Metal Men #7 Review

When Metal Animals Attack!

Written By: Dan Didio, Shane Davis

Art By: Shane Davis, Michelle Delecki, Jason Wright, Travis Lanham

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: June 16, 2020

It's time to get back to the Metal Men....... or...... the Metal Mammals or the Metal Menagerie, whatever they want to be called going forward, it's time to dive into an issue, where we see what Will Magnus does once his team of Metal heroes abandons him now that they've become self-aware...... he builds a new team.  I've been really enjoying this series so far, let's see if that continues now that we've got a new team of heroes fighting the good fight and now that our beloved Metal Men have gone off on their own to find themselves.  Let's jump into this issue and check it out.

Like I said in my opener, we're dealing with the Metal Mammals this issue as they take on the classic Metal Men baddy, Z-1 and his Missile Men and right off the bat I'll tell you that I love the design of this group of metal animals, but it does feel weird that they do appear to be metal, but are supposed to be gasses.  Our team consists of Neon the tiger, Oxygen the wolf, Xenon the gorilla, Helium the falcon (or some kind of bird), Fluorine the cobra and Nitrogen the cap-wearing, cigar-smoking bear.  Yeah, I don't quite understand the gasses aspect, but these metal animals are actually pretty fun and to Dr. Magnus' dismay end up bickering just as much as the Metal Men, if not more.  

The big problem is....... we're not dealing with the Nth Metal Man.  this new character is the big problem that we're facing in this twelve-issue maxie, but it seems like he's rarely the focus and in this issue, we find out that Platinum and he have run off and have somehow cloaked themselves from anyone who might want to find them and it just feels weird that a Metal Man from the Dark Multiverse would have been given so much free reign to just mess up the unhinged Doc Magnus' life.  Instead, of getting to the bottom of who or what he is, Will simply moves on and creates a new team of heroes....... This has been the trend through this entire series, where Magnus doesn't want to face his mistakes and makes sense for how the character's been portrayed, but it still feels weird.  You do get the Metal Men for a bit here though as they contemplate what their life will be moving forward, while Dan Didio makes a joke about himself, which is pretty funny.  I don't know if our Metal Menagerie or Metal Mammals are going to be up to the task though of that looming threat in the background that goes by the name of Chemo.

All in all, Shane Davis rocks the hell out of the art in this issue as he always does, but the biggest problem I have with this book is the lack of focus.  This could have been a really tight story, but some aspects of what we're dealing with feel like it's simply padding to fill out the twelve issues, but even with that, this is still a lot of fun and this book continues to be one of my favorites that DC Comics is putting out right now.  There's a lot of mysteries going on right now and I hope that they're all answered by the end because even though we want to showcase some of the Metal Men's villains like the Devil Ray previously, Chemo and now the Missile Men, which is a great way to get people familiarized with the Metal Men if they are new fans, I don't want the greater story left behind in doing so.  

Bits and Pieces:

While I know that we all wanted to see what was going to happen with the Nth Metal Man and Platinum after last issue (at least I did), we move away from that here to showcase Dr. Magnus' new team of heroes now that he's trying to move on after his previous team abandoned him.  Yeah, it's not the direction I was hoping we were going to go, but this issue was still a lot of fun and the new characters were a hoot.  The art is amazing as always and I can't help but keep loving this series.  

7.8/10