“So now you’d better stop and rebuild all your ruins”
Hey, look at this — it’s DC’s Dark Knights of Steel: Allwinter (with an extra story, “Heir to the Sea”), a sequel to Dark Knights of Steel! This is by Jay Kristoff and Tirso, with the extra story by Tom Taylor, Riccardo Federici, and Arif Prianto. Wes Abbott letters the whole thing, and Andrea Shea is the collection editor. 
It costs $19.99, and it’s 192 pages long.
As a medieval history aficionado, the fact that DC decided to do an Elseworlds universe in which their characters are chucked into a medieval world should please me, but I didn’t quite love Dark Knights of Steel, the initial offering of the world. It was ok, but it felt off somewhat, the story had some very severe logical gaps, and it felt like Tom Taylor was trying too hard to establish everything in the world. Allwinter, which is more focused, is much better, and I had more fun reading it. It’s a bit too long and it ends a bit too sappily, but for the most part, it’s a fun adventure. In the far north, it’s always winter (no Game of Thrones similarities here, no sir!), and Deathstroke is hired by a “jarl,” Vandar (Vandal Savage, of course), to capture a “monster,” who turns out to be a young boy in the care of Deathstroke’s ex-wife. Not being a complete bastard, Deathstroke defends the boy and his ex-wife against Vandal’s crew, which is led by Killer Frost. He gets the hell out of Dodge, as the boy claims he will be able to fix the winter (no Frozen vibes here, no sir!) and Deathstroke feels responsible for him, but Vandal simply sends Deathstroke’s daughter, Ravager, after them. 
It’s utter mayhem!!!!
It’s a fine adventure — we learn early on that Deathstroke may have gotten his sons killed, which is why he feels guilty about the boy and decides to help his ex-wife take him where he needs to go, Bruce Wayne shows up for a while and plays a somewhat crucial role in the story, Kristoff puts some nice spins on familiar DC characters, and the villain is obvious (it’s not Vandal Savage, even though he’s a dick) if you know anything about DC, but it’s still a good adventure. This is just another comic that’s kind of hard to write about because part of its charm is in the twists, and I don’t want to give those away. Kristoff keeps things humming along, as Deathstroke and the boy can never relax because there’s always another threat after the next page turn, but he does a decent job softening Deathstroke enough so that the ending works quite nicely. In the extra story, Taylor gives us a fun origin of Aquaman, who’s adopted by the Kents, because in every reality, it seems the Kents can’t stop adopting super-powered individuals! It’s fun.
I do like Tirso’s art quite a bit. He has a nice, cartoony style that he easily adapts for more serious stuff while he’s also able to do some goofier stuff in the course of the book. 
The action scenes in the book are marvelous, as his thin, curvy line feels like it’s always in motion, so when he draws stuff actually doing things, it really leaps off the page. His character designs are terrific, and he does an excellent job with the wintry setting, making us really feel the cold. In flashbacks, he uses a watercolor style which contrasts nicely with the harder edge of the freezing present, and the little color in the book really pops, because the rest is so starkly black and white. He uses blacks really well, almost throwing it onto the page to scar the drawings, giving us a very good idea about how tough everything is. Then there are a few silly panels, which breaks up the bleakness nicely and which he handles very well. The book looks very cool, which helps the story quite a bit.
These comics aren’t great, of course, but they are pretty fun, and Allwinter is more fun than the original. It feels more medieval, which is one of the issues I had with the first series, even though I know it’s not really meant to be medieval — I guess there’s less magic, which makes me happy, because magic often annoys me in fiction. I thought DC had at least one other series set in this world, but I’m not sure. Maybe I’m crazy. Anyway, you don’t really need to read the original to read this one (I guess it helps to know what Bruce Wayne is doing here), so go out and check this out!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
