Scott Snyder is an acquired taste. He seeks to write as in a sub-textually meaningful way as Geoff Johns and Alan Moore with the cosmic scale of Grant Morrison, but more often than not just about missing the mark in being a little too ambitious and overt with his plans.
Dark Nights: Metal is one such example.
It is clear from the word “go” what his thesis statement is – trying to fix what was done to the DC universe with the New 52, the “darkening” of everything DC and the persistence of all DC-bound media to be a little too much “like Batman” (looking at you, incoming Flash movie). It is a critique thereof and, at the same time, a critique of marketability as a whole rendering a whole lot of sameness, making things that look and sound a little too familiar being easier to “sell” rather than having its own identity while presenting an illusion of choice by a different coat of paint.
Neo-liberalism.
Truly sad, really that following this event it did not take long for the same universe to slide down that same road again albeit down a different path. Let me avoid that argument for now.
But it did have some reprieve, for a while.
However the opening salvo was a bit of a loud, convoluted mess that wants to be a lot but becomes a little too “much” for its own ambitions. It does take a while to untangle all the details of it – it wants to stand alone, yet is mired in continuity. It wants to be an ending, yet it is a beginning. It wants to be a DC story, but is mainly a Batman story. It wants to be self-contained, yet is spread all over the place in its minutiae.
I must say, I like it. It is not as pleasant a read as, say, Kingdom Come or as heavy as Final Crisis. But it wants to be.
It just ends up being its adorable younger brother that makes a lot more noise.
