Read on Twitter
Haven't read the Metal stuff today, but I'm seeing pictures floating around and I'm thinking about the comparison between the Thors back in Secret Wars and the Evil Batmen in Death Metal. And how those comparisons show what works about SW and doesn't work about Death Metal
The Thor Corps in SW is a simple, elegant extension on the concept - especially at a time that the Thor mantle was explicitly being recast as something that could be passed on, the hammer was a very easy method of suggesting backstory without needing more.
By contrast, while some of the Batmen lend themselves to an easy understanding by design, they've all got complicated and unique backstories that are eating up page space and overcomplicating the story at every turn.
You can extrapolate this to the larger Death Metal/SW comparison - Hickman built Battleworld largely off of known bits of Marvel continuity, and just gave snapshots of worlds that would be explored futher in tie-ins. He also flooded the map to give a sense of the huge change
In contrast, Snyder's "DCU" - beyond just the obvious lack of compared creativity with locations - is much less inclusive of the wider idea of the DC Universe, and as a result, feels much emptier and less inviting.
(Seriously, it's just the Trinity and nothing else)
(Seriously, it's just the Trinity and nothing else)
Snyder's clearly trying to go for the same epic-scale, everything's different, recontextualization that Secret Wars went for, but his focus is wrong - he's letting the bit characters be what interacts with continuity, while the setting just feels empty because there's no base.
And the bit-Bats being so heavily continuity-based means that they overburden the story, making it top-heavy with what are essentially background gags while the actual story structure - with no firm base of setting - collapses under the weight of the Bats.
No real conclusion here - Death Metal will be what it'll be, and maybe things will turn out all right, but there's a structural flaw here that really keeps the book from working as fully as Snyder clearly intends
