Was visiting a nearby metropolis (Get it? Get it?) the other day and happened upon some trade paperbacks. What was I to do? Buy them of course. This stuff will probably seem like ancient history to anyone living in North America, but where I live American comics are few and far between.
1. Dark Nights: Metal by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo
I remember hearing about this one years ago and being intrigued by the idea. For whatever reason I forgot about it later on.
In Dark Knights: Metal the Justice League discovers a Dark Multiverse "beneath" the multiverse as they knew it. Ruling over this Dark Multiverse is a godlike version of Batman known as Barbatos, and in his employ are several other versions of Batman culled from the same Dark Multiverse. All of the evil versions of Batman have one thing in common, they evolved from an earlier Batman that cast his scruples aside and framed the war on crime in more Darwinian terms.
Fortunately for the Justice League, there's a magic metal that will put Barbatos and his minions out of commission, but they have to act fast because Earth is rapidly sinking (?) into the Dark Multiverse.
You can probably guess how it ends. I thought it was... OK, but it's a far cry from what Grant Morrison has done with similar tales of magic and parallel worlds. I think writer Scott Snyder was wise to throw physics out the window and instead offer a more "Silver Age" take on the Justice League, albeit one with a lot more violence.
2. Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads
Another series I'd been hearing about but forgot about later on.
Many years ago Brian Michael Bendis did a run on Moon Knight that I loved. My favorite part of that run was Marc Spector hallucinating the entire Avengers, going out with them and having "adventures," and having to answer for his behavior later on. It was great fun, and an interesting take on the character.
More recently, as everyone probably knows, the comic book Saga has broken records and become wildly popular. I really enjoyed Saga when it first appeared, though I have to admit I lost touch with it a couple of years ago.
Tom King's Mister Miracle reminds me of both Bendis' run on Moon Knight and Saga. It's got the unreliable narrator, it's got the mental health issues, it's got the human frailty, and it's got the day to day dramas that most superhero comics don't touch. Is it well done? Yes, but the art reminded me a bit too much of Bill Sienkiewicz and the story, again, reminded me of both Moon Knight and Saga. Tom King has a good ear for dialog, but I was hoping for something more. Maybe his version of Vision is better?
3. Infinity by Jonathan Hickman and Jim Cheung
Thanos or Darkseid? I'd have to go with Darkseid. He's got Kirby's Fourth World mythos behind him, the Anti-Life Equation, and he's been featured in some great stories.
Then again, when I started reading comics Thanos just wasn't very interesting. He'd tangled with Adam Warlock, and he was starting to reappear in relation to Silver Surfer, but on the whole he came off like a Darkseid clone.
I'm also not sure if it's fair to credit Jim Starlin with his "creation." A lot of later comic book writers did all the heavy lifting when it came to Thanos.
Thanos aside, Infinity is REALLY long and doesn't offer much in terms of a story. On the one hand there's Thanos menacing the Earth yet again, this time in search of his son, who he wants to kill. On the other hand there's a race of aliens called The Builders, who are out to annihilate (?) the cosmos. There are also some references to Marvel's "New Universe," and a subplot involving Atlantis and Wakanda going to war. That's about it. All in all it's a fairly vacuous exercise, and surprisingly so given what Hickman did later with the New Avengers.
Some elements of the Infinity storyline found their way into Avengers: Infinity War, so if you're an MCU fanatic there's that.
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