Metal's Dark Knights Aren't Just Evil Batmen

In the DC Comics' Dark Nights: Metal event, writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo have introduced us to a group of evil Batmen from the Dark Multiverse. The creative team has billed this group as a representation of Batman's fears come to life, and while that may be true, these characters also represent what would happen if Bruce Wayne had failed to live up to what we have come to expect from the caped crusader.

It's only through these failures that we get to see these fears come to life, while their transformations into unspeakable monsters illustrate just how lucky the DC Universe-proper is that its Bruce Waynes, across the Multiverse, have found the strength to defeat their inner demons rather than submit to them.

The Day Couldn't Be Saved This Time

We all know Batman as the one hero who is prepared for everything, who is able to save the day no matter the odds, and beat the bad guy. But what happens when Batman isn't strong enough? Many of the Dark Knights' origins are stories of Batman's greatest failures and what happens next.

Two particular stories show Batman's utter inability to be the hero the world expects him to be. In The Devastator, we see a Batman who is completely unprepared for when Superman turns evil. To the comic book reading public who read JLA: Tower of Babel over a decade ago, where we learn Batman has secret countermeasures against each Justice League member, it seems somehow false that he wouldn't know what to do when Superman turned on his former friends.

Instead of stopping the mad Kryptonian in his tracks, we see a Batman who can't come to terms with the fact that his friend has gone bad. Superman has killed the entire Justice League and dismembered Batman by the time Bruce finally enacts his last ditch effort to stop the Kryptonian murderer by transforming himself into a Doomsday monster. This is a Batman who has not been able to sever his head from his heart, and as a result he is too weak to do what must be done until it's too late.

We see this again in The Batman Who Laughs, which depicts Batman's final, decisive battle against the Joker, however, the story glosses over the fact that he had been unable to prevent the Joker from destroying Gotham City. While the Dark Knight has always been against killing, he has still been effective enough to stop his arch-nemesis from going too far, but The Batman Who Laughs was not.

For years, we've been presented with the idea that Batman needs his enemies to feel important, and that he doesn't kill the Joker because deep down inside, he knows he needs an enemy. Neil Gaiman put this idea on display during his two-part Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader story, which posited that the Joker was simply Alfred the whole time, giving his "son" an enemy to pursue.

While this theory is usually left for the reader to decide, this Batman shows us how true it really is. That Batman, who previously abandoned his no guns rule in Final Crisis in order to kill Darkseid and save the day, held off until it was far to late for everyone involved is a clear indication of his failures as a protector. Batman lost far before he ever transformed into the Joker.

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Lack of a Moral Compass

While his career as a vigilante certainly toes the line between hero and criminal, Batman has always held himself to a higher moral standard than others. He has his sacred rules and his unwavering moral compass, but the Dark Knights show us what happens to Batman when he doesn't have those guidelines in place.

The Batman we see in The Merciless is someone who has become so consumed by his mission to be protect of the innocent that he actually becomes exactly what he has been fighting to stop. All his focus goes into defeating Ares that he forgets who and what he is fighting for in the first place. His desperation to defeat his foe and natural drive to be the best cause him to become so lost in his own power that he actually kills Wonder Woman, who he claims to love. It all happens just so he can hold onto his power, even though we know that our Batman would know better.

Batman wears the helm of Ares as Batman the Merciless

In The Dawnbreaker, we see a young Bruce Wayne who hasn't even gone through the rigors of become Batman. He's a helpless child who is given the most powerful weapon in the universe on the worst day of his life. A kid who is left malleable by tragedy can do terrible things without the right guidance. We also see that Bruce, without the influence of Alfred and the training to control his rage, isn't inherently good after all.

An Inability to Let Go

Bruce Wayne's life has been defined by those he has lost, but also by his ability to pick himself up and do more with his life. He may always be tortured by the deaths of his parents, but he's turned that tragedy into a force for good. However, several of the Dark Knights have shown us what Batman would look like if he couldn't move on and he couldn't let go.

The Drowned depicts a gender swapped version of Bruce Wayne who is so tortured by the loss of her love that her entire life is spent attempting to get revenge on those who wronged her. That thirst for revenge leads to Atlantis drowning Gotham City in water before she murders them all. This is a version of Batman who allows her own selfish emotions and desires to get the better of her and control her actions.

The same thing happens in The Red Death and The Murder Machine. Batman has seen his loved ones die before, but it has never driven him to do the things he did in these stories. Our Batman carried on after the death of Jason Todd, but the Red Death was born out of a desperation to right his mistakes. The Murder Machine was created from his inability to let go of Alfred, who had become a father figure to him over the years. It is these mistakes that cause everything to go wrong in the end.

The Dark Knight one-shots have been tales of tragedy, but they're also stories of ineptitude, weakness and an inability to live up to expectations. In a sense, before this group was warped into a collective of monsters, they were simply weaker versions of Batman. The real thing should have no problem defeating them in the end.