Alright so the guidebook is out today, wasn’t sure I was going to get it but I had a gift card so why not. I’d say it’s pretty similar to the Legends of the Dark Knight one-shot, where there is like one big story and then a few smaller stories except this time starring our heroes instead of evil Batmen...I mean evil Batmen still are in this they just aren’t the stars. Without giving to much away about all the stories I’d say that the first story is interesting because it serves as a kind of zero issue that shows the take over of the earth by Batman who laughs and his cronies, that’s not a spoiler because that’s what we knew in the first issue it’s just that now we get to see it. It’s exactly what you expect, the heroes trying to fight off Batmen.
The rest of the stories are also prequels that show what certain characters are doing in the new world order. I personally don’t think they add much in the way of plot significance to the main story, maybe the one with Batman (not the evil ones) and Jonah Hex because you get some more insight on Batman with a black lantern ring.
I’ll be straight with you all, this is a 7/10 at best and it’s not really essential like other tie-in books may be later, in fact it doesn’t really explain anything because at this point in the series you pretty much already knew what happened. I’d honestly say unless you just have an interest in seeing what happened you can probably skip it and that’s from someone who likes and enjoys the Death Metal event so far.
However, there was one thing in the main story that got me confused, especially when I looked at who wrote it, and it made think either the writer of his own series made a huge mistake or there’s something to that.
spoilers:
So the Justice League Dark show up to fight the mage Batman, but there are three Doctor Fates. Helmetless Khalid and Kent, and then just a random helmet wearing fate on the other side. Which is really weird when you remember the fate in the main series is helmet wearing Kent Nelson, but then it’s really off putting when you see that James Tynion helped write the story and he wrote the main Justice League Dark book. Not sure if Snyder made a huge mistake on Tynion’s work or something else is going on. |
end of spoilers