Next week what appears to be the big final battle between the Darkest Knight and the heroes of the DC Multiverse begins in Dark Nights: Death Metal #6, and it's liable to be a pretty long and brutal fight considering there are still two issues in the event series to go.
And considering the fate of 'non-Dark-existence-as-we-know-it' is at stake, you know Batman is going to pull out every and any stop to win the fight. And boy oh boy, does he pull out a helluva stop in this preview of the first three pages of the December 15 issue Newsarama readers get to see first.
What trick does Batman have up his sleeve?
First, a summary (and now's the time to click out if you don't want to see the spoiler):
The battle is against the Darkest Knight. Who is the Darkest Night? He's a Dark Multiverse version of Bruce Wayne/Batman who fought with the Joker and got exposed to a purified form of the Joker toxin, and who then transformed into a Batman/Joker hybrid the Batman Who Laughs.
He was defeated in the original Dark Nights: Metal, and in Death Metal he is killed by Wonder Woman, but his brain is transplanted into another Dark Multiverse Bruce Wayne who this time has the powers of Watchmen's Doctor Manhattan, which transforms him into the now near-omnipotent Darkest Night.
Still with us? Now comes the bananas part.
In this preview of the first three pages of Death Metal #6, Batman uses the power of his Black Lantern ring to resurrect the original Batman Who Laughs, who now appears to be fighting alongside the heroes against the villain that has his brain.
Yowza.
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Metal and Death Metal have always been about bombastic can-you-top-this storytelling bordering on the wacky (including monster truck and dinosaur Batmans), and if this is what's happening on the first three pages of the penultimate issue, hold onto your hats for the rest of the issue and the series finale on January 5.
Death Metal may yet wind up on Newsarama’s countdown of the most impactful DC event stories of all time.
