Spoiler Saturday--When Batman Became Axe Cop?!?

OK, this is going to spoil Dark Knights: Metal #1 a bit, so maybe come back later if you haven't read it yet.

Spoilers commence after the 5 pictures of metal...

Still here?

As you know, I haven't exactly been thrilled with DC's use of Batman the past few years.

Yes, there's room for many possible interpretations of the character. Yes, there's a place for Justice League Batman and International Man Of Mystery Batman and what have you.

But lately, that's all we get, as street-level crime-fighting has been as non-existent in the Bat-titles as thought balloons. It seems each and every Batman story has to involve a city-level extinction event now (or larger!), as bank robberies and organized crime are too low-rent for everyone's favoritest hero. Sad fact: if today's Batman were around in Bruce Wayne's youth, his parents still would have died, because this Batman has no time for mere muggers. No, it's so much cooler and true to the concept that he's killing Darkseid or beating the crap out of Superman or knocking out Solomon Grundy with one punch.

It's almost as if his current adventures are being dreamed up by children, in ever-escalating flights of imagination to make Batman progressively bigger and tougher and badd-asser in a upwards spiral of silliness.

Maybe I'm overthinking this? Sure.

But then again, there's this week's Dark Knights: Metal #1, which reveals the ultimate plot for the latest DC crossover:

Yes, Batman is now the most important being in the multiverse. 

Or, as a 6-year old might describe the plot:

There's this other multiverse, but it's worse because it's the DARK multiverse, and Batman is so cool and tough that he became every hero in this DARK multiverse because he's much better than other heroes but somehow OUR Batman is so badass that he never turned evil, oh, and somehow every special piece of metal that ever existed in the DC Universe is connected and is really from the DARK multiverse and that's what every hero got their powers from and now all those EVIL Bat-heroes are coming to our multiverse to kill everybody and we're going to have an event-within-the-event called "Bats Out Of Hell" because that's so awesome and this event is going to be so cool and at the end every one of our heroes will be beaten but OUR Batman is so super-special and awesome that he'll beat the evil ALL BY HIMSELF!!!!

Yes, that's an entirely accurate description of Dark Nights: Metal (except for the last bit, which is just guesswork on my part, but Scott Snyder is writing it, so you know that's how it will end). And yeah. in it's own demented, throw-in-everything-including-the-kitchen-sink way, it'll be fun.

But it's still not my Batman...and somewhere in Gotham, a kid just got killed by an out-of-control getaway car, because Bruce was too busy being the most important person in the multiverse to notice.