Dark Nights: Death Metal

Following the final battle between Batman and The Batman Who Laughs, the Source Wall is shattered,[3] causing a chain of events that frees Perpetua from her cosmic prison.[4] Despite Apex Lex capturing the Batman Who Laughs, the latter reveals that the future Lex saw was a hoax made by Perpetua in order to manipulate him. After this revelation, Perpetua strips Lex from his powers and returns him to Earth.[5]

Meanwhile, the Justice League survived their battle with Perpetua, after they were saved by the Quintessence, who reveal they were protecting something very important, and then sent the League to an unknown location in order to search it.[6]

The goddess Perpetua has taken over Prime Earth, and is destroying most all realities only eight left, so she can restart everything in her image. Her lieutenant, the Batman Who Laughs, enforces her whims across Earth, aided by an army of evil Batmen from the Dark Multiverse. All resistance has been crushed, and even Earth’s heroes have been press-ganged into servitude. But when a mysterious prisoner is to be banished to Tartarus Pits of Hell (formerly Themyscira), he awakens memories in the Warden; Wonder Woman. When a meeting with the Batman Who Laughs’ Justice League (comprising Harley Quinn, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Mister Miracle; each paired with a respective Dark Knight of the Dark Multiverse) is interrupted by the mainstream Batman, Wonder Woman argues with her former teammate; saying that it’s not enough to just win small “street battles” like Bruce is, and they need to fix everything, not what’s left. Meanwhile, out in space, the bounty hunter Lobo is hired to uncover something. Back in Tartarus Pits, Diana meets up with the prisoner, revealed to be an exhausted Wally West. He retells Diana the story of Perpetua, how she has manipulated many of the previous Crises from behind the scenes, and how she survived the previous battle with the Justice League through the Batman Who Laughs. When the Amazon decides the best cause of action is to make the first Anti-Crisis, she’s confronted by the Batman Who Laughs, whom she proceeds to gut with an invisible Chainsaw of Truth. Though dead, the Dark Knights set to work to unleash the Batman Who Laughs’ true plan; preparing the body of the final Bruce Wayne. In an underground bunker, Batman enlists the help of a severed Sgt. Rock.[7]

Dark Nights: Death Metal is the sequel to 2017's Dark Nights: Metal and concludes Scott Snyder's run in DC Comics; he stated "Everything is coming back, we want to pay it forward. The Omega Titans, Barbatos, the Forge, it’s all coming back. Everything you read, our goal is to reward. All of it culminates in like a year in like a Metal event."[15]

On April 2020 during an interview on DC Daily, Snyder assured that the purpose of Death Metal is to unify every storyline from mainline DC Universe comic books, including the standalone stories.[16][1]

Following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic over comic book industry, the series was later postponed from May 13 to June 16, 2020.[2]

• "Warship My Wreck" by Marilyn Manson