Dark Nights: Metal - 8 Reasons To Be Excited About The Batman Crossover
5. The Preludes Did Not Disappoint
The scene has been set for Dark Nights thanks to a pair of solid prequel issues, Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting.
Both titles established the crossover as this summer's comic book event to watch, revealing the creative team's vision and ambition to tell one of the darkest Batman stories since that arc where The Joker peeled his own face off.
Anyone curious about the titular Metal in the story should check these issues out. Spoiler alert! It refers to the Nth Metal famously associated with Hawkman, and these two one-shots reveal its role in the DCU is bigger than the fans ever imagined.
With these preludes, writers Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV convey a sense of impending doom and successfully piqued our interest in the epic conflict to come.
An all-star artist lineup of Andy Kubert, Jim Lee and John Romita Jr makes the interiors of these titles look like a best-of-DC gallery, although the transition from one illustrator to another is jarring.
The general consensus, though, is that Dark Days has built excitement ahead of Metal and the plot threads it's introduced pose burning questions for the DCU at large.