Oddly enough, I've never picked up the
Showcase collections for the Metal Men; partly because I never see the first one, and partly because I already have the Walt Simonson issues in the should-never-be-out-of-print
Art of Walt Simonson. Also surprising: I didn't already have all of this one: from 2011,
DC Comics Presents: Metal Men 100-Page Spectacular, mostly written by Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis, mostly drawn by Kevin Maguire!
While this starts with a reprint of the Bob Haney-written
Silver Age: the Brave and the Bold #1, the rest is the complete run of back-up stories from Giffen's 2009
Doom Patrol, which I have most of but I don't think I added it to my pull list until it was already on the chopping block for cancellation. The Metal Men stories are fun, but that's all they are: there's barely a lick of development or drama, but maybe that's the way to go with them? They're largely resistant to change, or change and then quickly change back--malleable, you might say! One change should have stuck, though: the addition of new team member, Copper; but one running joke is that most of the team seems to forget her on a regular basis. (I thought she was from Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire, but
Copper was actually an earlier addition, from 2007's
Superman/Batman #34!) I'd love to have her back in the lineup again, like she took two years off to hitchhike across Europe, then just told everyone she had been there the whole time, and they bought it...I wondered if maybe the guys weren't building up to something, like the reason Magnus and the others never remember her was that she was some kind of plant; but now I kinda doubt that: in the last couple stories, they gave Magnus his own lab assistant/wacky sidekick, which really feels like overegging the pudding there.
3 comments:
I absolutely LOVED those Metal Men backups! I guess I can if a regular monthly wasn’t selling, why Giffen never got to write his own MM series, despite how funny and entertaining it would’ve been. I guess the Metal Men work better as guest-stars and features in anthology series than being able to support their own book, but that’s mostly because consistent financial support from a large enough consumer base isn’t there & probably was never there even going back to their Silver Age heyday, but now more so now than then. Damn shame because under the right creative people, like Giffen, they’re really good entertainment.
I definitely liked Copper, but it seems like unless it’s not the original core group, newer additions tend to not stick.
Totally agree- more JLI style stories from those three are always welcome. Metal Men is such a weird throw-away kind of concept that backups and guest starring are probably best for them. Plus, I feel like a lot of the original stories ended up with them destroyed and Doc putting them back together by the next issue.
@H: Same. The classic formula worked for a reason.
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