Well, Scott Snyder promised us a big, bonkers summer blockbuster of a comic and that seems to be exactly what we're getting with Dark Nights: Metal. It begins with the Justice League forced to fight for the entertainment of Mongul and his hordes...
... continues with the revelation of the identity of the new Lady Blackhawk following the appearance of a mountain in the heart of Gotham City...
... and ends with the unexpected appearance of… nah, that one I shan't spoil, as it's a last-page surprise, and a biggie. I can, though, reveal that we get a photographic cameo by Will Payton aka the fifth Starman, and a live action appearance by Red Tornado.
It seems that since DC Rebirth, Reddy is unknown to the rest of the heroes. Likewise, they don't know Kendra, the Blackhawks, the Challengers of the Unknown or Carter Hall. An interesting surprise is the JLA’s familiarity with the homeworld of 31st-century hero Cosmic Boy, Braal, but as this story is all about metal and cosmic connections, it fits nicely.
We get some fascinating infodumps, including this nuttiness… the Dark Multiverse has to exist because, well, a 2D map can be flipped over… er, OK.
The opening arena fight between the League and creations of a reluctant Toyman - the young version (BoyToyman?) - is loads of fun… Snyder writes a terrifically triumphalist Mongul, and a wonderful League. The team dynamics are great fun, although they seem to have forgotten everything Gardner Fox ever taught them.
Come on guys, if you have opponents cued to your abilities, you simply swap dancing partners. Mind, the solution Batman comes up with is rather excellent.
The only off-moment is this:
I realise we have to move with the times, but there's no mainstream Barry Allen that would make a pun based on a word’s similarity to a bit of Anglo-Saxon cursing. Tut.
That's a tiny thing, an offside aside in what turns out to be a pre-credits sequence for a deep dive into DC continuity, nodding to everything from Final Crisis to Aquaman’s harpoon-arm era (*See the 90s, suggests the dry editors’ note).
The art suits the script nicely, which is no surprise as penciller Greg Capullo, inker Jonathan Glapion and colourist FCO Plascencia worked with Snyder on a long run of Batman issues; this is a creative team with chemistry. The heroes look good, the monsters, bad and the settings, wild and woolly. The only thing in the book that looks awful is the tragic Blackhawks redesign, but I think that predates the current creatives.
Are those stacked utility pockets meant to suggest feathers? Whatever, just bring back the sleek, black leather classic uniform.
I like Capullo’s willingness to play with composition, for example using Batman’s head to frame a League conflab. Plus, he nails the funny moments Snyder builds in.
And thanks, too, to Steve Wands for a typically sharp lettering job.
At 28pp of story this is almost 50% bigger than your average DC comic, but it feels larger still. If you've been swithering as to whether or not to buy Dark Nights: Metal - it's six issues seeding a bunch of side stories and specials - I say risk the money, you almost certainly won't be sorry.
I liked it too...and had that same problem with Barry's line. Wally or Kyle, sure. But that just didn't sound like Barry.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they'll be reading this and fix it for the collection. Yeah, right!
DeleteAll right, you've convinced me. Guess I have to go buy it now!
ReplyDeleteWould love to hear your thoughts.
Delete"Forge," "Casting," and now this issue have completely worn away my resistance to embrace Rebirth. I dived in when it all first came out, liked it, then pulled back when it all started to wobble (for me), with the "wait, now Superman is a combo of two Supermen and wait Superwoman has to be all different now, too, already, and oh yeah, we totally have this all figured out" kind of stuff started happening. This "Metal" event, along with the great work of the Young Animal imprint, has convinced me to dive back in and give what used to be my "fictional home base" another chance.
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoy it! There's certainly an energy across DC right now.
DeleteI saw this issue as the anti-Rebirth? Miss Hawkgirl and classic Lady Blackhawk? Ha, they're now the same because it's coool. Want any hero competent besides Bat-God? Tough! I bought it because I missed Capulo drawing properties I like but even that was a let down. I'll stick to Rebirth titles that go for the positive like the soft reboot was advertised as being all about, have a full cast that knows what they're doing that aren't Batman, and writers who prefer character to spectacle mostly...
ReplyDeleteI don't think Hawkgirl and Zinda are the same, as we saw Zinda as a separate person in a picture. And I can't see Kendra staying out of her winged outfit for long, this is almost certainly just Scott Snyder 'aving a larf'.
DeleteSo let me get this straight...
ReplyDeleteWe had the post Crisis DCU. Then that got rebooted by Flashpoint into the New52, which scrapped a lot of history/relationships to try and lure new readers. That wound up turning off a lot of old readers. So then we got Rebirth which indicated an nearly omnipotent Doc Manhattan of Watchmen fame was responsible for the lost history/relationships. Now DC has been slowly bringing back aspects of the pre-New52 (see the Superman Reborn and Button storylines) and hinting that the old DCU many of us loved and miss will eventually return as part of a Geoff Johns project published next year tying up the Watchmen storyline.
And yet, in the middle of this, DC launches ANOTHER major storyline - Metal - about ANOTHER mysterious, nearly omnipotent threat lurking out there. On the one hand this storyline takes more steps to reverse the New52. Crisis happened! Final Crisis happened! Morrison's Batman run happened! And it references pre-New52 versions of The Challengers of the Unknown, the Blackhawks, Hawkman/Hawkgirl, Red Tornado and Starman. Some of those characters were part of the New52, but those versions appear to be ignored/forgotten.
But wait!!!! All of said characters STILL have different histories from their pre-New52 versions. The Hawks and Red Tornado apparently still never worked with the Justice League. The Justice League does not know/recognize the Challengers.
So now, with the New52 fading and still in the middle of the pre-New52 coming back, we have, what, the Snyderverse?
What the hell is going on at DC? All of the reviews of Metal have been pretty positive. And I understand why it's an exciting story. But c'mon. Snyder is using continuity, heavily, in this thing to get people excited. And yet he is also screwing around even more with DCs continuity. Is there any reason why he could not write the Challengers, the Hawks, the Blackhawks and Red Tornado as characters who had been around for years and had worked with/been members of the Justice League? That would not have prevented him from weaving the exact same story about a hidden conspiracy among that group to search for the Dark Multiverse. But instead we get yet another history of the modern day DCU which is not quite the New52, not quite the pre-New52, and, for all we know, will be rendered moot at the end of Geoff Johns Watchmen/Rebirth project.
What a mess. What an unreadable mess.
I absolutely get what you're saying and on one level, yep, applause. On the other, this is a period of transition for DC's books - we're pretty sure there's going to be a hard continuity reset within the year, so in the meantime, the creators are likely thinking, why not have some fun? We've recently had a timestream image of the classic JLA, in The Button maybe, and I'm guessing the 2017 continuity will segue back into that post the big Dr Manhattan story, with Reddy knowing everyone, maybe even The Secret Origin of the Justice League (minus one).
DeleteCyborg's Booyah was massively deserved when the league formed Leaguetron
ReplyDeleteBooyah!
DeleteThanks, Martin. Sorry to be so negative. I like your site because it's generally very positive!
ReplyDeleteGiven we are in this flux period I guess it would be hard for Snyder to suddenly write Red Tornado and Hawkman/Hawkwoman as if they were known to the League, particularly since we are still operating without a Justice Society, which the Hawks played such a big part in.
But that's what makes the ambitious Metal story so ... clunky. It's kinda like Snyder is inventing the rules and flying by the seat of his pants as he goes along because Rebirth is still happening. And when you really start to apply some internal logic, it falls apart.
We have the Blackhawks and the Chals and Red Tornado and Hawkman/Hawkgirl back and, apparently, they were fighting the good fight before the Justice League? But, at least based on Metal issue 1, the League didn't know them? These folks weren't public? It's just hard to swallow and awkward.
Snyder's doing the best he can with the framework he's got to work with. And that's why it just would have been better to get Rebirth over with before tackling Metal, because that framework is still being built over in the Geoff Johns corner of the DCU.
Don't publish some big, multi-verse shattering epic in the middle of you're unfinished, multi-verse shattering epic.
That's very fair. I've complained about Marvel doing that very thing. Did you see Tom Bondurant's, I would say, fascinating piece on CBR this weekend ... I know, it's not a listicle! http://www.cbr.com/dark-nights-metal-1-annotated/
DeleteI was underwhelmed, though that won't stop me from seeing where it goes. I am, again, rather alarmed by how quickly DC seems to just throw continuity out the window. The whole Grant Morrison multiverse thing should have been thrown out the window by Convergence, according to which a Superman (I can't remember which anymore) and a group of heroes went back into the past to stop the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which they did, meaning the infinite multiverse is back.
ReplyDeleteNow, I am not opposed to this Multiverse, limited though it is, but I think Snyder should have explained it differently than he has here. I think this multiverse the see is a "local" multiverse, or a universe cluster in an otherwise infinite multiverse.
As for this dark multiverse, I am okay with it, but again, the way it was presented here was really dumb, though I understood what Kendra was saying with regard to the dark matter and dark energy (completely misunderstanding what those things are, btw) and how those are a kind of clue as to a different multiverse.
What is really bugging me about this is how Snyder seems to want to always link heroes to some kind of cosmic meta-symbol. I like the idea of Batman being a human being. A brilliant and incredibly well trained one, but still just a human being with a quest for justice. I hate the idea that he is some kind of manifestation of something greater.
I really enjoy Snyder's writing, but I think at this point he needs someone to rein him in a bit. Having lots of ideas is great, but knowing when you're going too far with them is a skill he needs to embrace.
Anyway, I am hoping this leads to a much better story than this first issue.
BTW, now Aquaman can fly through space unaided? When did this happen?
I do agree that all the symbolism is a bit much. But I'm willing to see where it goes. I am of the Glass Half Full tribe.
ReplyDeleteOh, I agree with you there. If anyone has earned a "Give it a chance" it's Snyder. His run on Batman is one of my favorites ever. So I am hoping that maybe I just need to see more context. :)
Deletehave this nutty theory with The Dark Multiverse being used an it's connection to The Dreaming eye think ol Wesley Dodds may show up or at least get referenced
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