Dark Nights: Metal

by Joshua Williamson and Ethan Van Sciver

[Quirky Cat]

3 1/2 Stars.

I received a copy of Dark Nights: Metal: The Resistance through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Dark Nights: Metal: The Resistance collects all of the tie-ins leftover from the Dark Metal plotline. Because they’re bouncing from series to series, the art style changes and things feel a bit less organized than if it was an enclosed event.
This volume contains the stories that appeared in The Flash, Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, Justice League, Teen Titans, Nightwing, as well as Hawkman: Found and Batman: Lost. So you can tell right away that a lot of authors and artists were involved in this one. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you to decide.



It’s nice to see all of these issues all in one collection. I love it when collections like this have been organized so we can see the order and intended pattern of the plot. It’s much easier for me to read in this format, though I may be an exception to the rule there. Not sure.
I was behind on reading the Dark Metal plot, so at the time of release for some of these (the series I’ve been keeping up with) I was really confused about what was going on. I was able to infer some information from the context, but not enough to understand everything that was happening. It’s fantastic to finally have all of this explained, and I feel like I have a better understand of the Resistance now.
There are two main plots for this collection. There’s the Bats Out of Hell story, which is in four parts, and the Gotham Resistance arc, which is also in four parts. Obviously then there’s the two single plots, Hawkman: Found and Batman: Lost. The irony of the titles here was not lost on me.
Obviously some of these I liked more than others, but that has a lot to do with my preferred and favorite series. Likely everyone will have the issues they liked and the ones they felt fell flat. For example I’m not up to date on the Justice League, so while that one was interesting for me, I’m sure I missed a lot of obvious details.
I will say that ultimately I found this interesting but probably skippable, if you weren’t feeling inclined to track all of these stories down. I know I keep talking about how I’m looking forward to seeing the ramifications of the Dark Metal plot on the DC Universe, but this isn’t what I meant. I’m not looking for a short story here and there. I’m looking for major impacts (like what is happening in the Wonder Woman series right now). So this was a little bit of a letdown for me.
Still, I’m holding out hope for some bigger collections showing some crazier effects of the plots. I’ve seen it happen (as stated above), so I know it’s possible. It should be interesting to see what happens.


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