Ricky Church reviews Dark Nights – Metal: The Resistance…
Dark Nights – Metal was DC’s big event last year, headline by the former Batman duo Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo. While the story spanned across the DC multiverse as evil versions of Batman invaded, the event itself wasn’t as all encompassing as previous events with massive amounts of tie-in issues. The tie-ins focusing on the Dark Nights was already collected, but now DC has released Dark Nights – Metal: The Resistance, the final collection of tie-ins that focuses on the various groups of heroes coming together during their darkest hour to defeat the Dark Nights.
The stories in the book focus mostly on the Justice League and some members of the extended Bat-family and Suicide Squad as they do what they can to defeat the Dark Knights. The main draws are ‘Gotham Resistance’ and ‘Bats Out of Hell’, showcasing just how desperate a situation this is for the heroes as they suffer several roadblocks in their battle to repel the invasion. There are some entertaining moments and intriguing character team-ups or interactions that help propel these stories forward, but the book ultimately doesn’t do too much to serve the overall narrative of Dark Nights – Metal save for a one or two stories here.
Much of this relies on having read the main Metal story in order to fully understand the events presented here. ‘Gotham Resistance’, for instance, takes place between Metal #2 and #3, fleshing out adventures and information that were briefly referenced in Metal #3. It’s a bit of an entertaining team-up between the Teen Titans, Nightwing, Green Arrow and the Suicide Squad in a crossover that stretches across their respective titles and actually flows fairly well with four writers covering each individual chapter. What makes it a fun read is the pairings that aren’t often seen, like Damien with Green Arrow and Harley Quinn as they traverse a changed and dangerous Gotham City. However, there isn’t that much more to the story that adds to Metal in any huge way. You do see more of what the Dark Knights have done to the world, but even then most of the trouble is left to various Batman rogues who have been granted additional powers or territory to claim as their own rather than a Knight stepping directly in. The information that is revealed that advances the story is so minimal that the few lines in Metal #3 just about cover this four-issue crossover.
Likewise, ‘Bats out Hell’ sees members of the Justice League on their own individual missions against the Dark Knights, but this crossover is set between Metal #4 and #5. It mostly features the Justice League pitted against their evil Batman counterparts, such as Flash vs the Red Death, Aquaman vs the Drowned and Wonder Woman vs the Merciless. The outstanding chapter of all these showdowns is actually Green Lantern vs the Dawnbreaker, which Robert Venditii writes and Ethan Van Sciver on art. Its a very entertaining confrontation that displays Hal Jordan’s stubborn and intuitive nature as he thinks outside the box to battle Dwanbreaker. Sciver’s had plenty of experience drawing Green Lantern thanks to his time on Geoff Johns’ epic run and here he’s no slouch as he depicts some stellar images. Despite that, however, ‘Bats Out of Hell’ ultimately doesn’t do too much to the story except to account for the presence of a few characters who show up later in Metal and is more of a side quest for the heroes that somewhat detracts from the main narrative. It is nice to see more of the Dark Knights and how they fare against the Justice League, however, but its not quite enough to give the story that much weight.
The two main stories that actually play some major parts in Metal are ‘Batman: Lost’ and ‘Hawkman: Found’. Both stories are fairly integral to Metal that depict the various ways Barbatos and the Dark Knights have tortured Batman and Hawkman enough to break their spirits. ‘Batman: Lost’ is particularly important since it was written by Scott Snyder alongside James Tynion IV and Joshua Williamson. Their writing of Batman is well done in showing just how his resolve had faded in Metal by what was done to him. Of all the stories, this one is perhaps the most significant while ‘Hawkman: Found’, written by Jeff Lemire with Bryan Hitch’s art, gives some nice Hawkman action and offers an interesting parallel into his own torture cycle and resolve. These two stories also carry the most emotional weight behind them and their teams successfully gets the pain and hopelessness of Batman and Hawkman’s plights across.
Dark Nights – Metal: The Resistance offers some interesting stories and fun team-ups, but ultimately they aren’t entirely necessary for one to fully understand Metal. The scope of the conflict is widened, but not much more than it already was. Despite some admittedly entertaining interactions with some of the characters and battles between the justice League and Dark Knights, ‘Batman: Lost’ and ‘Hawkman: Found’ are the only real necessary stories in this collection that offers insight into the main narrative. It’s still a good book, but aside from just collecting all of the Metal books for the complete story, readers don’t entirely need this one.
Rating: 6/10
Ricky Church
