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The Dark Multiverse (Spoilers)

Hadn't seen much discussion about the upcoming Scott Snyder series, and I thought it might be worthy of its own thread.

For those of you aren't aware, Snyder is writing a series called Dark Nights: Metal, that involves... well we don't know yet. Leading up to it were/are Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting. The Forge came out last month, and the Casting came out last week.
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  • mphilmphil Posts: 448
    To kick off discussion, we have Dark Days: The Forge.

    I found this to be a fairly confusing issue. I'm not so familiar with Hawkman, so I didn't understand the connection between him and Batman. I suppose the point was to say that Batman is continuing on an investigation that Carter Hall had began decades earlier. Is that right?

    Anyways, we have 2 stories going on at once that seem to be connected, but we don't know how. On the one hand we have Hal Jordan investigating the Batcave with Duke, and on the other we have Batman at the Fortress of Solitude where he has a secret room that even Superman is not allowed to enter. So naturally he asks Mister Miracle to open it for him, which reveals... I don't know what it was inside actually.

    I read this a couple of weeks ago so my memory is a little fuzzy. Feel free to correct any mistakes I made.
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200
    mphil said:



    So naturally he asks Mister Miracle to open it for him, which reveals... I don't know what it was inside actually.

    Have you read Crisis on Infinite Earths?

  • mphilmphil Posts: 448
    I have, is this from that? What is it?
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200
    edited July 2017
    mphil said:

    I have, is this from that? What is it?

    One of Anti Monitor's(or Alex Luthor's, I forget who builds them) towers

    image
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511
    Read The Forge. As I mentioned over in the Preview episode, I'm generally intrigued and will probably stick with it, though the price tag and the JRJR art are two very large disincentives.

    Is the intent for this to be a spoiler thread? I've got thoughts that might lead to spoilery discussion.

    Also, are others also reading that the little roman columns in the batcave are intended to be holographic projectors? One one page, they appear to be supporting / containing artifacts. One the next they seem to be displaying images of people. Holographic would make sense, but given the other areas that bats has been able to put so much technology in things that fit in his utility belt, the column bases as projector housings seem a but clunky. My first read through, I was really confused as to why/how he had the artifacts displayed... seemed like some really important people would be missing them.
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200
    edited July 2017
    Yes I think they are all projections. The book is implying that all these artifacts originate from the same metal.
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511
    Mr_Cosmic said:

    I took it as the artifacts came from other earths.

    Possible. The image on the next page with the Batman team left me second guessing. Still, sucks to be the person from the other earth missing their swag.
  • David_DDavid_D Posts: 3,881
    @hauberk since the series is now out, and this is a thread dedicated to it, I think it makes sense for me to go ahead and add spoilers to the title. @mphil was looking to talk about it with others who have read it, so spoiler discussion makes sense.
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511
    David_D said:

    @hauberk since the series is now out, and this is a thread dedicated to it, I think it makes sense for me to go ahead and add spoilers to the title. @mphil was looking to talk about it with others who have read it, so spoiler discussion makes sense.

    Perfect. The absence of spoiler tag left me hesitant to put in too much detail.

    The Hawkman interludes leave me believing Nth metal is going to be impacted in some fashion. I feel like thats consistent with something about Fate's helmet and with Aquaman's pentadent (I cannot bring myself to call it a trident) and maybe the other artifacts that were featured in Aquaman and the Others. It feels like Hawkman has gotten hosed enough.

    As far as display vs projector, the image of the Outsiders on the page opposite of Fate's Helmet, Aquaman's pentadent and Wonder Woman's bracers seems to be using the same columns.
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200
    hauberk said:

    Mr_Cosmic said:

    I took it as the artifacts came from other earths.

    Possible. The image on the next page with the Batman team left me second guessing. Still, sucks to be the person from the other earth missing their swag.
    Yeah, I changed my thoughts on that. I reread it and it looks like they're hologram projections.
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511
    edited July 2017
    Read The Casting last night. I'm pretty disillusioned as I sit here thinking about it. In part, it might be that it's because I didn't follow the New52 Batman book, but there's just so much that seems broken about this idea.

    The shared art chores just doesn't work. It doesn't seem to be assigned based on tone of page or portion of storyline (at first, I thought that all of the Hawkman stuff was going to be Kubert, which made sense to me). The seemed to have fallen by the wayside this issue with at least one Hawk page being poorly delivered by JRJR.

    I'm at a loss for Batman shoving a flaming god sword, unsheathed, between his hip and his utility belt. I'm at a loss that his utility belt is elastic enough to hold said flaming god sword.

    Graphically, I continue to find the book hard to follow. We discussed the pillars previously and concluded that they were probably holographic representations of the artifacts, but then they make the machine and the artifacts show up there as well.

    I didn't, initially, get the barrier between Joker and Duke/Green Lantern.

    From a story standpoint, we're going to start with the 8th metal (from Hephaestus) and then go to the 9th (from the Wizard Shazam) and keep trading metals until we get to Nth? I don't think that we can hit infinity in a 6 issue series.

    So far, I'm not seeing enough positive about the series to offset the price and the JRJR art.

    Edited to correct book title to The Casting.
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511
    Read the first issue of Metal last night. No JRJR art on it, so that's a big plus. Tied into Grant Morrison's map of the multiverse and referenced the 52 different universes and goes on to speculate that, while the nature of the universes may vary, the number seems to be constant. All of that was very interesting as is the notion that the Dark Multiverse is something that is building off of the recent concept of dark matter and dark energy. Not sure that I'm entirely clear yet about the metal itself. It seems like the suggestion is that Nth metal is derived from the Dark Multiverse and ultimately has a more insidious purpose/effect?
  • batlawbatlaw Posts: 879
    I enjoyed the forge and intrigued by it. Much less so with casting. Still interested overall though. Havnt read metal 1 yet but we'll see.
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200
    batlaw said:

    I enjoyed the forge and intrigued by it. Much less so with casting. Still interested overall though. Havnt read metal 1 yet but we'll see.

    Yeah, I'm waiting on my DCBS box for Metal #1. I really enjoyed Forge but Casting fell short. I'm still really excited for the whole event though.
  • batlawbatlaw Posts: 879
    Just finished metal. So far so good. Cool and fun and promising.
  • DARDAR Posts: 1,128
    It's a fun read so far
  • BionicDaveBionicDave Posts: 377
    hauberk said:

    Read the first issue of Metal last night. No JRJR art on it, so that's a big plus. Tied into Grant Morrison's map of the multiverse and referenced the 52 different universes and goes on to speculate that, while the nature of the universes may vary, the number seems to be constant. All of that was very interesting as is the notion that the Dark Multiverse is something that is building off of the recent concept of dark matter and dark energy. Not sure that I'm entirely clear yet about the metal itself. It seems like the suggestion is that Nth metal is derived from the Dark Multiverse and ultimately has a more insidious purpose/effect?

    Yes, I agree with all of that. And thanks for tipping me off to this thread, @hauberk :)

    Was I the only one who thought/feared that Joker's letter-shoutout of the hospital's "M-E-T-A" flag implied that "meta" is linked to "metal?" - i.e. that the DCU's metahuman population is not simply due to genetic mutation, but to the molecular presence of Nth metal in a metahuman's bloodline?

    Also, was I the only one who did not realize that Joker and Carter Hall are such chatty-Cathys? Holy crap were these characters overwritten in these issues. Does Snyder not write second drafts of his work? I'd have trimmed his Joker/Carter Hall scripting by 40% at least.

    Lastly, we could make a drinking game around how many times characters say the word "Bruce." Especially Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. Sometimes they'd say it multiple times in the same word balloon. Are DC and Snyder seriously worried that we could ever forget the name of the secret identity of The Batman, Bruce? I mean Bruce, it really seemed that way, Bruce.
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511

    hauberk said:

    Read the first issue of Metal last night. No JRJR art on it, so that's a big plus. Tied into Grant Morrison's map of the multiverse and referenced the 52 different universes and goes on to speculate that, while the nature of the universes may vary, the number seems to be constant. All of that was very interesting as is the notion that the Dark Multiverse is something that is building off of the recent concept of dark matter and dark energy. Not sure that I'm entirely clear yet about the metal itself. It seems like the suggestion is that Nth metal is derived from the Dark Multiverse and ultimately has a more insidious purpose/effect?

    Yes, I agree with all of that. And thanks for tipping me off to this thread, @hauberk :)

    Was I the only one who thought/feared that Joker's letter-shoutout of the hospital's "M-E-T-A" flag implied that "meta" is linked to "metal?" - i.e. that the DCU's metahuman population is not simply due to genetic mutation, but to the molecular presence of Nth metal in a metahuman's bloodline?

    Also, was I the only one who did not realize that Joker and Carter Hall are such chatty-Cathys? Holy crap were these characters overwritten in these issues. Does Snyder not write second drafts of his work? I'd have trimmed his Joker/Carter Hall scripting by 40% at least.

    Lastly, we could make a drinking game around how many times characters say the word "Bruce." Especially Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. Sometimes they'd say it multiple times in the same word balloon. Are DC and Snyder seriously worried that we could ever forget the name of the secret identity of The Batman, Bruce? I mean Bruce, it really seemed that way, Bruce.
    I've either already forgotten the META thing so can't comment there. Not sure what I think about the connection between the meta(l?)gene and Nth metal.

    Yes, some of the characters were really, really wordy.
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511
    So, anyone read the first of the tie-in issues. I was in my LCS today - they sold out on it, but the manager indicated that there was actually more to it than just being an evil bat amalgamation of Flash.

    Intrigued, but not yet so much as to feel compelled to track it down.
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200
    Not yet - have everything coming in my DCBS box at the end of the month.
  • Read last week's TEEN TITANS tie-in which was, well, awful. Very boilerplate. I hear great things about BATMAN: THE RED DEATH, though.
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511

    Read last week's TEEN TITANS tie-in which was, well, awful. Very boilerplate. I hear great things about BATMAN: THE RED DEATH, though.

    Wasn't planning on doing anything with the tie-ins from other series, unless I'm already reading that series. Also wasn't originally planning on doing the one shots, but the one review I've gotten so far, seemed like I might need to pivot.
  • Just read BATMAN: THE RED DEATH. Guess I heard wrong.. this thing is just stupid. With each tie-in by a non-Snyder writer, I am fast losing interest in this METAL event.
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200
    Then just stick with the main story. No sense letting the other books ruin it for you.
  • PeterPeter Posts: 470
    mwhitt80 said:

    @Peter How did you like Batman Metal? The trades are getting ready to come out, is it worth jumping in?
    Also thank you for doing the Legion podcast; I decided to start my Legion journey with that series just a few months before you started the podcast. I've really enjoyed it.

    Hey @mwhitt80 - moved my response here so not to derail that other thread.

    I'm enjoying Metal. Especially for the way it's completely committing to being zany and over the top. I'm enjoying the larger DCU elements the most - the Immortals, the metals, secret behind metahumans, etc - regardless if they stick. The latest issue (#4) may have gone a bit too far in its extreme but I'm still curious to see how all of this ends. Of the tie-ins, the Dark Knights oneshots are pretty good/interesting. The "Gotham Resistance" tie-in story can be skipped. And I haven't read "Bats Out of Hell", Batman Lost or Hawkman Found just yet.

  • batlawbatlaw Posts: 879
    It's been just crazy cool and fun. Not high art by any means, just wild.
  • mphilmphil Posts: 448
    I didn't understand #4 at all. I have no idea what is going on now. I'm definitely going to have to reread the main series once it is done.
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200
    Just finished the Wild Hunt...

    I was originally pretty high on this event. I thought the Casting and Forge were interesting and I was all set for a good ride...but this is a trainwreck, imho.
  • Overall, I liked Metal. Forge and Casting were GREAT, then it admitedly sort of devolved into chaos, where I was barely tracking issues 4 and 5, but I thought 6 stuck the landing, brought it around, and made for a cool story on the whole. Plus, each issue had at least a couple moments that were just insane! Plus, the potential best new villains of the year the Dark Batmen- especially the Batman who laughs.
  • Mr_CosmicMr_Cosmic Posts: 3,200

    Overall, I liked Metal. Forge and Casting were GREAT, then it admitedly sort of devolved into chaos, where I was barely tracking issues 4 and 5, but I thought 6 stuck the landing, brought it around, and made for a cool story on the whole. Plus, each issue had at least a couple moments that were just insane! Plus, the potential best new villains of the year the Dark Batmen- especially the Batman who laughs.

    I haven't read #6 yet but I'm happy to hear it wrapped things up well.
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