If you haven't been regularly reading Demon Knights, you're missing out on one of DC's most colorful cast of characters in a book that feels like no other in its lineup. Writer Robert Venditti keeps his merry band of misfits as offbeat as ever in Demon Knights #17, with artist Bernard Chang adding some delightfully nuanced visuals to the issue.
One usually doesn't look to mainstream comics as a source of boundary-testing gender subversion, but from the beginning, Demon Knights has been intent on pushing at our preconceived notions of gender and identity in a variety of subtle ways. Venditti continues this trend by pitting Exoristos, the exiled Amazon warrior who embodies an indomitable ferocious femininity, against macho man Vandal Savage, whose masculinity is so exaggerated it doesn't simply verge into the comedic, it gallops headlong into it. Also resolutely bucking traditional gender roles is Sir Ystin, the shining transgendered knight, who is most happy when he's dancing along the edge of convention. The violent confrontation between Vandal Savage and Exoristos is tempered by the subtle dance between the latter and Ystin and Venditti achieves an almost sublime nuance with his characterizations.
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