WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dark Nights: Death Metal #1 by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia and Tom Napolitano, on sale now from DC.
As a full-on celebration of the history of the DC Universe, Dark Nights: Death Metal is loaded with Easter eggs and allusions to plenty of key moments and classic stories. One of the most prominent, direct nods to DC history in the opening issue is the 2009 crossover event Blackest Night by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis. The widely acclaimed story saw the dead heroes and villains of the DCU rise from the grave as the undead Black Lantern Corps, targeting the living to feed off their raw emotional energy as they swept across the universe.
And with the fight turning increasingly desperate in Dark Nights: Death Metal #1, a new Black Lantern appears to turn the tide of battle: Batman.
By the start of Death Metal, much of the DC Multiverse has been conquered by Perpetua, with the main DC Universe rewritten by the Batman Who Laughs, her loyal vassal from the Dark Multiverse. The surviving heroes and villains have either been forced into new roles, imprisoned with the fiery pits of a repurposed Themyscira or gone into hiding. Defiant to the last, Batman leads his own resistance against the Batman Who Laughs and his new roster of Dark Knights even as the villains reshape the world in their own nefarious image. And to gain much-needed reinforcements, the Caped Crusader turns to an old childhood memory for inspiration.
Bruce Wayne recalls that, as a boy, he and his father used to walk in a large, open field near Wayne Manor. Thomas Wayne recounted that during the American Revolution, soldiers on the side of the Continental Army had built a system of tunnels to maneuver around British troops that were threatening Gotham City, earning the nickname the Dead Bats. Eventually, the British tracked down and killed the Dead Bats, burying them in shallow graves on the field where Bruce and his father hiked centuries later.
With the Batman Who Laughs and the Dark Knights gathering for a meeting by the site of Wayne Manor, Batman uses the opportunity to strike the assembled villains with an impromptu ambush. As the Dark Knights confront Bruce on the field, the heroic Batman reveals the ultimate ace up his sleeve: a Black Lantern Power Ring. Using the ring, Bruce raises the long-dead revolutionary soldiers as his own undead army and has them attack the Dark Knights, with a similarly revived Jonah Hex joining the fray against the Dark Multiverse villains.
Batman previously had his own connection to the Black Lantern Corps during Blackest Night. Black Hand had used a cloned corpse of Bruce Wayne developed by Darkseid during Final Crisis to illicit an emotional response from the Justice League and create Black Lantern Power Rings to temporarily kill them during Blackest Night. Green Lantern John Stewart had briefly channeled the power of the Black Lanterns during "War of the Green Lanterns" and Hal Jordan had used a Black Lantern Power Ring to defeat Nekron and the First Lantern during the New 52 though both instances would darkly influence the user.
It is unclear if Batman's use of the ring will affect him or if his intense mental training has led to a greater mastery of its powers. But with the Dark Knights showing no signs of slowing down, Batman's use of Black Lantern power may not be a one-time affair, and it could cost him his soul in the long run.