10 Best Comic Books Of 2017

8. Dark Nights: Metal

Batman Dark Nights Metal Scott Snyder Greg Capullo
DC Comics

Fans might have exerted one gigantic sigh when Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo departed the Batman franchise a little over four years following the debut of their New 52 run, but this year's return, chronicled in the pages of Dark Nights: Metal, has made it the comics event of the year (sorry, Doomsday Clock).

Harkening back to classic crises of DC's past, Snyder and Capullo's opus to both Batman and metal iconography feels like poetry in motion or, at the very least, a very well put together album. It's even getting its own soundtrack soon, and while the sheer scope of its premise is bound to flummox some readers, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Bat-fan who doesn't get a big fat bat-grin flicking through its pages.

Said premise, centred around the discovery of a 'Dark Multiverse', is just genius, and both Snyder and Capullo have been afforded plenty of space to exploit it fully. It's visually stunning in every sense of the word, painstaking in its use of the Bat-license and even better for its cumulative contributions to it. The Batman Who Laughs is already shaping up to be one of the best villains in the character's rogues gallery, and - quite unusual for an event comic - even the tie-ins have felt worthwhile.

That's no small feat, and while Bat-fatigue is something DC will have to be weary of in the months ahead, there's no denying that Metal, in all its bombast and beauty, has made for one of the most entertaining reads of the last five years, let alone this one.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.