As much as I appreciate the concept of the Dark Knights: Metal event, I can't help wonder why those dark knights went EEEEVIL, since the whole point of being Batman is that you had a guy who overcame in order to become a hero for justice. Instead, you had all these versions of Batman going off the rails, with some being worse than others. I mean, take the Batman Who Laughs. My original understanding of being "jokerized" is that it warps your perception of reality, not imprint Joker's personality onto the victim. As for "The Drowned", her motivation was a tad bit sexist, considering that OUR Batman has lost loved ones before. Come to think of it, the ONLY one I could understand being the way he is would be the Dawnbreaker, having never went through the training or mentoring that made Batman the way he is.

In my personal opinion, rather than be "monsters", I would have liked seeing these alternate Batman challenge OUR Batman, but in some twisted way. They would fight to defined innocents, but who have become so corrupted that they would make our Batman look normal by comparison. "You've tried things YOUR way, Bruce; now, we're going to try things OUR way". Then, you can see how scary these guys are, in the sense that there would be a lot of people agreeing with these Dark Knights, even as Batman and the rest of the superhero community have to contain these alt-Batmen. I mean, these are Batmen, at their core, which means that when dealing with a problem, they use both brawn and brains to solve a problem. And, of course, each issue featuring a Dark Knight would tackle a case their way, but related to their abilities and mindset. So, imagine the battle of wits, between a jokerized Batman and the original Joker (which has been done, but not in a way that is in-keeping with Batman still being Batman at his core, in spite of being jokerized).

Oh, well. I do wonder what happened to the Dark Knights, if any of them are still around, having cool designs, even if their motivations are suspect to me, as the reader...