Dark Days: The Forge #1 set the stage for this summer's event comic Dark Nights: metal in a pretty huge way.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Dark Days: The Forge #1!
The Forge lays the groundwork for the big mystery driving the events of Metal, reintroducing the Carter Hall version of Hawkman and hinting that Thanagarian Nth Metal has ties to something outside the scope of the traditional DC Universe. That's a mystery Batman has already spent years trying to unravel, especially following his encounters with other mysterious, super-powered metals like Electrum in the "Court of Owls" storyline and Dionesium in "Endgame."
That mystery is rapidly expanding to include the entire Justice League. This issue reveals that Batman has been working with Mister Terrific to further his investigation, that Plastic Man is somehow also connected to the Nth Metal mystery, and that Batman has been hiding an ultra-powerful computer inside the Fortress of Solitude, one apparently tied to the New Gods.
But the biggest surprise of all in this issue came as Green Lantern and Duke Thomas explored a previously unknown corner of the Batcave. Not only does this area house the various clues Batman has gathered in his investigation, it's also home to the most unlikely prisoner of all - the Joker.
We were able to talk with writers Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV about this big twist and its implications for the larger Metal storyline. Snyder told us, "I the DC Universe right now there's a big story coming from Geoff Johns with the three Jokers from back in Rebirth. Joker has sort of been deliberately off-table for the last year, but when it came to this story I approached Geoff and talked to him about it. The idea, really, for us is that we want Batman to suddenly realize the scope of the thing he's following. Not only is he the detective following the clues, but his whole story might just be one more piece in a mystery that's bigger than all of it. Meaning, he might have been taken advantage of long ago. The entire history of his time as Batman might be another clue as to what's coming. All of that stuff where the detective realizes he's just part of the mystery he's been following."
Snyder continued, "The only character who's been with him that entire time, apart from Jim Gordon, is Joker. He's been the adversary in my run with Greg [Capullo], and he was in pretty much every arc as a constant sort of recourse for Batman, telling him in different ways what he thought Batman was doing right, what he was doing wrong and also discovering a lot of things with Batman along the way. It just made sense to be the character here at the end, who'd be locked away with both answers and more questions than anyone would have asked."
Tynion said that readers can look back to various key storylines from the New 52 to see the seeds of Metal. "I'd say that 'Endgame' in particular is a good place that, if fans are looking for even more added depth to this story, go back and check out 'Endgame.' Especially the stuff that we hint at in The Forge, and you'll see more of it in The Casting. When Joker discovered Dionesium, he started down a path of discovery. That's the reason Batman has him locked up down there, because the Joker knows things. He might not be telling the truth about any of this, but he knows something, and Batman is trying to find out what. It's all a part of this greater tapestry. And for people who are less familiar, we'll be laying all of that out in The Casting, as well. I love the things where you can look back through an entire run and be like, "Oh! That's the antecedent to this seed." There are a lot of Easter eggs to look back and find once the full picture is drawn here.
Snyder elaborated, saying, "There are so many Easter eggs, it's crazy. James and I had a lot of fun late at night going through all of that stuff. Even if you think about metals that have appeared in our run, there's Electrum in 'Court of Owls,' Dionesium in 'Endgame,' Batmanium in 'Superheavy.' There's the Blackhawks in All-Star Batman. All of that has been seeded. In Batman #50, the last issue I did with Greg, there's a ton of clues and terms and things that come back in our story. Things that were set up in the owl scene and all kinds of stuff. That probably be too much of a Rosetta Stone for everybody, but I would just say it's meant to be one of those things that's entirely built on our run, on Tom's run, on existing Batman stories. It's going to touch on stuff that other Batman writers did before me that'll surprise you - big DC events like Infinite Crisis. It's sort of a love letter to Batman and the DCU in a large way. Again, if you go back and look, it'll be more rewarding. But you can just pick it up cold and you'll be okay, as well."
If you haven't already, be sure to check out our main, spoiler-free interview with Snyder and Tynion about Dark Days: the Forge #1 and how this issue lays the groundwork for many big changes in the DCU.
Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
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