Dark Nights Metal #4 Review

Dark Nights Metal #4
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion
Cover by Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion
Published by DC Comics

A review by Stacy Dooks

Wow, how long has it been since Dark Nights Metal #3? Only two months? It feels like forever but thankfully this issue jumps in with both feet, building on the suspense from the previous installment (as well as Batman: Lost) and manages to raise the stakes for our heroes even higher. We last left our heroes performing that time-honored super-team tradition of splitting into smaller squads and heading to various locales within the DC Universe to find a weapon to fight the Evil Batmen with. Meanwhile we have Superman and Batman struggling to escape the heart of the Dark Multiverse with a little help from a familiar face.  With time running out and the forces of the demon bat-god Barbatos rallying for a final assault on the DC Multiverse can our heroes rally and find the mysterious Nth metal that will give them a fighting chance? Or will things get worse? Spoiler alert: things get a whole lot worse.

That’s all the detail I feel I can go into without the risk of giving things away, so let me just say that Dark Nights Metal #4 is a hoot. As with the previous installments the goal here is to take comic book crossovers back to the old days when literally anything could happen, and it’s a welcome change to see our heroes being dynamic and facing down the menace head-on. Granted, the menace we’re dealing with is essentially Bat-Cthulhu, which means this isn’t the standard Justice League romp where the heroes send Kalibak or Kanjar-Ro packing and go home. The writing by Snyder is great, and I particularly enjoyed his take on Daniel, as well as the fun bits of business with the Dark Multiverse Supermen and the surprise return of an original Justice League villain whose dialogue  made me burst out laughing.

Half the fun of the series has been to watch Capullo run wild with the bigger cosmic concepts and characters of the DC Universe as a whole and quite frankly his work has never looked more boss. There’s a number of redesigns for several familiar DC Characters and locales that had me grinning from ear to ear. The story sequence is also well done, as well as the sequences set in familiar DC locales like Thanagar or the far reaches of the Dreaming. The book looks big, and feels very much like an epic even as it explores increasingly crazier concepts. Glapion’s work is seamless in its support of Capullo’s own, and everything pops from Superman’s iconic shield to the new look for. . .well, that’d be telling. Suffice to say the book looks great.

The Verdict:
Buy It! While the peripheral titles and spinoffs have been entertaining if you want the pure uncut crazy of DC’s event you need to be on board with Dark Nights Metal #4. It’s amazingly epic insanity that reminds me of the original Crisis or Secret Wars. Like die-cast metal construction, this comic is a lost art form. Recommended.