Death Metal: Robin King #1 spoilers/discussion

[sifighter]

Alright I’m just going to start with saying this, this does not feel as important a one-shot as say Trinity Crisis or Speed Metal. If you skip this I don’t think it will have that big an impact on the overall story, because honestly the vast majority of this story is just what Robin King was doing before meeting Batman who laughs and his transformation into a Groblin (although I will admit it that part was a tad interesting), and then a quick fight on regular earth which I have a feeling will upset some people and honestly I’m not so hot on the story myself

For the sake of not ruining anything I’ll put it in a spoiler box. So here’s what happened

spoilers:

So Robin King kills people with his utility belt...pretty much the whole issue. Apparently he blew the whole fortune on the belt and so on his earth some time after killing Alfred we get to see him kill his worlds Firestorm, Hawkman and Hawkwoman, Adam Strange, and two guys in planes called Hans Von Hammer and Steve Savage...no idea who they are. So then BWL picks him up. The only interesting part really is that Robin King didn’t want to be what BWL turned him into, but he could nothing to stop it so instead he made it so he could retain some free will but held onto some animosity for being put in a cage so to speak. I thought that was cool but it doesn’t really go anywhere else between him and BWL, other then something at the end. So then we get to the real world and he then makes short work of killing Animal Man, Red Tornado, and Ted Kord which I’m sure people will not be happy with especially with how they died (Ted Kord mauled by a big beetle, Red Tornado given human feeling only to feel his own tornados rip him apart, and animal man gets eaten alive by zombie versions of his family...it’s not a good look no matter how you spin it) And then he and BWL leave before he can really lay into the Justice League who have been knocked out most of the issue and travel into the last 52 that BWL is creating to find a world where thanks to Robin King the Groblins now have sentience. The only real saving grace of this issue is the part where Duke gets control of his light and dark powers and helps Tim, Cassandra, and Steph beat down some random evil Batman made of Lazarus pit. Wish there was more of that honestly.

end of spoilers

Look I’m going to speak honestly as someone who actually enjoys Death Metal...this issue is kind of weak and doesn’t really add anything. You get to know about Robin King and see him kill people but it’s not all that compelling and honestly nothing made me care for the character. The saving grace really is the last few page story of Duke Thomas that Robin King has nothing to do with and also that I saved money by using a gift card on this. I hate to be a downer and I know people probably worked hard on this but compared to what else I read it just doesn’t stack up.

[Robotman]

Yeah this one is definitely not essential. It just shows how this super annoying psychopathic brat got to were he is.

spoilers:

the only thing this issue told us is that Robin King now has his own army of Groblins.

end of spoilers

[Restingvoice]

Omigosh, no wonder I can't guess which Batman combination it is. It's not even a combination of characters! They freaking cheat!

So they're dead dead? Main continuity, main earth, current timeline dead?

[Hizashi]

Wow the spoilers:

Animal Man tangent

end of spoilers will definitely have me skipping this one.

[OopsIdiditagain]

Robinking is what happens if every edgy young!Bruce fanfic was put into one character. The art was good and I liked the Duke part too.

[Superfan90]

Haha, this was bad. Like Onslaught Reborn level bad.

[lemonpeace]

I bought this exclusively for, and skipped immediately to, the Duke story (love to see it, it was great, more please), but I haven't gotten around to reading the actually Robin King story. from your write-up, it seems like the biggest offense is probably the deaths, but it doesn't feel like the worst thing ever. mind you tho, I haven't read it, it could indeed be the worst thing ever.

[K. Jones]

I read it not because I expected it to have big story beats or to be interested in Robin King as a character because in true over-the-top satire form, he really is just like the next evolution of the annoyingly broken BMWL-type characterization, which works as a side character in the main story's ridiculousness but can't really support itself (Just like all the Dark Knights and their one-shots), no, I flipped through it because I like Riley Rossmo's weird ass comic book art.

It's fairly clear continuity-wise that anything that happens to anyone in Death Metal has no relevance on whether or not they're still alive and well and set up for stories afterward, as a sort of self-contained Pocket Event and the ... I dunno, icing on the cake of the concept that continuity (or "the timeline") is broken and nothing really matters. Which is why the mission statement of "Everything matters" also reads as satire. So that stuff I've got no problem with.

There is something charming about the over-wrought manner in which Robin King is explained as a conceptualization of Edge-Lord Teen Bruce. Charming? Anti-Charming? I dunno ... silly, mainly. But there's something in the bones of it that I do like that ties back to that Silver Age Harvey Harris adventure where Batman's like "actually the first ROBIN was ME!" Which is where I think the primary wasted potential of this issue lies. I know they're all dumb dark multiverse riffs on things but if you're doing a story where Young Bruce Wayne is running around calling himself Robin anything, you're missing your cool opportunity if you aren't remixing that old Harvey Harris storyline and having Harris be his strange mentor.

And then there's the verisimilitude ... because while it doesn't happen this issue, I don't quite understand how the eff an adult(ish) Harleen Quinzel shows up at his house and Bruce is a teenager. Like dark twisted timeline or not, Bruce Wayne still should be a few years older than Harley, right, thereby making her also a teenager? All the characters from his universe should have been teenagers, so him killing his versions of the Justice League and what-not should have been him killing teenagers. Which frankly would have been more fun, like he's the "Batman" from the TEEN SLASHER MOVIE universe.