From Morrison's Mind: Metal Men by Duncan Rouleau

One of my, somewhat, hot takes is that 52 weekly is overrated and there are a number of flaws with it. And my hot take as a Morrison's fan is that whole space adventure story is real bad. On the other hand I think that Oolong island story arc is fantastic. So I was very intrigued when Morrison wrote a proposal for Metal Men that then was used as a basis for Rouleau's miniseries. 

Looking at the covers of the issues we can notice that not only 52 weekly is mentioned as a basis for this story, but Superman/Batman ongoing as well. Whats up with that?

Well, before Rouleau's could bring back a new version of Metal Men to DC comics... they actually returned in the pages of Superman/Batman #34-36 written by Verheiden. It also introduced two new characters to the cast. Magnus' assistant Helen and a new female Metal Men - Copper. Unfortunately this story arc is rather bad and really not worth tracking down. Fortunately Rouleau pretty much ignores it entirely. New characters are used, but they are written and drawn differently than here so you don't have to be familiar with these initial versions.

But is Rouleau more faithful to the 52 weekly? I wouldn't say so. Magnus feels different and his relationship with T.O. Morrow is different. It also doesn't feel like a natural sequel to 52 (or S/M). I wonder what was in Morrison's proposal that Rouleau actually used? My first guess would be focus on Magnus just like in 52 weekly. Metal Men are there, but they are more of a supporting characters than leads. I'd also make a guess that Helen and Copper were there, otherwise it is not clear why these characters would be reused when everything from their introduction is ignored. Another guess would be that focus on chemical reactions instead of Metal Men simply shape-shifting into various forms also came from Morrison. I'm real bad at chemistry so I have no idea if any of it was actually legit, but who really cares about that at this point, it was fun and unique.

There is one surprising reference to older story - Joe Kelly's JLA run! It is nothing major, but if you have read it then you are likely to appreciate Rouleau's Metal Men a bit more. It is not surprising, after all they work (or used to work) at the same company.

But ignoring all that, how is the actual book? As is probably obvious by now Rouleau is not trying to mimic anyone here with his writing or art. It is all him and thankfully he is really good at drawing and not a bad writer. Even today it stands out as an unique experience with a strong vision and you should totally get it. 

But there is one negative thing, at least to me. I'm not really a fan of story jumping from one time period to another, I think that usually it just adds fake depth. You have to pay more attention, but there is actually nothing extra there when compared to a straightforward story. Another issue is that writer sometimes gets lost in his own time jumps and mistakes happen.

I do feel like there is one mistake made with time jumps here, but on the other hand it wasn't a major thing so it never bothered me enough to try and pinpoint it. Rouleau delivered an excellent book and there is no point in trying to pick it apart.

So what happened next? Next we got Wednesday Comics and one of the strips was Metal Men written by DiDio and drawn by Garcia-Lopez. It obviously looks great, but how is the writing? I usually find DiDio's writing above average and this was no exception, it is fun little story. Thou Wednesday Comics was more of a standalone project so this story doesn't really build up from what Rouleau or Morrison did. But other than that Wednesday Comics is worth picking up because it has few more cool stories besides Metal Men.

Last appearances of Metal Men before Flashpoint were in the backups of Giffen's Doom Patrol. Creative team? Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire so you know what to expect. I was never a big fan of JLI (or what it eventually turned into if we want to be more precise) so their style of comedy was never really my thing. Was this an exception? No, I thought it was pretty bad and I don't understand who finds it funny that various Metal Men members keep forgetting who Copper is. Not as bad as S/M issues, but not good either.

Rouleau's story ended with a cliffhanger and sadly it wasn't picked up by anyone, eventually Flashpoint washed everything away and Metal Men were rebooted during New 52. But thats a story for another time.