Woof. This is just a lot. That refreshing feeling from last time? That's gone know. You have to turn your brain off for this one... Hell, don't even turn it off, set it to dumb. This event has quickly turned into what the original Metal was and what Justice League was, which is just things happening and then the characters explaining why it happened because it's never been properly set up. It just happens! I don't have the patience for that. I really think the Batman Who Laughs getting Dr. Manhattan powers is a meta commentary on DC squeezing that fruit dry. But I'm not sure if I should assume that that's what it is. This is tiring and I'm no longer being nice about it. more

The apparent culmination of the Game of Thrones-style struggle for DC continuity supremacy is here, and I worry that the least potent of the mix won out.

Tom King fell by the wayside, his Heroes in Crisis devolving into a critical disaster. His Batman couldn't recover from the post-Catwoman non-wedding storylines. Now, his Strange Adventures and his forthcoming Bat/Cat miniseries have been shuffled off to Black Label.

Brian Bendis came on strong ("Bendis is here!"), but his Super-books are losing circulation and his Wonder Comics line isn't taking off. He's now talking on podcasts about winding down on Superman and getting excited about Checkmate.

Dan DiDio was fired.

So who won? Scott Snyder, apparently. He now has free reign to trash the proposed "5G"/"Generations" event with its rethinking of DC continuity in a linear, historical perspective and replace it with the apparent capstone to his Dark Knights: Metal/Justice League run...the one that so many fans felt was a hot mess of baffling multiversal conflict where his heroes keep screwing up, making mistakes and losing. Where the once-almighty Monitor now has an even more-almighty mother in Perpetua and siblings (!) in the Anti-Monitor and World Forger. Because DC doesn't have enough bloat at the top of the multiversal pyramid.

But that's the backstory.

Death Metal #1 is a simple story - a silly story, perhaps a dumb story - but a simple one nonetheless all dressed up with "rock and roll!" dressing. Perpetua has awarded the Batman Who Laughs the Mr. Earth pageant sash and crown, beating out Luthor. (As I said, silly and perhaps dumb...but it is what it is.) But Perpetua doesn't really care about the Earth, she just wants to destroy stuff. So BWL sets up a hell on earth environment that has not been seen anywhere in recent continuity, providing a jarring transition from "same old, same old DC" to "Holy crap, it's a pop-up Hellscape!"

At this point, the story gets really small. Superman is off-page (of course he is, because he's so powerful that this story wouldn't get to happen otherwise), and Batman and Wonder Woman conspire how to fight back when BWL has them pinned down in a life of misery. It's a life that is nowhere reflected in any other DC book, but I digress.

Wally West, who unfortunately has the Watchmen's Doctor Manhattan juju wrapped up in him to become all seeing/knowing/powerful but is a pitiful prisoner in this title, shows up. He suggests a way for the superheroes to win, trying to explain the multiversal mess that is DC in a couple of pages. After having has character shellacked by Tom King in "Heroes in Crisis," Snyder gets to revive West's statue as a beacon of hope. Hero revolt slowly ensues. End issue 1. Seriously, that's it.

This was not a good story. This does not appear to be a good title. But it IS DC's tentpole title for 2020, so DC readers have to get it simply to understand what is going on in their shared universe. For that, I'm more than a little bitter. If you want to see what a GOOD event book is like for comparison's sake, go read Wolfman's "Crisis on Infinite Earths" #1. You'll see how far things have fallen.

Technically, DC's maddening decision to force BWL's word balloons to be red chicken-scratch against a black background continues. BWL's lettering is largely illegible as a result. That's right, it's nearly impossible to read what the lead baddie of this book is saying.

The sole high point of the book is Greg Capullo. He is a very talented artist, and his renditions of fire, brimstone, madness and everything else "rock and roll" are on point -- given the subject matter he has to work with. His characters look solid, his layouts are vibrant and exciting.

Scott Snyder, on the other hand, baffles me. He IS a decent writer, something I continually have to remind myself throughout this book. His Batman "Court of Owls" story is quite good. His "Undiscovered Country," co-written with Charles Soule for Image, is pretty good, too. His JL, however, was convoluted and a chore to read. That carries forward to this book. Perhaps he's just out of his league on stories of this nature. Very few writers can pull off a blockbuster event. He can't. Well, he hasn't so far. Sadly, I apparently will have to keep reading to find out.

Snyder won the Game of Thrones at DC. It's his universe to mold, to make everything count. And, with his first move as the prima dona of DC, he's fallen flat on his face. Maybe King was lucky to get banished to Black Label, and hopefully Bendis can continue to do his own thing. Me? I think I'll be spending a lot more time reading back issues if this is what we'll be getting from DC going forward.

2.5/10 on the basis of Capullo's art alone. I would go a touch higher but have to deduct points for the unintelligible lettering on BWL.

Do better, DC. more

Boring, it killed my interest in this event that I got hyped for just a weekend before this issue came out. The advertising for this got me sucked in but now I don’t even care what happens after this issue any more