DC Comics reviews for the week of 9/20/17
Batman: The Red Death #1
With Batman: The Red Death, DC is a very solid three for three with Dark Night: Metal tie-ins with a riveting battle between The Dark Knight and The Fastest Man Alive.
Beyond the regular Metal tie-ins, DC is also releasing standalone issues featuring the origins of the Dark Multiverse Batmen. These are the corrupted and tainted Batmen who gave in to their worst impulses. The Red Death Batman is imbued with the power of The Flash, making for a terrifying and exciting villain.
Since Batman: The Red Death is just as closely linked to The Flash, the regular creative team of writer Joshua Williamson, artist Carmine Di Giandomenico and colorist Ivan Plascencia have the honors.
Williamson explores how Batman would defeat The Flash. It’s helpful having the regular write Barry’s downfall as Williamson is invested in not making The Flash look like a loser fighting Batman. The way the battle plays out makes sense and Williamson avoids putting Batman at superheroic levels to defeat a meta.
And best of all, Williamson introduces a wildcard that neither Flash or Batman anticipated, which further makes events unpredictable. With his world disposed of, Red Death gets an invitation to destroy the main Earth and not even Flash can stop him without some help.
Di Giandomenico isn’t the most detailed and pristine of DC artists, but he brings an unrivaled energy to every page. Better than most of his peers, Di Giandomenico really provides that constant sense of movement. It’s easy to imagine how the characters ended up in this frozen in a moment panel before moving on to the next panel.
Plasencia’s colors are always impressive, but he finds some new avenues to explore with dark reds and purple skies.
There’s some very cool additional elements like Red Death’s drift being made of bats instead of lightning comprised of lightning and a Crisis on Infinite Earths inspired page. Williamson incorporates some nice detail work like Batman supplementing his arsenal and revealing a jealous side. This is high quality work for a one-off.
So far, Metal has delivered big time and this makes for another exciting Metal tie-in. This has been some of the best DC reads since Rebirth started. Don’t miss out on this one.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10