Rebirth’s first major crossover event, Metal, has slowly crept into the margins of the main DCU with the help of its prelude comics, Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting, but this week marked the first real intersection of Metal’s framework with the current line of ongoing titles.

RELATED: DC’s Dark Days: The Casting Annotated, From Abel to St. Roch

Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #26 set about folding the breadcrumbs of The Forge and The Casting into the present day, immediate concerns of the GLC as they currently stand -- and made the looming threat of the mysterious, ominous “metal” all the more apparent with some familiar faces cropping up to help along the way.

“Old Genesis”

Green Lantern Corps member Graf Toren has had a vision -- or, rather, has been having visions, nearly every night, and they’re becoming more and more terrifying. But it’s not the fact they all seem to be pointing to a sort of prophecy that is most concerning, it’s that they suddenly seem to be very specific in the “who” rather than the “what” or the “why.”

Toren sees a set of “metal golems” in his most recent vision, awakening...somewhere (somewhen?) deep within the furthest reaches of the multiverse. It’s their appearance that finally pushes him to act and warn the rest of the Corps about what is out there waiting for them in the darkness of space.

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Now, the golems themselves are interesting -- even Toren points out that the annals of the universe make no mention of there existing anything like them, and we are clued in from the caption boxes on the page that they seem to be originating from a planet called “Old Genesis,” which should be sounding some alarms.

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New Genesis is, of course, the well known and well understood home planet of Highfather’s New Gods. We’ve known through works which expanded upon Jack Kirby’s original Fourth World epic that there once was a planet called Genesis that was ruined during a massive war, and that prior to that initial destruction, the New Gods of both New Genesis and Apokolips alike lived on a planet called Urgrund. So that leaves “Old Genesis” a bit of a mystery as far as time and place are really concerned. Toren’s vision seems to indicate that it is or was a lushly green place that looked roughly uninhabited. But if that’s the case, who was it that forged the “metal golems?”

It’s also worth noting that the other cosmically focused DC ongoing, Green Lanterns very recently introduced the concept of a “Third World” which, according to writer Sam Humphries existed before the Fourth -- an idea that could potentially have some influence on the way this timeline actually shakes out, once more information has been presented.

However, as of right now, there are more pressing matters to attend to because…

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Let Slip the Dogs Of War

Toren’s warning, unfortunately, comes too late. A metal golem has already arrived in a populated corner of the universe and, despite their best efforts, Lanterns Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner are unable to make it to the scene on time. They arrive only to find absolute destruction -- a total loss of life.

But not for long, as a familiar sound rings out in the middle of the rubble -- Ping ping ping.

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Seconds after Hal has the presence of mind to set up a defensive position, a Boom Tube opens in the middle of space and out comes Orion of the New Gods. Now, for those of you playing along at home, this is week marks Orion’s first proper appearance in the mainline Rebirth continuity, and with him comes a whole branch of late New 52 baggage.

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Darkseid War was the final event of the New 52 era. The event suffered from the New 52’s general lack of cross-title organization, making it difficult to figure out how it meshed with the rest of the DCU even as it was unfolding, long before Rebirth set into motion its sort of cosmic reset. So far, the only explicitly called upon consequences of Darkseid War within Rebirth has been the existence of multiple Jokers.

However, when Orion shows up, he lays it on the table: there was a war, it left the New Gods and the Green Lantern Corps considering one another allies, and Kyle played a major role in the conflict as the White Lantern. But Kyle’s not the White Lantern anymore (refer back to the “Quest for Hope” story arc to see just how that took place) and Orion didn’t make it through his Boom Tube unnoticed.

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A series of Omega Beams -- Darkseid's lethal eye-lasers -- launch from seemingly nowhere and strike Orion in the chest, critically injuring him. Left with no choice, Hal and Kyle immediately transport him to the nearest city for medical attention -- and they’re successful! Orion’s life is saved, but at the cost of luring his attacker directly to a major city on a populated planet.

One of the metal golems -- the one responsible for destroying the star system -- opens a Boom Tube of its own, directly in front of the unlikely trio, ready to “commence culling.”

Getting to Work, Mining that Metal

So, what does all of this mean for the status of the Rebirth DCU and what can we infer now about Metal?

Well, for one thing, the clear ties to Darkseid War indicate some potential narrative cherry picking on the horizon. The finale of Darkseid War left Darkseid himself transformed into a baby (it’s... a long story) so it’s unlikely that we’re going to see a plot element that picks up that particular thread in any meaningful way -- though it’s certainly not completely impossible. Darkseid has actually only very recently been brought up in Rebirth’s continuity at all, most prominently in this week’s Mister Miracle #1, where he looms large as a completely off-panel presence.

RELATED: King & Gerads Have Redefined Mister Miracle, And Possibly Comics

So no one can be quite sure of Darkseid’s status in Rebirth just yet -- or of just how much of Darkseid War will actually carry over or how much will be quietly written off entirely.

As for the golems themselves -- their ability to fire Omega Beams and teleport via Boom Tube, as well as their stylistic similarities to Darkseid himself seem to indicate another possible venue for the God of all Evil to strike at the DCU, even if he does so from somewhere off-stage. Also, the fact that the only clear motivation the golems have been given thus far is “culling” Orion certainly makes their goals seem both vendetta based and old. Is it possible that the mystery of the metal, the dark multiverse, and everything that both Batman and Carter Hall have worked to carefully uncover could all point back to the fires of Apokolips in the end?

It certainly seems like one major potential outcome.