Exclusive Preview: DEMON KNIGHTS #23

If there was ever a preview with a final remark that made you super anxious to see the next page, this is it. GREEN LANTERN and X-O MANOWAR writer Robert Venditti continues to direct Etrigan the Demon's adventures in the dark corner of DC with DEMON KNIGHTS. Unfortunately, this also happens to be the last chapter in the series, too. Check out the synopsis for the final issue below and enjoy the exclusive preview!

DEMON KNIGHTS #23

The Knights are running out of options as they try to protect the Holy Grail! Plus, the fate of the Black Diamond is revealed!

DEMON KNIGHTS #23 goes on sale 08/14/13.

And so I must say fairwell to the most consistently well written series in the New 52.

Why is this ending? I was so, so devastated when they announced the cancellation. I've been dreading this. A genuinely amazing team made up of characters I didn't even know before I began reading it but now deeply care about. It's way better than any of the other group books DC is publishing at the moment; each character has distinct personality, voice, motivation, history, and interpersonal relationships. They're all awesome and interesting and well written. As much as I enjoy Justice League Dark, this book is far and away the best. I think it's a problem this is better than all of the Justice Leagues - shouldn't DC's flagship books be better than the 'obscure' one they're canceling? Ugh. Sorry for the rant, but I'm so angry and upset. Boo on you for this one, DC. Boo on you.

@darthmat: it's okay your rant is good and I agree with you on this

@darthmat: you mean boo on the readers for not buying this book. At the end of the day, DC is a business and they can't keep publishing a book if the audience is too small.

The end at last is in our sights the final tale of Demon Knights. I clicked the link to take a look yet sadly that can't save this book. To those who love it very much my sympathies go out as such. Etriggan is one cool cat but his book won't sell without a "Bat-". Money talks but never sings the dollar is DC's true king.

@zeeguy91: DC never promoted this book never had it crossover with another title it was thrown in the deep end and left there. DC needs to learn how to promote smaller titles or just release them as Vertigo titles.

great series , sad to see it go

Probably will get replaced with 2 new batman titles.

Hopefully we'll still see Etrigan in the current timeline doing something, or maybe the Justice League Dark book

@hushofthewind said:

Can't wait to see how Constantine pisses off Etrigan.

I'd say all of those characters could hold there own title. I don't think I like this as a team though... oh well

I've loved this book. The art has been slipping as of late but heres to a great run by both Cornell and Venditti, and both creative teams for great stuff.

:(

That's the problem with comic readers, or at least readers who only read Marvel and DC, they stray from or reject anything outside the norm. It amazes how people spend money picking up the 3rd and 4th Spiderman, Batman, X-Men, and Superman titles instead of discovering new characters and stories. This same thing happened to Agents of Atlas.

it's odd how some books are only praised when they're about to be cancelled

@darthmat: Ranting isn't bad when you're right.

@thetimestreamer: Well the The Edge ( war, science fiction, western, or crime) and Dark ( supernatural themes ) books never get enough attetion even if the books are really good, they get cancelled due the main character isn´t too popular around fans or media. I Vampire was really good but tittle was misleading as it looked as similiar theme similiar to Twilight.

Too bad It was a very good book, better even than superman, superboy and other which are still running but when you don't have a S or a bat on your chest or don't belong to their families you will be thrown away to sad

@thetimestreamer: Where have you been looking? Demon Knights has been praised since the beginning. I can't think of one negative thing I've ever read about it.

Words can't even express how sad I am to see this go. This book singlehandedly kicked all the JL books to the curb in my eyes. Even JLDark. They should come back as a miniseries or even better, an ongoing under Vertigo

@mellow_hype:

lolz, true

I liked I, Vampire. That was the one that I wished that they didn't cancel.

Sigh... it's a sad day for comics when good ones get cancelled. Ho.. hum...

@br_havoc: uh, yes they did. I remember seeing a bunch of ads for it when they first launched the New 52. I remember thinking "oh, I like Etrigan. I should probably give it a shot." I mean, if they didn't advertise it, then how'd you find out about it? And because if that advertising, the title launched with around 50k readers. But, to your point about crossovers, they probably never had a crossover for it because of the fact that its set in a time period separate from the rest of the DCU. It would be impossible to have a crossover without time travel. However, they did link this title heavily to Stormwatch. Anyway, the point is that it's easy to blame the company. However, they're not the ones responsible for the lack of audience. They did advertise the book. No. The responsibility for this book's cancellation lies with the readers.

Add me to the list of people who are sad to see Demon Knights get cancelled. I first heard about DK in an issue (can't remember which one) of Stormwatch that Etrigan was in.

@nuec_sol: tell me about it. Now, if this book had been called Justice League Gothic, maybe that would have made people buy it.

I agree to a certain point you can blame readers but Demon Knights was never promoted correctly so it could not reach its full audience. Smaller books never are other then the initial promotion of the new 52 and all its titles when did they promote it after? The answer is then never did it they pulled a Dial H and left it out in the cold but would keep tossing promos for Superman or any big event that does not need any more press. There is a back page that DC should use to have an editor or a writer talk up smaller books to help get the word out. They fail to do that every time.

A crossover with Demon Knights would be tricky but not impossible I would have done it with Justice League Dark and frankly it's a comic book the concept of time travel is common and easily explored.

You seem to always want to blame the readers and they share half the blame but the other half lands squarely on the company that failed to promote their book properly and help it find its core audience. Why the hell did they not try to market this book to fans of Game of Thrones or Lord of the rings? Because it was a small book and did not have Batman or Superman on the cover.

Am I the only one that sees Wonder Woman on the cover?

Maybe its an easter egg? Maybe some of these characters pop up in Wonder Woman in future issues?

After the Lucifer thing I could never pick this series back up.

And so passes an awesome book that makes no sense to cancel :-/ Ah well. At least we got to see some of Venditti's genius in the book before it ended.

I loved it but it did lose steam at one point and I stopped buying it. I always felt that Etrigan was being held back by the others.

@vitalius: I think the art of I, Vampire was also working against it. Definitely visually interesting, but it wasn't very accessible and it was "muddy" - hard to really follow sometimes. I'm sad to see a lot of these characters go, especially when there are so many books for other characters that are of such varying quality and that have such little regard for continuity.

And this is why I'm so happy Valiant is back.

I'll miss this series so much but the art has been lacking for me personally when Bernard Chang left the book.

@mellow_hype:

The sad thing is you're probably right. *sigh* DC has a problem understanding that we comic customers may not want Batman in every permutation possible. Same thing with the cartoons, they just don't get that once in a while we want to focus on someone/some group OTHER than the Batman.

@emperormeister734: I thought that was Wonder Woman too at first. But upon closer inspection, I realized it was actually her Amazon sister, Exorsitos, who has been part of Demon Knights since the beginning.

@vitalius: Suicide Squad is an Edge book. Isn't that doing well? I may be wrong. It seems like DC has abandoned the categorizing of their series into the families anyway as all the New 52 October solicits were released in one article and the November ones were released in three, one of which was everything related to Batman and/or Zero Year, another was everything related to Forever Evil, and the third was the remainder.

@mezmero: Ha ha! I see what you did there. It would be more obvious if you pressed the 'enter' key between verses, or even used commas.