YMMV / Dark Nights: Death Metal

• Awesome Music:
  • Warship My Wreck by Marilyn Manson is a dark song with growls that fit the comic's tone.
  • Broken Dreams, Inc. is a energetic punk rock theme made by Rise Against.
  • ANTI-LIFE is a chilling industrial rock track by HEALTH and Chino Moreno that somehow manages to incorporate gorgeous harmonies within its punishing soundscape.
• Broken Base: Around Snyder's statements in interviews of whether this is a Wonder Woman-focused story. With some arguing she is in more of a lead role than she has in previous events and others arguing that it's not really a Wonder Woman-focused event since it has very little to no involvement of characters or concepts from her corner of the DC Universe.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After all the damage The Batman Who Laughs has done to multiple worlds, seeing Wonder Woman eviscerate him with an invisible chainsaw was quite satisfying. That said, this is undermined by the reveal that this was part of TBWL's plan to gain Dr. Manhattan's powers.
    • For real in the final issue when Diana throws him into the sun.
  • People who are sick to death of all the evil Batmen running/flying around get a little respite in the form of the original evil Batman, Owlman, telling the entire idea of the Dark Multiverse to shove off since he’s the evil Batman that always returns no matter how many Crises there are in Metaverse's End.
    • And we don’t even have to wait until the end of the event to find out he’s right as it’s been announced that there will be a Crime Syndicate miniseries starting March 2021.
  • More and more people have complained about how DC seems to treat The Joker as the end-all-be-all of villains, almost a cosmic force that can never die, instead of what he actually is; a nutjob with an unhealthy obsession. For those people, having a multiversal being tasked with chronicling the entire multiverse dismiss the Joker as a minor nuisance who somehow no-one has bothered to kill yet will feel immensely satisfying.
  • To see the Robin King, the insufferable psychopathic little shit who managed to kill every hero on his Earth because he could pull anything out from his utility belt, finally be outsmarted by his older prime counterpart, who then proceeds to rally the resurrected Bat-Family (including Alfred) AND the Bat-Rogues against him is so, so satisfying.
• Complete Monster:
  • The Batman Who Laughs is a being born of The Joker's toxins infecting the Bruce Wayne of Earth-22, giving rise to something new and far eviler that slaughtered his entire world. As the right-hand of Barbatos and leader of the Dark Knights, the One Who Laughs gleefully gave all for a chance to massacre entire worlds, summoning Barbatos to Earth to annihilate it and torture and kill everything there. Surviving his master's downfall, the One Who Laughs continues massacring others in his path, tries to start entire world wars, attempts to twist Gotham into pitiless monsters like him, and eventually becomes the herald of Perpetua. Betraying her upon achieving a new cosmic awareness, the One Who Laughs rechristens himself the Darkest Knight, vowing to become a bullet to the Multiverse itself as its worlds fall before him. Slaying Perpetua, he unleashes an army of the worst he has to offer, plotting to turn all existence into a nightmarish reflection of his own soul in an eternal chaos that will devour itself until nothing remains.
  • Perpetua, Mother of the Multiverse, is one of the Hands, servants of the Source who craft vast multiverses before returning to the Source. Desiring to rule forever, Perpetua twisted forms of life into her servants. Later imprisoned in the Source Wall, Perpetua reaches out to cause all of the prior Crises with their massive losses of life. After achieving freedom, Perpetua begins annihilating whole universes, planning to wipe out the Multiverse and empowering herself by keeping entire realms in pure agony while she feeds off their strength.
  • The Robin King is an utterly sadistic version of Bruce Wayne who was born hyperviolent and evil on an unknown world in the Dark Multiverse. Committing various obscenely violent atrocities as a child, such as bashing Alfred Pennyworth in the face with his rattle, torturing animals, and crafting weapons, Bruce solidifies himself as a sociopathic murderer by shooting his parents in Crime Alley and framing a mugger he killed immediately before. Murdering Alfred and police officer Jim Gordon, Bruce soon turns to the superhero population and puts his weapons to use in the most brutal and sadistic manners a 10-year-old boy can imagine. Reluctantly deferring to the authority of The Batman Who Laughs, who christens him the Robin King, Bruce aids his new master by gleefully killing off many heroes who stand in The Batman Who Laughs's way of multiversal conquest.
• Contested Sequel: To Dark Nights: Metal.
  • Those who prefer Metal think that this event, and the Justice League run leading into it, have outstayed their welcome for what amounts to a very generic event in the grand scheme of things. The event is also much bigger this time and structurally more all over the place, as opposed to Metal which, despite also being shaky, at least didn't require the reading of tons of tie-ins to make sense, whereas Death Metal will leave out entire subplots that are relevant to the core narrative and resolve them in tie-ins (e.g. Secret Origin and Speed Metal). The shift in focus to Wonder Woman is also a bit jarring for some given she was not the focus character for anything Scott Snyder has done, making it come off more like cashing in on her cinematic popularity.
  • Those who prefer Death Metal generally will agree that it's more straightforward, but enjoy it because it's not pulling a Voodoo Shark retcon every issue like Metal was and can be enjoyed on its own much easier, serving as the culmination of a story rather than the beginning of one. These people also tend to like that the scope of the event is so large, due to the nature of the story as a Crisis-level event. Finally, because of the nature of the event, some argue that Wonder Woman's nature makes her perfectly suited for the event — that or they like that Diana is getting a starring role in an event at all, which is rarer for her than Batman and Superman, who at least play supporting roles.
• Critical Dissonance: The series was critically acclaimed by professional reviewers, though general audiences were much less enthusiastic and gave it mixed reviews. Common points of criticism include the return of the Batman Who Laughs (a character who was overexposed to the point of saturation), being Denser and Wackier than its predecessor, and a perceived lack of originality when compared to other Crisis events or Scott Snyder's previous works.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The Robin King's origin explained in Legends of the Dark Knights is disturbing because of his nature of being a violent sociopath since birth, but the montage of his upbringing contains some darkly hilarious scenes, particularly him hitting Alfred with his rattle when he was a baby and setting a car on fire just so he can roast marshmallows.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Although he only appeared in a couple of issues, B-Rex has become among the more popular evil Batmen because of his intimidating design and the sheer absurdity of his origin story. Being made the frequent butt of jokes from other characters regarding his tiny arms also helped garner sympathy from readers.
  • Some of the characters from the Darkest Knight's Last 52 multiverse have also risen in popularity for the interesting concepts behind them and their unique designs in spite of being glossed over only once or twice.
• Epileptic Tree: Since Scott Snyder's run on Justice League heavily hyped up Apex Lex and Perpetua only for the Batman who Laughs takes his place and once again becomes the main villain, Comic Pop theorizes that Apex Lex would have been the main villain, but editorial made him go with the BWL due to the characters ability to sell.
• Fandom Rivalry: A mild one has cropped up with Doomsday Clock, mostly because fans who liked Doomsday Clock feel it already achieved the very thing Death Metal aims to do — bring back the old DC continuity and undo the changes made by the New 52. However, due to a massive Schedule Slip and the contested reaction to the story itself, as well as the fact Doomsday Clock had a much more quieter effect on the DCU (with the restoration of old continuity being largely unacknowledged), while by comparison Death Metal was loud, boisterous, stuck to schedule even despite being rewritten, and as a result was much more widely acknowledged, so Death Metal ends up being the one credited with restoring the timeline.
• Fan Nickname: The Darkest Knight (the Batman Who Laughs in the body of a Batman who got Doctor Manhattan's powers) has been called the Doctor Manhattan Who Laughs.
• Franchise Original Sin: Something that's actively acknowledged by the fandom; people who read and liked Metal are far colder to this event for largely just repeating and continuing the same beats and concepts, only with Batman-Who-Laughs having more Plot Armor after evolving into the Darkest Knight, resulting in some thinking he's overstayed his welcome. People who didn't like Metal like DM even less, as it continues to display the same flaws as the previous event only taken up to eleven. It's gotten much warmer reception though from people who skipped Metal and are just here for Wally, the JSA, and Wonder Woman, because they're not as over-exposed to this stuff and can brush off the BWL and the other Dark Knights as just being ridiculously over-the-top badguys.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Although it may seem odd that the Batman Who Frags would look and act exactly like Lobo after injecting himself with Czarnian DNA, it makes sense considering that Lobo is the only known Czarnian; his healing factor is strong enough to create clones of himself with the same personality and mind as the original from only drops of blood, so the DNA may have possessed enough healing ability to transform Batman into a physical and genetic duplicate of Lobo instead of merely endowing him with the Czarnian's abilities. As for his Main Man-like personality? Genetic Memory.
  • It's noted that the new cast of Dark Knights are mostly not very smart or competent despite being Batmen. This was probably intentional on Laughs's part, since too many villains with his mind won't go so well for his plans.
• Fridge Horror:
  • According to Robin King, Dark Multiverse versions of villains, in contrast to the heroes, tend to be good versions as that's what they fear. So it's entirely possible that many worlds in the Dark Multiverse are actually good, as the villains fear and despise the idea of worlds where they cannot or will not spread terror and subjugation, only for them to decay away simply for being down in the dark.
  • The Dark Multiverse has worlds where all Crises went horribly wrong, no matter the scope, like the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Tales from the Dark Multiverse reveals that there's somehow a Dark Multiverse version of Metal, which was an invasion by the Dark Multiverse. So it's entirely possible that somewhere down there, the Darkest Knight succeeded in bringing his conquest to the rest of the Omniverse.
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • Back in the 1990s Post Crisis Wonder Woman had a villain known as "He-Who-Laughs" before settling on "White Magician". What was a throwaway piece of trivia becomes a lot funnier knowing about Wonder Woman's role in this story.
  • The existence of B-Rex was pretty funny on its own, but then Jurassic World Dominion came along with a Giganotosaurus as the antagonistic dinosaur, which director Colin Trevorrow claims was written with the Joker in mind. Looks like we needed a Bat-Dinosaur after all.
  • Owlman's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Bat-Baby about how all the Dark Multiverse Batmen are just bad throwaway ideas while he's Batman's one true Evil Counterpart becomes darkly ironic come the introduction of The Batwoman Who Laughs on Earth-11, the Gender Flip universe, after Laughs's death, implying the idea of Laughs has already been propagating because he's become an enduring idea of a dark counterpart to Batman.
  • While fighting Harley, Robin King states that the Dark Multiverse versions of villains are heroes, hence why there's no Harley Who Laughs. In 2022, a Harley Quinn Who Laughs has been officially introduced.
• Just Here for Godzilla
  • A lot of people jumped onto this event purely because Wally West turned out to be the deuteragonist after Wonder Woman, who despite the darkness is not written as a cold-blooded Proud Warrior Race Guy as she often ends up being. It helps that Diana's plan basically amounts to 'give Wally West enough power that he can reboot the multiverse so it doesn't suck anymore' and reads like a thinly veiled jab at Dan DiDio and the much-derided New 52, something that is especially endearing to fans of Wally and Diana.
  • Some circles only read the event just to see Superboy-Prime get redeemed and kick ass as a hero.
• Memetic Badass: Ironically not Batman, as many would expect, but Penguin, who entered the final battle wielding little more than a sharp rock. Several fans have treated this as an Awesome Moment for a man who is known mostly for being squat and wielding umbrellas and view Death Metal as his most powerful incarnation. He becomes more of a badass in the Last 52: War of the Multiverses one-shot, where he faces off against Evil Counterparts (well, more evil than usual) of himself and transforms into a gigantic, monstrous bird-like form to kill them all and stand victorious.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I can't figure out what's going on. And the worst part about it all is...I don't care anymore." ^ExplanationSuperboy-Prime summing up his feelings about the plot of the titular Crisis Crossover event. Can be used to apply to similar events with similarly convoluted stories.
  • The [X] Who Laughs^ExplanationThe Batman Who Laughs takes center stage as the Big Bad in a huge way, hijacking the body of a Bruce Wayne/Doctor Manhattan fusion and even creates a "multiverse that laughs". The sheer ridiculousness of how much influence he amasses, as well as titles of YouTube reviews and explanations labeling something "The [X] Who Laughs" has led fans to think of laughing psychotic versions of characters, DC or otherwise.
• Narm Charm: While many of the stories of the Dark Knights from Metal were somewhat absurd, they all at least had a level of "cool factor". Death Metal, on the other hand, leans into the idea of the Dark Multiverse being a multiverse of "bad ideas", with Dark Knights debuting in it including the Batman who Frags (a Batman/Lobo fusion), Pearl (an evil Martha Wayne in a mechsuit), Batmobeast (Batman's brain in a monster truck Batmobile), Baby Batman (Batman's brain in a baby's body) and — of course — Batmanasaurus Rex (Batman's brain in a robotic T-Rex). Certain fans who didn't like the original Dark Knights prefer the Death Metal ones, particularly when Owlman calls them out for being ridiculous.
• One-Scene Wonder: B-Rex is unfortunately not used nearly as much as fans wanted him to be, despite his popularity.
• Only the Author Can Save Them Now: By issue #4, many readers have expressed this sentiment towards the story as it seems that every time the heroes one-up the Batman Who Laughs, he's already five steps ahead. It's worth noting this sentiment was shared with the original Metal, and indeed is a recurring theme of Scott Snyder's writing.
• Questionable Casting: The soundtrack includes many hardcore and metal bands like HEALTH, Marilyn Manson, Mastodon... and Soccer Mommy.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Superboy-Prime, believe it or not, despite possibly being the most infamous scrappy of DC comics. The character was already being Vindicated by History, as many had began to recognise that his Straw Fan Take That, Audience! traits were somewhat rooted in real life issues with fandom toxicity and fan entitlement, but for many, the character's Heel–Face Turn after Diana convinces him to help stop the Batman Who Laughs ultimately demonstrates significant character growth and depth that he'd previously lacked. Though some just see it as him not being a complete wanker, rather than genuinely redeemed, it's still a significant improvement. Then The Secret Origin takes it one step further by showing Prime, despite both hero and villain hating his guts, taking on the Batman Who Laughs himself, sacrificing himself to give everyone a fighting chance to live and being rewarded by being returned to Earth-Prime no longer the hated monster he had become and given a second chance to be a proper hero.
• The Scrappy: The fandom began to despise Robin King almost immediately after his introduction for lacking the interesting backstories and motivations that made the previous Dark Knights so popular in the first place and coming across as a poor copy of the Batman Who Laughs and his Robins. A sizeable chunk of the fandom also consider him a Replacement Scrappy for the more popular Knights like B-Rex after he ended up being the only survivor of The Darkest Knight's purge. It doesn't help that he immediately got a lot of push in press releases that hyped him up as Scott Snyder's favorite creation and really overstated how awesome he is, only for his proper debut scene to just make him come off as a try-hard. And to make things worse, he seems to have Batman and the Batman-Who-Laughs’s Plot Armor taken up to eleven, because according to his own words, he somehow managed to murder every single hero of his world despite being no older than 10 years old. And did we mention that unlike Batman, he didn’t travel around the world and didn’t train under any teachers, which means that he logically shouldn’t be able to do half of the things he does in this story, yet he does them anyway? Where Batman had to work hard and train hard to earn his skills, Robin King somehow already had them from the get-go. Basically, Robin King is a version of Batman who defeats the purpose of Batman: Batman is supposed to symbolise hard work and determination to achieve badassery, but Robin King was apparently already overpowered without requiring any kind of training or hard work from the beginning.
• Strangled by the Red String: In Last Stories of the Multiverse, Dick and Babs stage a mock wedding, which comes out of nowhere, literally as they were arguing just seconds beforehand, and not in a Slap-Slap-Kiss moment. While the two do have romantic history, they had been severely sunk in the pages of Batgirl, as the last time they spoke, Babs basically told him to go to hell in a glaring example of Unintentionally Unsympathetic^note Babs was angry at Dick for how he behaved during the "Ric" persona and what he did while brainwashed by the Joker in Joker War; basically, she had utterly No Sympathy for him despite the fact he had suffered a severe brain injury that was taken advantage of by Joker, all things he had zero control over, which is despite the fact she's Easily Forgiven Jason Bard for being a terrorist who framed her father, which was penned by the same writer as this short story. Adding fuel to the fire, Dick had recently reunited with Starfire (his other most prominent love interest) during a mission for the Justice League, where she was far more sympathetic towards him for what happened, and though Kory didn't witness it like Barbara did, her reaction had people expecting a Dick/Kory reunion instead. Also not helping matters is Dick and Babs both had other Love Interests right before this event.
• Take That, Scrappy!: In Last Stories of the DC Universe, the splash page featuring past versions of the Teen Titans includes the original Duela Dent among the Bronze Age team. However, the New 52 Duela (who is repeatedly decried as a shoddy knock-off by fans of the original) is nowhere to be found among the Titans assembled by Donna Troy. While it's true that the New 52 Duela was never considered a Teen Titan, it's telling the creative team included Titans such as Mirage, Risk, and Argent in attendance even though they never appeared after the Flashpoint reboot.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Several of the newer Dark Multiverse characters, such as Kull and the Pearl, are barely utilized beyond a couple of pages while the most prominent Dark Multiverse antagonists are the heavily divisive Batman Who Laughs and the much loathed Robin King. Kull represents a child of Batman who turned rogue, while the Pearl's a Martha Wayne who survived and went on to become a Batman-like character instead. After years of hyping up the idea of Thomas Wayne becoming Batman thanks to Flashpoint and Earth 2, it would've been refreshing to see the angle explored through Martha. Kull meanwhile had an interesting design, and while representing a Batman/Wonder Woman coupling which is a long-time Fan-Preferred Couple, could've been used as a Foil to Damian or Helena Wayne.
  • The Last 52 Multiverse created by the Darkest Knight is barely expanded upon besides creating more evil versions of Batman as well as Superman and Wonder Woman. The Multiverse Who Laughs one-shot basically squandered the concept where the Robin King briefly talks about certain worlds, like the world of the Last Sun Superman and the Lois Lane who killed all of her world's heroes. You'd think we'd see what the stories behind those worlds were. Instead, it shows us random one-shot tales that ultimately held no meaning to the overall series featuring characters who barely had anything to do with Death Metal prior.

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