Can someone explain Batman Metal and Death Metal to me?

[Winghead77]

And how they effect the core Batman title and other titles in the Batman corner of DC. I read a bit about them but I’m not sure if they are essential or like elseworlds stories.

[zvrk]

They're Crisis type events and I'd say they're skippable, as are tie ins.

[Ruthborn]

They affect the Bat-titles as much as Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis affected the Bat-titles but while the previous two crisis had support stories leading into them (eg OMAC Project, Identity Crisis, Black Glove, etc) the Metal Crisis was all self contained. You might like to read them to find out how the 52 Multiverse got reset to an Omniverse and such but there are currently no plot lines in the bat-titles that require the reader to read the Metal Crisis to be able to understand them.

Short answer; while they are not elseworlds stories, they are currently not essential reading.

[thwhtGuardian]

They were overly long and drawn out and ultimately don't really have any affect on the stories being told...so I'd say skip them.

[captchuck]

I bought and read the whole thing. I have no idea what I read for the most part. There were some good issues and some I couldn't fathom.

[sifighter]

More crisis stories then Batman, outside of some tangential Batman series/stories it honestly didn’t really effect the Batman books, had more an impact on the Justice League line of books.

I personally like Metal and Death Metal but they are very crazy brand of dc stories, the type of crazy that tends to happen in stories like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, and etc. I mean come on Captain Carrot hung out with Guy Gardner.

[charliehustle415]

Pure unadulterated nonsense.

If you like Saturday morning cartoon style storytelling, then it will be great.

Capullo's art is the real draw

[Restingvoice]

And how they effect the core Batman title and other titles in the Batman corner of DC. I read a bit about them but I’m not sure if they are essential or like elseworlds stories.

They're essential for causing big universe change, Death Metal itself resulted in the current DC Omniverse and realigned timeline, while Dark Nights Metal was the Part 1 of a long story that changed the Justice League books lineup, but as a story they run on their own while other books do their own thing, so they don't affect the stories in Batman family titles except for... I think... 1 tie-in issue of Nightwing that did have a lead up in the previous story arc of that series.

[captchuck]

The only long term thing that mattered is that now all stories that ever happened in the DC Comics happened somewhere in the DC Universe. So if you have favorite stories that were somehow cancelled in one Crisis or another, now those stories are uncancelled and real DC comic book stories again. I'm all for that idea.

[I'm a Fish]

Aesthetically, it was basically Batman cosplaying as other heroes.

But yeah, I don't think they are really essential to Batman.

If anything, Wonder Woman was the character most affected by it.

[Multiverse]

Basically a Crisis brought about by Batman's curiosity and dropping multiple evil Batmen on the DC-Verse (which got really old REALLY FAST).

Looking at the entire story arc as a whole (Metal, No Justice, Justice League and Death Metal), there still are elements I liked: The Journal of Carter Hall, the roster of both the Justice League and Legion of Doom, the new origin of the Monitor brothers (particularly Anti-Monitor's new motivation for his CoIE actions), the new "Thanagar-Prime" dynamic, characters Jarro and Shayne J'onzz, and Vandal Savage's Legionnaires Club (considering it's membership has included Lionel Luthor, Arion, Ultra-Humanite etc).

[I'm a Fish]

Basically a Crisis brought about by Batman's curiosity and dropping multiple evil Batmen on the DC-Verse (which got really old REALLY FAST).

Looking at the entire story arc as a whole (Metal, No Justice, Justice League and Death Metal), there still are elements I liked: The Journal of Carter Hall, the roster of both the Justice League and Legion of Doom, the new origin of the Monitor brothers (particularly Anti-Monitor's new motivation for his CoIE actions), the new "Thanagar-Prime" dynamic, characters Jarro and Shayne J'onzz, and Vandal Savage's Legionnaires Club (considering it's membership has included Lionel Luthor, Arion, Ultra-Humanite etc).

I hope the Legion of Doom isn't gone. I love bad-guy teams.