WARNING: The following article 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 Comics.
As the original Dark Nights: Metal event has proven, writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo aren't afraid to tap into the vast history of the DC Universe to deliver jaw-dropping moments to fans. Metal famously reintroduced Hawkman into DC continuity, and the first issue of its sequel, Death Metal, teased larger roles for Lobo, Superboy-Prime, Jonah Hex and more. Another character to make a surprising appearance was The Flash's Wally West.
Now imbued with the powers of Doctor Manhattan of the Watchmen, Wally West has traveled across the Multiverse in the Flash Forward miniseries and now finds himself a prisoner of The Batman Who Laughs. Finding an ally in Wonder Woman, the duo must now embark on a quest to rescue their friends and save the DCU.
CBR participated in a video conference call with Snyder ahead of the release of Death Metal #1, where the writer revealed the heroes will revisit different crises in DC's past. With that in mind, we have a first look at pages from Dark Nights: Death Metal #2 which feature Wally West, Wonder Woman and Swamp Thing meeting the Justice Society of America, and Wally's tearful reunion with the first Flash, Jay Garrick.
The next two pages fans may recognize after Capullo teased the art on his Twitter account. We see Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman being bombarded in a red energy in the bottom center of the page, with Lex Luthor in his Apex Lex form and Doctor Manhattan hovering above them. At the very top of the page is the Source Wall that was destroyed at the end of the original Metal series.
Finally, the last page features a collection of recognizable heroes as they charge into battle. Batman drives a gnarly motorcycle with possibly the revived Jonah Hex riding shotgun on the back; Harley Quinn is resting atop one of her supersized hyenas with Wonder Woman shielding the rear; and Barry Allen's Flash races alongside to keep up with the group. They are all charging towards a square exit in the ground that is guarded by someone blasting a rifle in their direction. Whether or not he's aiming at our heroes or the monster bats chasing them is unclear.
"Basically, the story is to save the DC Universe, the heroes realize they have to go into the Dark Multiverse and find the crises that happened in the past and collect the energy from those and use it to restart the DC Universe in a different way. When they go into the Dark, they don't expect the crises have been twisted in a way that they don't expect. So you're going to see a bunch of characters there from the original series. You'll see Darkseid and all kinds of characters reframed," Snyder said during our interview.
He added, "So, I think a lot of the idea with this was to try and bring back some characters that fit the idea of a war, that fit the idea of and themes of rebellion, battling to throw off old systems and trying to find new ways of doing things. Throwing off oppressive overlords. So there's even a revolutionary war reference in the first issue, so trying to pick characters that fit that from different times and then bringing them in to surprise you and then reframing of characters that you're really familiar with in ways that will also, I think, catch you off guard by the difference in the way that they're thinking and behaving but still remain true to their core."
Dark Nights: Death Metal #1, by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion and FCO Plascencia, is on sale now from DC.