Beyond The Panels #18: Dark Nights: Metal: Why It's The Best Event Book In Ages And What Can Be Learned From It

So, I don't think I'm going out on a limb here by saying that Dark Nights: Metal is pretty fucking spectacular.

It's not exactly a controversial opinion.

Dark Nights: Metal works so well because if you'd been reading Snyder's Batman and/or know a lot of stuff about the DCU, you're getting a lot of fun pay offs and seeing DC stuff you hadn't seen in a while and if you have only been reading DC for a little while, like since Rebirth, you're still getting a cool story. It's continuity heavy in a way (there's a lot of Morrison stuff in it, from Final Crisis to Multiversity, plus Snyder's own stuff, as well as lots of other little DCU stuff in it), but it does in a way where it explains what you need to know. It works when it really shouldn't.

One of the things about DC stuff, especially events, is that DC is the comic company with the craziest continuity and as such, has lots of crazy stuff that could drive away readers. Metal takes stuff like the Multiverse and the five "magic" metals of the DCU and uses it to make everything better. It takes things like Dream and the Oblivion Bar and throws them in there and lets you decide whether you care enough to go and find out more about them. If you don't want to, you don't have to, but it's there and it's presented in such a way that may pull in people to go learn about them.

As an event book buyer, I rarely buy too many superfluous crossovers. Mostly, I'll buy the main series and the tie-ins in books I already buy, but I rarely if ever buy any of the miniseries tie-ins and so on. A lot of time publishers, especially Marvel, go into tie-in overkill and put out miniseries like they're going out of style. DC has resisted this impulse. Metal crosses over into DC books and they do it in an interesting way- they do one part per book and have multiple books cross over with each other. Now, I didn't buy the ones from books I didn't read, but even then, I was still able to follow what was going on. That's a good thing and it's a rare thing with event book tie-ins- usually, if you miss a tie in, you're kind of screwed (my two cross overs were in Nightwing and Justice League and they were both second parts), but I wasn't. I've also been buying the Dark Multiverse Batman books.I was only going buy the Batman Who Laughs one, but the employees of my LCS talked me into reading the Red Death one and... yeah, I've bought them all. Because of the quality of these one-shots, I've decided to buy all the tie-in one shots. Since they are one-shots, it's like I've only added two books to my pull per month- the main series and the tie-in series of one shots.

We're at the halfway point and so far, what we've gotten is working. It's working so well. And Marvel could learn something from it.

So, when I heard about Secret Empire, I started buying Steve Rogers: Captain America because that was the build up book for Secret Empire. It was a good book and it led to..... well, Secret Empire wasn't bad. It just wasn't particularly good. It was long and bloated and Marvel milked it for all it was worth... which, on a basis of what we got and how good it was, wasn't much, in reality. Secret Empire had it moments, it just took way too long to get there and was sort of aimless for a lot of it. There were sooooo many crossovers- most Marvel books had one and there were multiple miniseries. Of course, this has always been the Marvel way of doing events... and DC's. This time, though, DC isn't doing it that way. They released a small list of tie-ins titles and.... that was it. Like I said, there are some crossovers into monthlies and a bunch of one shots, but that's all.

Secret Empire was a lot of filler. Way too much filler. Dark Nights: Metal is all killer, no filler. First off, it's six issues long, so you don't have time to fuck around. Secret Empire eventually got ten issues, not counting the zero issue and the aftermath issue, and.... Jesus fucking Christ, there was a ton of fucking around. Most of the first five issues was just fucking around. Metal doesn't have that luxury- Snyder and Capullo can't meander- they have to get to the point and tell the story. If this was a Secret Empire like event, we would have got the origins of the Dark Multiverse Batmen in the main book.

Another thing is if you picked up Secret Empire #0, you wouldn't have known too much about what was happening without having read Steve Rogers: Captain America. You probably would have known about Hydra Cap, but you wouldn't have known how he manipulated his way into power and all the building blocks of the whole thing. I don't know if you would have stayed with the book without that prior investment. With Dark Nights: Metal, sure it's nice if you've read Snyder and Capullo's Batman or Dark Days: The Forge and The Casting, but you don't really need to. The main book does a great job explaining everything you need to know... in a short six issue series while also moving the plot along. It's a wonderful work of comic creating. I'm not big on Scott Snyder's superhero stuff- I've read his two Joker stories in Batman and found them pretty good, if a little long winded and the last few parts of Superheavy. He's fine, but his writing strikes me as Grant Morrison lite and he tries to throw a bit of horror into everything. I love his Image stuff, though. Anyway, I love what he's doing in Dark Nights: Metal.

He's still borrowing from Morrison, but he's using all the stuff he's built up and... it's pretty cool. There's still that horror feel to the book, but.... it works. It all fucking works. I know I've said that a few times, but that's the thing that's so amazing about Metal- it's working so fucking well. We live in a time when event books are a dirty word. People have turned on event books really hard- they still sell, but the fan and critical reaction to them has cooled to near absolute zero. Dark Nights: Metal is very much a stereotypical event book, but people love it. No one is saying anything bad about it. The worst I've heard is reading reviews to the Dark Multiverse Batman one shot and seeing the reviewer saying that whatever one they are reviewing isn't as good as another one. That's it. That's the extent of the hate I've seen this event getting. That's unprecedented.

I really hope Marvel is watching Dark Nights: Metal. DC has a smashing success and Marvel needs to learn from it. Event books can be great and concise. They don't need to be big, bloated monsters that eat up shelf space. You don't have to milk it for all it worth, because when you're doing that, well, you're killing the worth of it. It's not special anymore. Event books need to be special, but when you're slapping the event's logo and everything AND making a bunch of new miniseries to tie into it you're killing everything special about it. That's not an event. That's just a publishing strategy. Metal has tie-ins, but they make sense. They're special. I'm not drowning in Metal stuff every month and I read a lot of DC books a month.

You can do event and not choke your fandom to death with them. That's the triumph of Metal. I don't know if Snyder and Capullo are going to stick the landing, but they're doing an amazing job (Capullo's pencils are.... damn, he's so good; I haven't had time to talk about it, but he's so great) and they've done an amazing job so far and DC has showed the one thing you need with something as special as this story- restraint. Even if they don't stick the landing, they still did that and that's makes it a triumph regardless.

Next Issue: We're gonna talk about writers and artists and because we're doing that, we're gonna talk about Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and it's gonna get heated. Interested? Then join us next time at.....


Beyond The Panels!!!!