Dark Days

by Scott Snyder and Jim Lee

[Quirky Cat]

I received a copy of Dark Days: The Road to Metal from DC/NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Dark Days: The Road to Metal is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s a collection of all the stories that lead up the massively popular (and influential) Dark Metal series. Now, this collection is great in that it compiled everything together, meaning that the fans that don’t read all of these series can easily find all of introductions (and collectors will likely be happy too, for obvious reasons).
This volume includes Dark Days: The Force, Dark Days: The Casting, Nightwing 17, and some stories from Detective Comics 950 (not being a reader of Detective Comics I can’t tell you how much of this issue was actually pulled into the collection).



I have been hearing so much talk about the Dark Metal series and the eventual influence it’s going to have over much of DCs canon right now, so obviously I had to make a point to read everything about it. I mean, I don’t want to be confused when the references start popping up (or worse; deal with spoilers from it). For that reason I’m thrilled that they’ve put all of the preludes into one neat volume for us to read. It’s perfect, as not only do we not have to go hunting them down (something I’m not opposed to, but at least this way I don’t have to worry about missing anything) but we get a nice collection out of it all too.
Now, for the sake of honesty I should say that I haven’t read the Dark Metal series as of yet (I’m planning on reading it next; I wanted to read the preludes first), so I obviously can’t compare these issues to the ones they’re building up to…yet.
So this volume contains two Dark Days comics as well as pulling from Nightwing and Detective Comics. I think I liked the Dark Days issues best, but that may just be personal preference. You can see all of the effort they put into them; they’re dark (obviously) creepy, foreshadowing, and most importantly, they worked to make them fit into the continuity.
The Dark Days issues also explained a lot of other curiosities I has, things that I hadn’t realized were connected to the Dark Metal series. Like where Joker has been this whole time, or how Duke (the Signal) got involved with everything.
More than anything else in this volume I think I loved the tone the best. I’ve always felt that there are certain parts of the DC world that could afford to go just a bit darker, I mean, they’ve been skirting the line for years anyway, so why not cross it? I’m hoping that here we’ll finally see them skip over the line and start playing with some darker themes. While it could certainly end up being morbid, it would still be a refreshing and fascinating change.
One thing that did surprise me from this volume was the amount of characters included. I sincerely wasn’t expecting the Dark Metal/Dark Days plot to reach out and affect anything more than Batman’s series (and all of the other bat characters, of course). While I wasn’t expecting this revelation…I am pleased. I love it when major events happen in comic worlds (provided they’re not overused), so this should get interesting. I can’t wait to start reading Dark Metal.


For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks