 Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting episode, another edition of A Week in Geekdom here on YouTube. It's another review and finally, I had the opportunity to sit down and read DC's Metal event and I wanted to share my thoughts on it. So let's go. DC's Metal was the first company event in the rebirth era, if you will, unless you want to count smaller events like the button and all that stuff. Now I didn't read the story when it came out in singles, I waited until I could get my hands on the collected editions and boy, oh boy, that's one of my big negatives about this book is the collected editions. Okay, so this is the event itself. It's an oversized hardcover with only issues one through six. That's it. And it has like a sketchbook and some behind the scenes stuff and whatnot for the event. And you want to get the tie-ins. Here's Dark Knight's Metal, the resistance. It contains resistance and bats out of hell. That's the main two tie-in stories, which it's composed of Teen Titans 12, Nightwing 29, Suicide Squad 26, Green Arrow 32, The Flash 33, Justice League 32 and 33, Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps issue number 32 plus two one-shots. Batman lost number one and Hawkman found number one. Okay, if you want to read more supplemental material, this is Dark Knight's Metal, Dark Knight's Rising. That's a lot of dark and knights. Basically, this is where all the evil Batman from the multiverse, the dark multiverse show up. You get their origin stories here. You have, yeah, all the Batman tie-in one-shots and you also get the Dark Knight's Rising, The Wild Hunt issue, which in hindsight isn't really necessary, but whatever, if you want to get everything, yeah, you'll need that. But if you want to start from the very beginning, you're going to get this book, which is, you know, kind of pointless, but still cool to have. This is Dark Days, The Road to Metal. This contains a bunch of stories that built the foundation for the event, but what we are interested in is the two one-shots. Dark Days, The Forge issue one and Dark Days, The Casting issue one. That sets off a chain of events where Batman has discovered basically, now don't worry, I'm not going to spoil much, Batman basically discovers all, like, whenever there's a crisis event or a big event, there are afterthoughts and residuals of energy displacements and all that stuff. And, you know, the character realized that these things occur for a reason and they're building up to something. And like I said, this book, you know, it has the foundations for that story with Final Crisis, the return of Bruce Wayne, the New 52, Scott Snyder run, and Detective Comics and Nightwing re-birth issues. And basically, yeah, Batman has his hunch and he's investigating things because that's what he does. A lot of people don't know or don't exactly approve of his methods, but he's trying to get like the best result possible without highlighting the problem, sort of working behind the scenes, even from his own comrades. This leads to epic discoveries and it involves the tale of birds and bats, if you will, early tribal history. We have written accounts from Carter Hall, aka Hawkman, and his own investigation. Bruce finds this journal that further intrigues him and sort of sets him off on this path to discover what is essentially the dark multiverse. This layer, this founding, or this foundation, however you want to say it, in the DC universe that sort of like the basis for dark energy and dark matter and all that stuff. It turns out that there's this layer underneath everything and then like another plane of existence called the dark multiverse. And the idea is very simple. I don't consider this a huge spoiler, but more like mild, I don't know. Basically, the concept of that dark multiverse is that when the 52 world and the however many earths you want to say there are, it depends on your knowledge of DC history or how long you've been reading it. But let's go with multiversity and the whole concept of the 52 earths and all that stuff. The dark multiverse is basically sort of like the forge where things are being made and the offshoots and the evil actions or mistakes, I should say, that happen get transformed into these dark worlds that don't necessarily meet the light of day. They're doomed failures and a lot of characters, they're born from that failure. So, you know, they're not necessarily good guys. That's how you get different, that's how you get different bad people. You may have seen all the cool promo images because sorry, if I'm spoiling it, I'm completely sorry, but you have had to have seen the countless merchandise from figurines, statues, pops and posters and stuff of all the cool looking bat villains. And what sets off from Batman's investigation is this weird, awesome, metal as hell journey through what makes the DC universe what it is, this special place where you can toy around with the multiverse and different alternate worlds with alternate takes on heroes and how far are we willing to go to discover like the truth behind the truth? And even if Batman has to fight the just as the good self and other heroes and stuff to find out and put a stop to sort of this lingering hunch like he is gazing at this abyss and it is staring back and there's a reason for it. And it involves certain characters and a villain that I won't reveal in this but this type of overlord type villain that, you know, his purpose and his reason for being I guess you could sort of trace his roots to earlier stories. It's not necessarily the most complex nuance thing, I don't know, but it is a lot of fun. Like I said, it's a fun ride and you get to see different corners of the DC world from outer space to here on earth as well. There's a moment where this cataclysmic event occurs in Gotham City and you're presented with a hugely bizarre version of Gotham and a resistance group is doing everything possible to stop it from continuing and spreading. So I thought that was really cool. It's only six issues. It's written by Scott Snyder, great artwork from Greg Capullo and it has wonderful, it has wonderful tie ins that don't bog the story as other events tend to do. For some reason I found myself really enjoying what I was reading almost all the way through the resistance thing, the backstory for the bad guys, everything was really fun and really interesting just seeing these guys create this new story. Sometimes I wonder after reading so many events and reading so many stories, you know, what else can you do to expand on the overall myth and lore of the comic book universe and and Snyder just does a really clever thing and he traces back to his love for events and a comic book event is very bombastic fun actioning. It can be a little bit cerebral or in-depth and mysterious and philosophical in nature but it can also be really fun like this huge looming threat where the characters have to band together to defeat this huge bad guy. If you've read the crisis events, you know, it has sort of that flavor where it involves the whole gang of characters and that's the type of event that we get. It's not super complicated but the implications involved in this story are great and it opens the world to new stories, new heroes, new books and just exploring fun concepts. Who would have thought that this event would sink in perfectly with what Grant Morrison did with Final Crisis with what Snyder, of course, you know, Snyder writing it so he's going to refer back to his Batman run but to take stuff from his run and expand it in an organic sort of way where it's not forced like, oh this came out of nowhere, you know, the hints were there. It was pretty interesting to see how it all plays out. So yeah, the art is wonderful. I'd love, I'd love, love Greg Kapoor doing DC comics. It's just, it's wonderful and getting him on an event like this where he can draw so many different characters. He can draw the whole Justice League telling a story and all that stuff is really cool. I wish the event could have been just a tiny little bit longer but it's fine with the length that it has. The tie-ins aren't too tiresome. There are a couple issues where, yeah, like typical tie-in drama like it expands on something the main issue talked about. It gives you a little bit and then it ends in a cliffhanger because you got to continue the story with the main issues. There is a little bit of that but it doesn't, it doesn't bother me as much with other events. Yeah, what else can I say? It is a wonderful, action-packed, fun ride and through the DC multiverse and its wonderful history, the implications at the end are actually fantastic. And like I mentioned earlier, it opens the gateway for a bunch of cool new ideas. Ideas that we're currently reading and seeing. I cannot wait to tackle the new Justice League dark books and I can't wait to talk about Terrifics with you guys and then the heroes that, well, most of them got canceled but the few that are still there, I want to talk about them eventually. So yeah, should you read Metal? If you have extensive knowledge on the DC universe as a whole, I think you're really going to enjoy it. It's a fun action romp. If you've only read Rebirth, you might want to do your research a little bit backwards. You know, stuff like this can help but I would rather just have knowledge on the events and what the crisis entails on just who's who in the DC universe and that can help in the long run to really enjoy what Metal is really about. Yeah, also, for all of you that have read this story, Dawnbreaker, I think that's the name, right? It's the Batman alabs, the Red Death, the Drowned, Dawnbreaker, Murder Machine, the Merciless and the Devastator. Holy crap. You might want to, you might be thinking, hey, the Batman who laughs, he's pretty popular. He is but the one that freaked me out for some reason is the Dawnbreaker. I really dug that storyline. That was really creepy and the implications of that stuff. Oh boy. Like, I hadn't seen something of that nature. I don't know. I thought it was pretty interesting. Have you read Metal? I hope I didn't spoil anything too big for you guys. There is some really cool stuff in there and I want you guys to read it and let me know if you liked it. I certainly had a ton of fun with it. It's not like the biggest thing in the world but I think you're going to dig it. If you like just fun superhero action on a cosmic scale, DC Metal just might be that event for you. Guys, let me know down below. Thank you for liking, commenting, subscribing, doing all that wonderful stuff that you guys do. I wholeheartedly appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best. Follow me on your favorite social media platform, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all that fun stuff so we can keep the conversation going. All right. I have got to go. I will catch all of you at a later time. Remember to tune in to the Omnibus Collectors Network and my appearances on Omnibros Live. So if you don't see me posting here, I'm probably over there geeking out with my fellow nerds about comics and everything else in between. All right. God bless. I love every single one of you. Thank you so much. I will catch all of you at our next review.