The DC Comics event Dark Knights: Metal was meant to shake things up in a visceral way. As co-publisher Dan DiDio said in a New York Comic Con panel last weekend, DC "could not sit back and rest on [its] legacy."
That's why the power team of writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo were tasked with telling a story that will have very real ramifications for the entire DC world.
Snyder originally pitched the story to his old Batman partner, Capullo, who was in as soon as he heard the title: Metal.
When people heard Snyder and Capullo were getting back together for this event, they were pumped. This team wrote notable Batman stories like "Court of Owls" and "Death of the Family," and they're one of the most celebrated teams to ever take up the Batmantle.
Their current work is definitely enjoyable, even to the casual comic fan. You can follow the story well enough, but this team is also packing in years and years of Batman backstory. Don't know who Barbatos is, or what the deal with Hawkman is? Those details will most certainly be lost on you.
Snyder says he hopes that the story he and Capullo are telling is rich and engaging enough to entertain people who don't have a backlog of comic history stored in their brain. And for the most part, that is the case. But there will still be moments when subtleties and references make pages of this story a little alienating.
But the product Snyder and Capullo put into the world is undeniably gripping, no matter what your comic-reading skill level — and that's due to their fantastic working relationship. They clearly have deep admiration and respect for each other, and their friendship is palpable. They speak very highly of each other when they're apart, and bicker like an old married couple when they're together.
In one of their NYCC panels, their dynamic was on full display. Snyder complained that in their text message conversations, Capullo will respond to his heartfelt or serious messages with emoji — specifically the poop emoji.
Capullo defended himself: "I'm an artist. I tell stories with pictures."
Snyder later went on to describe a scene involving, "a million Batmobiles."
Capullo cut him off mid-sentence to complain about how it was very easy for his partner to say he wanted a million of Batman's famous car on a page, but it would take forever for him to actually draw that.
And when Snyder described the Metal event as, "so many things," enthusiastically discussing the [sometimes enraging] complexity of the story, Capullo added, "Believe me, it is so many things," clearly exhausted by this aspect of the book.
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When Mashable asked Capullo how these many layers of Snyder's storytelling affect the art in the book, he said, "If I survive this, I feel that I could probably survive nuclear war at ground zero, because it's jam-packed," while Snyder laughed to himself.
"We're back, every once in a while, to me strangling him," Capullo said. "It's not all peaches and cream."
As Snyder chuckled, he rebutted, "Every good marriage, every good marriage."
