Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Dark Knights: Death Metal is very much the sequel of its predecessor in all of its senses; it carries on both it’s strengths and weaknesses to a T. It’s not atrocious by any means; it does however cave in under its own weight as it reads like a treatise of ideas that flow wonderfully into one another but crammed into a small space which is ironically redesigned into a caricature, coming out the other end a very ugly parody of itself. This is not very much helped by the artwork, as Capullo’s art, although evocative of 80s metal bands as it should, comes off as soulless in all the wrong places. Sure, the faces are expressive but the eyes especially look very dead. Again, it is not unreadable, but its meat is not easy to read. As a matter of fact, I had to take a two-day break before the last two issues just to digest the weight of the previous two thirds.
It has a lot to say, and all of it very important and meaningful, and says them efficiently, but it is sadly done so within the confines of an ugly, confined package even for the thematic aesthetics chosen.
