Throughout the years we have seen many great event comics from DC, from the more recent Rebirth, Flashpoint and Blackest Night and going all the way back to the one that started it all, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This year is no different, as Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV are bringing us Dark Days.
Snyder promises Dark Days will be an epic event comic with the size and scope of Crisis on Infinite Earths. But, he makes it clear he doesn’t like comparing the two because when people think of Crisis, they think the DC Universe was getting reset. Under Rebirth he, as well as many of us, think DC is on the right track so DC doesn’t need a reset. Instead he likes to think of this event as a way to take the characters down new and exciting paths that they haven’t been down before.
In a recent interview he explained what he hopes the mega event will accomplish:
Scott Snyder: Metal is largely about the discovery of a Dark Multiverse, a place that is completely unknown. It’s not what you think it is, which is a billion Earth-Threes or just evil versions of our characters. It is truly based on the concept of dark energy and dark matter, this idea that there is this reactive, boiling ocean of possibilities. The Multiverse as we know it is very, very small. The same way that in the known universe, the positive and negative in the real world is quite small, compared to the amount of dark energy and dark matter that is all around us. It is almost unperceivable to us. In that way, the Dark Multiverse is this complete unknown and when they open the door to it, by mistake, and it comes to invade in its own way, you’ll see that it is that level of event.
With Rebirth still in full swing and Geoff Johns bringing us not one but two events with Doomsday Clock and the Three Jokers, Snyder explains how they will run together:
Scott Snyder: Geoff [Johns] has big plans for Doomsday Clock that will explain Rebirth and what Doctor Manhattan has done. All of the mysteries that were brought up in DC Universe: Rebirth are going to be answered there, so for us, with this, it’s a chance to bring in a vast new area of the DC cosmology and to explore it and create new characters, new tracts and new allies. The characters that are really involved in this story — Batman, Hawkman, the entire Justice League — really are the stars, but everyone from Doctor Fate on is in it in one way or another, and the spirit of it is exploratory. It’s meant to be about how the great torch of exploration has been carried through different heroes throughout time. Batman, even as a detective now, is about discovery and finding answers. Sometimes, you find answers to a mystery that you have been following that suddenly throw you backwards and make you feel terrified and yet you have to keep pushing through and seeing what’s on the side. That’s partly what Metal is about too. In that way, yes, we want it to signal that it’s a story that spans the Multiverse, it explores the origins of the Multiverse, it explores the origins of everything, from the Monitors and the Anti-Monitors and so on. It’s that big.
He mentions some more of the characters that will be a part of the event, including the ones we haven’t seen for a long time. He even goes on to tell us what we’ve been waiting to hear about Duke Thomas:
Scott Snyder: Plastic Man has a good role to play coming up. I don’t want to say what it is, because it plays into Dark Nights: Metal as well, but you’re going to see where we try to land him afterwards. We actually have quite big plans for him. We have big plans for Mister Terrific, too
We definitely have plans for the [original] Outsiders. I wanted to actually re-introduce them about a year ago, honestly, but we couldn’t due to other plans for certain characters. James Tynion has plans for those characters in Detective, and there are also plans for them beyond that. We are excited to integrate those characters back into the Bat-mythos and the DCU as a whole.
[Duke Thomas], his name and his role are coming out. I was going to do it in All Star Batman and then they gave us the option of playing him harder into this, so I thought we should do it here. By the end of The Casting, you’ll see his new role, you’ll know about his new book, all of that stuff.
Snyder explains that the Joker will play a large role in the story and actually always has since he started writing Batman:
Scott Snyder: He [Joker] featured in one way or another in every story that I did with Batman. He even made an appearance at the beginning of “The Court of Owls,” and haunts the Court of Owls in different ways. He’s always lurking, in one way or another. In that way, we felt there was nobody better to be the person that has more answers than anybody. Because The Joker has been there through all of it, and because he discovered bits of the mystery along with Batman that has to do with Metal about different sorts of metal across the DCU that radiate energy beyond any analysis, including the dionesium that we’ve used in our run. He would be the one who would sit there and I say, “I know what’s coming. I know the answers and you don’t want to go down this road.” He provides an incredible source of information for Duke and Hal [Jordan] and yet, at the same time, because he’s The Joker, he’s lying. [Laughs]
He’s always full of mystery, so you don’t know if what he is saying is true or not. He remains a great menace to Batman and actually sets up part of the mystery. He’s really fun. I don’t want to lean into him too hard, because I have used him so much and I have had so much fun with him – and I have more stories planned for him – but he’s always a special character that comes in. I like to use him in really calculated ways.
You can really feel Snyder’s enthusiasm for this project and if it is anything half as good as what he’s done so far, you can bet this will be an event worth reading.
Dark Days: The Forge is available now, with Dark Days: The Casting set for July and Dark Nights: Metal set for August
