Dark Nights: Metal: Dark Knights Rising Review

Finished reading Dark Nights: Metal: Dark Knights Rising, shifting the spotlight onto the villains of DC's Dark Nights: Metal event as a collective of creative teams dives into the origins of each character. The book opens with the origin of Red Death as the Batman of Earth -52 defeats his universe's Flash before hooking him up to the Batmobile as the two drive into the Speed Force which leads to the two merging together with a twisted Batman in control as the universe begins to die. The next story puts the focus on Murder Machine as he makes his way to the Justice League Watchtower where Cyborg is communicating with his father in Detroit only for the evil Batman to take control of the Watchtower and removing Cyborg as a potential threat while reminiscing over how is life got to this moment. The following story see Dawnbreaker a young Bruce Wayne who got a Green Lantern ring only moments after seeing his parents death which lead to him being able to corrupt the ring with the amount of will power he had for killing Joe Chill that make him one of the most dangerous people in his universe. The book than shifts focus to the Drowned, a female Batman who has decided to flood Aquaman's home of Amnesty Bay while remembering how she became the monster she is today when the Atlantis of her word declared war on the human race. The next story see the Merciless, a Batman who pretty much became his universe's God of War when he defeated Ares and wage a war on the Greek Gods, has come to Langley, Virginia, where a group of the heads of the DC universe's high raking agency's have met to try and find a way to combat the events of the main event. The following story buts the focus on to a Batman who infected himself with the Doomsday Virus in order to defeat his Superman who lost his mind and needed to be beaten by any means. Once arriving on the main DC Universe Batman began to infect the universe's Metropolis including Superman's friends and family. The penultimate dives into the origin of the leader of the Dark Knights, the Batman Who Laughs who became infected by the Joker when he killed him after the Joker tormented him which lead to this Batman becoming a new Joker. The final sees Detective Chimp along with a team of well known DC scientists as they try to help a group Cyborg, Flash and Raven navigate through the multiverse as the Dark Knight are chasing after them. Overall this was an amazing book as dives into the origins of the twisted versions of Batman that made their debut within the main Dark Nights: Metal series by giving moments of familiarity to the main DC universe before taking some extremely intriguing and captivating directions in making each of the Dark Knights more than just amazingly designed character mashups. The addition of the book's final story is great as it shows how the Dark Knights try to work together while being focused on try to stop the heroes while also continuing with the character development that Cyborg has been getting in the tie ins to the main series that is carried over from the Justice League centric story from the Dark Nights: Metal: The Resistance book. The art throughout the book is amazing as it does a great job in bring each of the evil versions of Batman with how each art team is able to bring each of the universe's the Dark Knights are from while also make each world feel like the main DC universe thanks to choice of art teams along with the way the different universe's have a familiarity to them. 9/10.