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Before I really got into comics, the times I read them the most were on long trips. Luckily, back when I was a kid DC had these great digests that were collections of stories of various characters and teams. My favorite digests were of Superman/Superboy, the Legion of Superheroes (my first exposure to them) and the Metal Men. I'm pretty sure I still have at least a couple of them around somewhere.
The nice thing about the digests is that they were actually in color and easy to take around, so I read them a lot. It's probably that re-reading that made the Metal Men one of my strongest interests in comics, and they are one of the few characters I will still delve into a title for if they are guest stars. So, when I heard of the new Metal Men miniseries coming from DC, I was pretty excited to see what they would do with the Metal Men in the post-Infinite Crisis DC Universe.
Well, the series is done now so I can give my overall impression of it. It should have never happened, in my opinion. The series was a convoluted time-skipping waste of paper. There are some pretty interesting ideas that come from the mini, but nothing that I don't think could have been take care of in a super-sized one shot or a such a one-shot plus a Secret Files issue on the Metal Men.
While the ideas that are built upon in Metal Men come from ideas that sprang forth from Grant Morrison's head, this is not one of those times where I am in a "disliking" mood regarding his ideas. This isn't about Duncan Rouleau's writing or artwork on the series either. The series was just simply a waste of time in my eyes. If I wasn't a bit too much of a completist at times, and wasn't so keen on the Metal Men I would have dropped the series after the first three issues. Honestly, I don't even know why this Metal Men series was even given the approval to happen. I'm fairly certain that I'm the only person in the comics store that got it after the first couple of issues.
After years (perhaps decades) of being thrown around, re-imagined and retconned, I guess the decision was made to put something "solid" together for the Metal Men of today. So, this series looked like it was supposed to flesh out things found in the pages of 52 and Superman/Batman. As I don't read Superman/Batman, I completely missed the Metal Men's little stint in that series, which apparently introduced the new Metal Wo-Man Copper and the fact that Platinum is now going by the nickname "Platina" instead of "Tina." I don't mind Platinum's nickname change much as it pulls her a bit farther from Tin in name and brings her closer to hear actual metal name. But, back to the series.
So, the Metal Men series tried to fill in the blanks of the Metal Men's current history. Personally I think I would have preferred the gaps. You see, all that really happened was that the time when Dr. Will Magnus became Viridium was wiped out. This had already been wiped out due to the revelation that Dr. Magnus had a breakdown and imagined the whole thing. Don't tell that to the Legion of Super-Heroes that used his responsometer though, or anyone who was involved with the Legion during that particular adventure.
Are you starting to get the idea of the "nothing" that this series brought to the Metal Men? What I can say is it brought out a whole slew of new annoying or re-imagined characters. I'm sorry, but this new Chemo is lame as hell ('nuff said). The most idiotic character uses a name from the Metal Men's past ("the Nameless") gives him cloven feet, likely goat legs, a rock-substance upper-body with a pyramid head with the Eye of Horus for a face. Did I mention that he wears a suit sometimes with a Kraven the Hunter style dead animal carcass on his shoulders? Oh, and nothing cool like a lion either. It looks a little more like the aardvark jacket Lane Meyer's dad wore in the movie Better off Dead . . . with the hairs teased up.
By the end of the series we have a few pages that try to "realign" the new history with established history (ooh look, a flying manta ray). This brings the total value of 90% of the 8 issues of the series to ZERO. The parts that do have value? Copper's creation, seeing that the Metal Men were "updated" physically, seeing that T.O. Morrow was a strong influence in Dr. Magnus' past and bringing back Viridium via mixing Dr. Magnus' brother David with some Gold leftovers and marinating them in the time stream. Wait . . . so Dr. Magnus imagined he was Viridium but his brother really turned into what he imagined he was in the past. Wow, what are the chances? Seriously, this series leaves me feeling a little ill now as I think about it.
I really do believe that what I mentioned at the start about filling in the gaps of the Metal Men's new continuity in a much more concise and quicker method would have been better. Instead, we're left with this mangled Metal Men history that is convoluted and largely worthless in my eyes. The characters were better off when their last update supposedly came from the delusional mind of a fictional character. Frankly, I'll be very surprised if anything from this series, other than the new Viridium, is ever referred to again.
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