As the events of Dark Knights: Metal rock the DC Universe, the creatures of the Dark Multiverse stand ready to invade our world! How can even the World’s Greatest Heroes stop a horde of deadly beings that appear to be powerful, nightmare versions of familiar figures?

Dark Knights: Metal has done a fantastic job so far delivering a high stakes comic event and in doing so introduced some truly terrifying villains and a fantastic new concept in the Dark Multiverse. What the main story and its tie-ins don’t do is provide much of a back story as to who these new villains are. These one-shot issues have been doing a great job filling in the gap by not just providing some story that directly has to do with the event itself but also adding an origin of some sorts. Those origins have been more than just how these characters have been “created” but also add in motivation as to why they do what they do as well as to where their world stands. All of that together have created must read comics that add to the overall story.

Writer Frank Tieri delivers the latest in Batman: The Murder Machine #1 which gives us a Batman that also has the powers of Cyborg. We get some sense as to the why but not as much as the how here. It’s a solid addition but compared to the previous Red Death it doesn’t quite nail it.

But, while the overall story feels like it’s missing something compared to what we’ve seen there is something that’s really impressive and that’s the exploration of Bruce Wayne/Batman and his relationship with Alfred. And seeing that in this issue, it clicked to me about this even’ts exploration of different aspects of Bruce Wayne/Batman, his motivations and personality. In the end it added a lot to my appreciation of things.

The art by Ricardo Federici stands out with some really cool designs and presentations that are hard to go in to without spoiling the issue. It mainly involves tech and how certain artificial intelligence characters are presented and done in a cool way that visually is striking and somewhat terrifying too. That’s a thing about this event, it does a great job of blending horror and superhero comics and a lot of that dread is delivered in the visuals.

Overall, a solid issue that despite not quite living up to the quite high expectations set up from what has come before, it still has added a depth to the story and my appreciation for it all.

Story: Frank Tieri Art: Ricardo Federici Cover Art: Jason Fabok
Story: 7.5 Art: 8.65 Overall: 7.65 Recommendation: Read

DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review