Metal Men #3

The Metal Men are characters that have a lot of charm but make very little sense. It’s difficult to rationalize shapeshifting robots who behave like humans (and yes, I’m aware of the incongruity of rationalizing comic book characters). They’re just hard to explain, and it’s very awkward to have Will Magnus keep sending sentient beings to their “deaths” over and over (read the Metal Men Showcase to see what I mean). A short-lived reboot a few years ago recast the Metal Men in the mold of the Vision: synthetic beings that had the personalities of dead humans imprinted on them. Apparently that didn’t take (possibly due to that problem of Magnus letting them be repeatedly slaughtered), so we’re back to square one.

Duncan Rouleau, working from ideas tossed out by Grant Morrison, is re-telling the origin of the Metal Men from Will Magnus’ point of view. The storyline switches from the past to the present, where a robot consortium (including some VERY clever choices as members) function as an underground, and Magnus’ former mentor, T.O. Morrow, is busy hatching another plot.

That sounds like a lot going on, but nonetheless the story reads oddly slowly. I suspect it’s because we’re three issues in and we haven’t actually seen the Metal Men yet. In fact, we’ve seen far more villains than heroes so far. Also, Will’s romantic misadventures as an up-and-coming robotics genius are, sadly, not that captivating. Breaking it up into an 8-issue miniseries doesn’t help the pacing. Bottom line: this would read better as a graphic novel. I’m not sure what the point of releasing it in monthly installments is, because we’re all pretty much trained to wait for the trade on miniseries.