Noteworthy Issues: Dark Nights: Death Metal The Multiverse Who Laughs #1 (November, 2020)

Man, it’s like a focus group worked extra hard to come up with a name for a comic especially designed to cause Watson maximum irritation.

Issue:  Dark Nights: Death Metal The Multiverse Who Laughs #1, November 2020

Writers:  Jimmy Palmiotti, Scott Snyder, Amanda Conner, James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson, Patton Oswalt, Saladin Ahmed, and Brandon Thomas.

Artists:  Chad Hardin, Scot Eaton, Tom Mandrake, Sanford Greene, Juan Gedeon, and Norm Rapmund

The Plot:  The Robin King has some scary stories to tell.

Commentary:  It is really hard to pull off a good anthology issue.  This issue, with the long, ungainly title and a list of creators as long as my arm, doesn’t really even come close.  I wouldn’t call it bad.  More like mediocre.

Though honestly, the framing device story, one that only appears at the beginning of the issue, did more or less work as the Robin King says he is going to tell some tales of the Dark Multiverse, one where he spins some examples, like a world where Superman’s spaceship went through a black hole and gave him an unrelenting hunger for burning human flesh, or another where Aquaman was more of a Lovecraftian monster, or one where the Martian Manhunter was more of a xenomorph sort of alien, or even one where Lois Lane is the ultimate hero killer.  With just a snapshot of each, the issue showed potential.  Of course, none of these stories are elaborated on, and the framing device as mentioned only appears at the beginning of the issue.

That was followed by a story where Mr. Zsasz wants to get the treatment at Arkham that makes Batman’s enemies more “metal” and monstrous, but the Asylum seems kinda nice, everything is brightly colored, and the director of the facility seems more interested in the seemingly harmless Kite Man anyway.  That one was written by geek comedian Patton Oswalt, so I had some high hopes for it that didn’t seem to come to pass.  It wasn’t all that funny, and the final panel had me wondering if I was missing something.

Then came up the Legion of Super-Pets where Krypto returns from deep space, finds the Earth more or less devastated, and that was because the Super-Pets had been infected with some kind of super-rabies.  That might have worked better with some more space.

A Green Lantern/Green Arrow story, possibly the shortest of the issue, showed them as enemies.  It was dull.

And then another potentially cool one showed a world where the Scarecrow’s gas was everywhere and the only hero left was Steel since he didn’t expose himself to the gas.  He was setting up a resistance group from the looks of things, and there was some cool Tom Mandrake art, but as I said, that one would have worked better if it ran longer.

So, yeah, not much worth talking about here.  The best stories left me wishing for more, but they were outnumbered anyway by lesser stories that didn’t interest me that much.

Grade:  C