Dark Days: The Road to Metal Review

Finished reading Dark Days: The Road to Metal, setting up the stage for DC's event, Metal the book sees Batman readying himself for an oncoming and mysterious threat that seemingly has ties to the different metals within the DC Universe. The book opens with Batman working with Aquaman to save a group of scientists from a Wayne Enterprises site on a volcanic island before he heads to his Batcave on the moon to check over the data from the site with Mr Terrific as Bruce begins an investigation into the different metals within the DC Universe that my have a link to alternative universes. Meanwhile on Mogo, Green Lantern is giving the mission to return to Earth to meet with Batman in the Batcave only to come across Duke as the two discover a secret part to the cave where Batman has seemingly kept the Joker locked up for some time. The next part of the book has the last two parts of the Final Crisis event where makes his final stand against Darkseid before being killed by the New God while the other heroes a trying to form a plan in preventing the collapse of the multiverse. The book then transitions to the opening part of the Return of Bruce Wayne as Batman finds himself with a tribe of caveman who come under attack from a very young Vandal Savage. The following large of the book features a couple of part of the Batman: Endgame that is referenced at the beginning of the book as Batman is in the middle of an out of control Gotham trying to find a cure for the city's citizens that may be inside Joker's own DNA after coming into contact with Dionesium. The penultimate story sees Nightwing and Robin working together in France as they are trying to rescue Dick's girlfriend, Shawn when they get into a fight with Deathwing who strongly believes to be the real Dick Grayson. The final story of the book has Red Robin finding Batman in an alley as he hopes to ask Bruce about the current situation of the Batfamily as everyone is position within different parts of the DC universe. Overall this was a good book as it puts the characters in place readying for the upcoming event while also giving some context to the event by featuring some additional stories. The use of Batman's investigation into the different metals within the DC Universe being juxtaposed to Hawkman's journal entries of his own investigation works immensely well with how the two parallel one another along with the journal entries working as narration for the story. While the art that accompanies the opening story is great as each artist does a great job in bring the different locations that Batman visits to life along with bring some of the character interactions to life extremely well as the changing of art styles feel surprisingly organic thanks to the story's structure. The addition of the older stories within the book while helping to give some context to the opening story with the Endgame story having a direct reference, some of the stories feel like extra padding to the book with some of parts of the book feeling out of place as they are only parts of a full story. 7/10.