BB Chronological 48: BB #28 – Knight of the Living Dead Pt. 1 |

BIG BANG COMICS #28 marked a return to the modern era of comics for the Knight Watchman when it was originally published back in December 1999 by Image Comics. It was pretty much a follow-up to the Knight Watchman: Graveyard Shift mini-series, although this time writer Chris Ecker also penciled the story, which was inked by Jim Brozman.

Jerry Randall’s leg injury from Graveyard Shift has healed, and he has resumed playing Galahad by day and Knight Watchman by night. This issue introduces a new adversary for him – a cannibalistic serial-killer who only kills members of the mob that murdered him.

And eats them, or at least parts of them, before they die.

Naturally, the police aren’t happy. And neither is the mob in Midway City. The Knight Watchman hears some police officers discussing the latest victim and they mention a possible previous one named Red Ted McKenna, who is either dead or has disappeared.

Knight Watchman sets out to trail McKenna and ends up in the sewers beneath the city. There he discovers a young black teen named Monroe Willis watching television in a shabby apartment area. Monroe is an orphan who is friends with whoever’s lair he is visiting.

As KW and Monroe talk, Red Ted McKenna arrives and the hulking fellow is not overly happy to see the Knight butting into his business, and the story ends on a cliffhanger with Red Ted knocking the Knight Watchman senseless.

After a one-page cartoon featuring Moffet the Prophet by Mike Worley, the action resumes in a 1970s era story pitting the original Knight Watchman and no-longer-a-kid Galahad against the Pink Flamingo.

The story is titled “The Pink Flamingo’s Bubble Trouble” and was plotted and drawn by Stuart Sayger, with very much a nod of the cap to the work of Neal Adams. I helped edit the story and gave a bit of help to the dialogue. It’s a somewhat dark story, in which the Flamingo sets out to rob the Wertham Art Museum, but first he alerts the Knight Watchman and sets a trap.

Pinky has a Super-Bubble gun that he uses to transform a henchman into a giant helium bubble monster. While KW takes on the bubble, Galahad goes after the Pink Flamingo, only to be blind-sided by Pinky’s other assistant, the Queen of Hearts. They take Galahad, and the stolen painting to their lair, but the Watchman trails them from the tracking unit in the Kid Whiz’s belt buckle. All ends happily as Pinky and the Queen are sent to prison and the painting is put on display at the Museum.

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