Death Metal, the forthcoming DC Comics event by writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo, is aimed at sorting out the publisher’s continuity, the writer revealed Tuesday during an impromptu Twitter Q&A with fans.

More on the context in a second, but first check out the Tweet in which he revealed this…

So, now the wider context. Death Metal is a sequel to another event story that Snyder and Capullo did a few years back during the Rebirth era, Dark Nights: Metal. That event saw a whole slew of evil Batmen emerge from something called the dark multiverse, which is exactly what it sounds like. This has essentially continued causing troubles throughout a number of other titles penned by Snyder (Justice League) and close collaborators such as Josh Williamson (Batman/Superman) and James Tynion IV (Year of the Villain), with the antagonist from Metal — the Batman Who Laughs — hanging around and pushing forward evil because he’s a jerk.

At the same time off of the page and in the real world, it has been a well-known secret that DC Comics leadership is interested in tinkering with its in-universe continuity, with that primarily being revealed on a somewhat regular basis by former DC co-publisher Dan DiDio, who departed earlier this year. While DiDio seems to have gone a bit too far with some of his plans around the continuity altering and what it would usher in after, some of what was set into motion apparently still remains.

Observe, another telling Tweet from Snyder today…

Wonder Woman has previously been announced as the star of Death Metal, while Snyder also penned a Bryan Hitch-illustrated story in Wonder Woman #750 that reframed her as the DC Universe’s first superhero. All that seems relevant here as we speculate a tiny bit.

Anyway, what did we learn today? Death Metal has big ambitions and they involve DC’s continuity. That’s not all though. During the chat, Snyder also doled out some other interesting tidbits, both about the story (which as of now is on pause as the comics industry sorts out distribution issues stemming from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic) and about his other work, too.

Here’s a list of other fun stuff Snyder shared:

  • Death Metal will also feature that old continuity disrupting rascal, Superboy Prime.
  • And it will introduce presumably a new character called “The Robin King.”
  • Snyder’s favorite cartoon is Batman: The Animated Series.
  • Even after his years of work with Batman, he still has ideas to do stories with Scarecrow and Penguin.
  • A lineup of “all star creators” is doing a guidebook for the aforementioned slew of evil Batmen from Metal.
  • Snyder has a bounty hunter-themed Jason Todd idea he’s tried to get to or to get someone else to do for a while.

This is all just a bunch of teasing, I know, but hasn’t it been fun to revisit a bygone era in which the murky status of DC’s continuity and what is to be done about it was the big thing we were all buzzing around? I know I’ve enjoyed the break from the COVID-19 anxiety, myself.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. You’d think that, in the thirty-five or so years since Crisis on Infinite Earths, someone would have figured out that every time DC does some big event to make sense of its continuity, it just winds up more confusing than it was before.

  2. I wish they’d just focus on telling good stories and ignore the impulse to fret about continuity.

    Reference things where they matter, but enough with the obsessive nerd-cataloguing stupidity. In some cases, that may be necessary and may, MAY, lead to a good story (Rob Venditti’s Hawkman, the current exception to the rule at DC, at least where I’m concerned) but more often enough it isn’t needed and that isn’t the end result.

  3. Snyder’s spent, what?, the last two or three decades screwing things up with this awful Metal crap, but I’m supposed to take his word that everything will be jim-dandy when it’s finally over? My god; the endless Trial of the Flash was shorter than this. Maybe this -is- the perfect time to finally give up the comics habit.

  4. Producing a new event series to fix continuity is like emptying a bucket of soot on the carpet to clean it.

  5. i was gonna leave a negative comment about what a bad idea this was, but the previous comments all cover this better than I would have. My advice for Snyder is to just stop.

  6. First, didn’t he say recently that he didn’t want Death Metal to be continuity fix related? Like this was the anti-Crisis? Second, for the love of comics, this is the same thing DC (every other creator) keeps saying about their initiative. And none of them has any teeth. I don’t trust Snyder anymore, after the non-endings to Metal, and Justice League. He’s got big ideas and might have a fun ride planned, but I’m out of this event.

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