Magic metal has somehow been secretly guiding humanity for years apparently. And of course Batman knows about it. A war or something is coming. This is Dark Days: The Road to Metal aka Scott Snyder Does A Crappy Grant Morrison Impression!
You know a DC book is going to suck donkey balls if Hawkman sticks his beak in - and guess who’s beaking it up on page 1? Though, to be fair, this one is terrible even without the Hawkman elements (I gather that his Nth Metal armour is the “magic metal”).
Heads-up to anyone thinking of buying this sight unseen - DC is taking the piss. In a 256 page book, only 70ish pages (just over a quarter of the book) is new material – Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting – the rest are all reprints. The filler is: Final Crisis #6-7, The Return of Bruce Wayne #1, Batman #38-39 (Endgame Parts 4-5), Nightwing Rebirth #17, and the double-page map of the Multiverse from The Multiversity Guidebook.
The reprints are meant to have some relevance to the main event (and maybe they do, I haven’t read Dark Nights: Metal yet) kinda like The Black Casebook, which was a collection of classic comics that influenced Grant Morrison’s Batman run. The difference is that The Black Casebook was sold as an optional accompaniment and wasn’t cynically tacked on to a couple of issues that anyone wanting to read the complete event would have to get! These two issues really should’ve been included in the main event rather than as its own separate book.
It’s also not satisfying to read this assortment of random comics. Aside from the Nightwing issue (which was garbage – an embarrassing mirror baddie to Nightwing called Deathwing fights Dick and Damian), I’ve read the others already so I wasn’t totally lost but what about new readers who haven’t got that context? Those issues, like the conclusions to Final Crisis and Endgame – none of which were that great to start with – are gonna read like a pure clusterfuck of nonsense to them!
Oy. So, onto The Forge/The Casting. At no point did I have any idea what was happening in them or why. Green Lantern and Duke discover Batman’s been keeping someone prisoner in a secret cave within the Batcave. Batman’s storage unit in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude contains something bananas. Magic is everywhere from the wizard Shazam to the titular metal to the flaming sword Wonder Woman gives Batman for reasons. Wha… ?
I didn’t mind the formless mystery as this is all a lead-in to the main event so I don’t expect answers at this point. But I wanted to encounter something to make me excited to keep reading – and there’s nothing here. Every scene was blah. The comics weren’t entertaining or attention-grabbing. Worse, they’re not well-written and are barely comprehensible.
What happened to Scott Snyder? This was a dude who, not that long ago, wrote one killer Batman book after another and then after Zero Year started churning out one crappy book after another, and hasn’t been able to stop and turn it around. It’s at the point now where I feel like he’s overstayed and should just leave DC - he’s that incapable of writing a worthwhile DC comic! Besides the many Morrison stuff included in this book, it seems like Snyder’s trying to get the acclaim Morrison gets by being as weird and wacky as some of his superhero comics are. Dude, just don’t. You’re not Grant Morrison. Just be Scott Snyder. That’s enough.
Snyder’s stories now are silly and near-unreadable. I really hate that Metal looks to feature a series of characters I can’t stand: Duke, the new “Robin-But-Don’t-Call-Him-Robin” who’s never been good, the ever-boring flying caveman without a personality Hawkman and Snyder’s tediously verbose Joker. His Batman has become oddly charmless too and the way he writes the rest of the swelling cast is unremarkable. And speaking of unremarkable, for a book boasting big artistic names like Jim Lee, John Romita Jr and Andy Kubert, there’s surprisingly little that’s special to see here.
I haven’t read Dark Nights: Metal yet so I can’t say whether or not reading this prologue is necessary but, from past experience with superhero events, I’m gonna say it probably isn’t. It’s certainly not much fun to read even if it is! Avoid it if you can.
It’s disappointing too as I was kinda looking forward to reading Metal – it seems unusual, original and amusingly chaotic – but what little enthusiasm I had for it has gone if it’s gonna be more of this crap. I’m still gonna read it though it’s looking to be like a chore now. Dark days indeed!
You know a DC book is going to suck donkey balls if Hawkman sticks his beak in - and guess who’s beaking it up on page 1? Though, to be fair, this one is terrible even without the Hawkman elements (I gather that his Nth Metal armour is the “magic metal”).
Heads-up to anyone thinking of buying this sight unseen - DC is taking the piss. In a 256 page book, only 70ish pages (just over a quarter of the book) is new material – Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting – the rest are all reprints. The filler is: Final Crisis #6-7, The Return of Bruce Wayne #1, Batman #38-39 (Endgame Parts 4-5), Nightwing Rebirth #17, and the double-page map of the Multiverse from The Multiversity Guidebook.
The reprints are meant to have some relevance to the main event (and maybe they do, I haven’t read Dark Nights: Metal yet) kinda like The Black Casebook, which was a collection of classic comics that influenced Grant Morrison’s Batman run. The difference is that The Black Casebook was sold as an optional accompaniment and wasn’t cynically tacked on to a couple of issues that anyone wanting to read the complete event would have to get! These two issues really should’ve been included in the main event rather than as its own separate book.
It’s also not satisfying to read this assortment of random comics. Aside from the Nightwing issue (which was garbage – an embarrassing mirror baddie to Nightwing called Deathwing fights Dick and Damian), I’ve read the others already so I wasn’t totally lost but what about new readers who haven’t got that context? Those issues, like the conclusions to Final Crisis and Endgame – none of which were that great to start with – are gonna read like a pure clusterfuck of nonsense to them!
Oy. So, onto The Forge/The Casting. At no point did I have any idea what was happening in them or why. Green Lantern and Duke discover Batman’s been keeping someone prisoner in a secret cave within the Batcave. Batman’s storage unit in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude contains something bananas. Magic is everywhere from the wizard Shazam to the titular metal to the flaming sword Wonder Woman gives Batman for reasons. Wha… ?
I didn’t mind the formless mystery as this is all a lead-in to the main event so I don’t expect answers at this point. But I wanted to encounter something to make me excited to keep reading – and there’s nothing here. Every scene was blah. The comics weren’t entertaining or attention-grabbing. Worse, they’re not well-written and are barely comprehensible.
What happened to Scott Snyder? This was a dude who, not that long ago, wrote one killer Batman book after another and then after Zero Year started churning out one crappy book after another, and hasn’t been able to stop and turn it around. It’s at the point now where I feel like he’s overstayed and should just leave DC - he’s that incapable of writing a worthwhile DC comic! Besides the many Morrison stuff included in this book, it seems like Snyder’s trying to get the acclaim Morrison gets by being as weird and wacky as some of his superhero comics are. Dude, just don’t. You’re not Grant Morrison. Just be Scott Snyder. That’s enough.
Snyder’s stories now are silly and near-unreadable. I really hate that Metal looks to feature a series of characters I can’t stand: Duke, the new “Robin-But-Don’t-Call-Him-Robin” who’s never been good, the ever-boring flying caveman without a personality Hawkman and Snyder’s tediously verbose Joker. His Batman has become oddly charmless too and the way he writes the rest of the swelling cast is unremarkable. And speaking of unremarkable, for a book boasting big artistic names like Jim Lee, John Romita Jr and Andy Kubert, there’s surprisingly little that’s special to see here.
I haven’t read Dark Nights: Metal yet so I can’t say whether or not reading this prologue is necessary but, from past experience with superhero events, I’m gonna say it probably isn’t. It’s certainly not much fun to read even if it is! Avoid it if you can.
It’s disappointing too as I was kinda looking forward to reading Metal – it seems unusual, original and amusingly chaotic – but what little enthusiasm I had for it has gone if it’s gonna be more of this crap. I’m still gonna read it though it’s looking to be like a chore now. Dark days indeed!
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