Villordsutch reviews Knight Rider #1….

Knight Rider was cool! It really was! In the 1980s we had dull cars in the U.K. which were either square in design or rectangular, they were daubed in dull pastel colours and were often left to rust on our housing estates. Our lives too were very drab, dull and nothing much occurred, but one of the few things that made us want to continue breathing the lead-filled air was Knight Rider, so when I was offered the chance to go back and relive this happy moment I snatched it and ran!

Lion Forge has brought back, to today’s world, both Knight Rider and Airwolf with more memories on the way; the issues are to be produced in a Digital Format to fit in with today’s modern age of wonder. With all this updating for the 21st century that this franchise has been given, it’s odd to see that the characters in this issue look like they are straight out of the 1990’s X-Men comics. Men with square jaws and brick wall-like chests, women with amazingly small waists, so small that their livers must be these size of a tennis balls, but at the same time breasts as large as their heads. What a world Jason Johnson (DV8, Penthouse Comix) must live it when everybody looks like this? There is no gritty realism here, just men with right angles built into their pectorals and women that could be used as floatation aids for Trans-Atlantic Cruise Liners. I’m 38 years old, I know this isn’t real!

The other confusing thing here is the story by Geoffrey Thorne (Honor Brigade, Dark Horse Presents) as I’m a wee bit unsure what the story actually is. Are we looking at the genesis of Michael Knight here as Michael already has KITT (well Horsie as he calls it) and he’s called Michael Knight already. Surely in #1 you’d be concentrating of completing this tale. This confusion is rather frustrating as I am unsure in which direction we’re going or what is going on, though near the end we do get a sense of a mystery building which left me wanting to read more of what’s to come. It’s just a shame the rest of the story felt like I’d missed a couple of issues – that and the fact the comic feels around twenty years too late.

Knight Rider #1 is clearly meant to reawaken a number of people around my generation, taking us back to times when we thought that leather jackets, tight jeans and perms rocked the world and I was more than happy to get a look at what Lion Forge has to show us. There is a story hidden behind this which I am very interested in and I’m keen to follow it, but I’d like to see it given more of a direction to focus on, as well as a rethink of the art we’re being given. If we do want new readers to the comic world I’d rather have the new readers turn up to see our maturity needle isn’t stuck back in 1995.

Villordsutch is married with kids and pets. He looks like a tubby Viking and enjoys science fiction. Follow him on Twitter.