Writer: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson and Grant Morrison

Artist: Howard Porter, Jorge Jiménez and Doug Mahnke with Jamie Mendoza

Colorist: Hi-Fi, Alejandro Sanchez and Wil Quintana

Publisher: DC Comics



Dark Knights Rising: The Wild Hunt was one of my most anticipated issues of Metal. Partially because of the fact that I have been enjoying Metal so much and because Grant Morrison, who is my favorite comic creator joined the team. The creative team for this book overall is all-star in both the writing and art department, and this is highlighted especially in this issue.



I really enjoyed this issue since it did use a lot of previous DC Continuity from books like 52, Final Crisis, Multiversity and much more. It is continuity heavy in a similar way to how Batman: Lost was and I feel that this is really where the creative team of Snyder, Williamson and Tynion shines. With this issue, it does reference a lot more of Morrison’s previous works, so you can clearly also see not only his influence but the way in which he has a love for continuity as well.



Snyder and co. decide to use the first few pages of this issue to re-cap the origin of Detective Chimp. This is a weird idea at first but does pay off throughout the issue, up to the very end. They use the Days of Vengeance origin as opposed to his original Silver Age origin, but they do change elements of the second origin, as they do try to make Fred Thorpe a more sympathetic character. Surprisingly we also get the appearance of Rex the Wonder Dog.



Throughout issues 3 and 4 of Metal we have really been focusing on the Justice League. This has been all the members except Barry and Cyborg, and in this issue, we do get to see what they are up to. They are trying to contact the House of Heroes in the Ultima Thule. The House of Heroes are a Justice League team that was made of various superheroes, and both this and the Ultima Thule are introduced in Morrison’s Multiversity and Final Crisis respectively.



Since the start of Metal, Snyder and other various creative teams have really been trying to let the Dark Knights feel like their own characters, as opposed to just a threat the heroes have to face. I felt that the most in this issue, as we do get the interesting concept of discourse between the Dark Knights. This does highlight on each of their tragic origins, because at the core the majority of them really want to be heroes. This makes them feel a lot more like characters.



There are a lot of little references in the book that are really cool. One of my favorite references is the reference of Anti-Music as we have seen in Final Crisis, that music has been used to defeat evil in the past. The art in this issue from Porter, and Jimenez was really good. Doug Mahnke does the majority of the art and it looks really good, however there are 1 or 2 pages where there is less detail and the art suffers for this.



This is honestly on of my favorite issue of the entire series. Snyder and co. do manage to keep up the excitement for Metal with this issue, which is needed since issue 6 does feel so far away. As far as we know issue 6 is the last issue and there is no omega issue or epilogue issue, and I hope that Snyder and Capullo haven’t stretch themselves too thin. One hope coming out of this series is that we do get to see a lot of these characters that have been introduced back into the DC Universe, to actually play a part in the wider DC Universe and not be forgotten.



