Metal Militia

Metal Men #2

This one is probably going to confuse the heck out of you. It jumps around through four different timelines — one in which the Metal Men exist and are battling, of all things, a giant inflatable robot filled with poisonous gas; one in which Dr. Will Magnus hasn’t yet invented the Metal Men; one in which the Metal Men have been destroyed (no big whup — in the old comics, they got destroyed at the end of every issue), and Dr. Magnus is trying to recover their high-tech responsometers so he can rebuild them; and one with an evil time-traveling Dr. Magnus who wants to prevent the Metal Men from ever being built in the first place. It’s really very confusing — I’ve read the craziest time-travel comics around, and I still needed a map and pushpins to keep track of what was going on.

Where the story really shines, however, is in the characters. Sure, the Metal Men’s personalities are great, but Duncan Rouleau throws in a ton of great villain robots, including the Robot Renegades, which includes a Manhunter robot, L-Ron (who’s normally a good guy), Body-X, and Warbox, a bunch of guys who I’m assuming are going to be called the Alchemy Men, and the stars of this issue, even though they only appear on one page, the Death Metal Men.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, it’s confusing. But the Death Metal Men? That alone makes everything peachy-keen.