I have said time and time again that going into these Batman one-shots I was only really looking forward to two; THE DAWNBREAKER and THE MERCILESS. The former because I’m arguably one of the biggest Green Lantern fans there is, and that focusing on the “Greatest Lantern of them ALL,” Hal Jordan. And the latter being because I’m a huge lover of [almost] anything knights, and THE MERCILESS looked right up that particular alley of mine. After reading all of the one-shots thus far, I can say that at least one of the two I was looking forward to was amazing. [Unexpectedly] THE MURDER MACHINE and THE MERCILESS are the two best tie-ins [if not out right books] apart of DC METAL so far.
I’ve long since said that two of the most talented individuals in DC Comics, and hell, in the comic book industry itself are Peter J. Tomasi (writer) and Francis Manapul (artist.) The two always end up giving us absolutely amazing work, and this is absolutely no surprise that the two of them working together is– well, it’s kind of nerd-gasmic.
Probably across the entire board, my favorite thing about these one-shots is the way the writers manage to seamlessly meld the origin story of how these “Dark Universe” Batmen ascended to such darkness.
Now, I’m going to be 100% honest with you as I say that I absolutely hate the Batman/Wonder Woman ship. I don’t think the character go together well on a relationship base, and that the two each have better respective partners they could be with. BUT with that being said, I think they’re “being together” worked very well in this version of the characters.
Peter really conveyed this tragedy to us through the Merciless’ dialogue with himself. You can feel his pain, his sorrow and even, I suppose embarrassment. I’ve always found reading Peter’s work that he has a way of telling extremely compelling and heart wrenching stories with the characters we’ve grown up with. And I think that seeing Wonder Woman’s “death” is what’s supposed to be driving Earth -12 Bruce to do and be who he’s become is quite interesting. It’s just like what the death of his parents had done to him.
I’ve often wondered what the death of a significant other– a woman he was in love with, what that would do to Bruce. I’ve always thought that it might be the straw to break the camel’s back and send him on a spiral he wouldn’t be able to come out of, and to see Peter play with that here brought a smile to my face.
I’ll say that the thing that set this issue apart from every single METAL issue before it was possibly the most out of left field twist in recent comic history,