Dark Nights: Metal Reading Order
| Prelude | Main Event | Tie-In | Tie-in |
| Individual Issues | |||
| Dark Days: The Forge #1 | |||
| Dark Days: The Casting #1 | |||
| Dark Nights: Metal #1 | |||
| Dark Nights: Metal #2 | |||
| Teen Titans #12 | The Red Death #1 | ||
| Nightwing #29 | The Murder Machine #1 | ||
| Suicide Squad #26 | The Dawnbreaker #1 | ||
| Green Arrow #32 | The Drowned #1 | ||
| The Merciless #1 | |||
| Dark Nights: Metal #3 | Batman Lost #1 * | ||
| The Flash #33 | The Devastator #1 | ||
| Justice League #32 | The Batman Who Laughs #1 | ||
| HJatGLC #32 | |||
| Justice League #33 | |||
| Dark Nights: Metal #4 | Hawkman Found #1 * | ||
| Dark Nights: Metal #5 | |||
| Dark Knights Rising: The Wild Hunt #1 | |||
| Dark Nights: Metal #6 | |||
| Collection | |||
| Dark Days: The Road to Metal (Review) | Dark Nights: Metal (Review) | Dark Nights: Metal: The Resistance (Review) | Dark Nights: Metal: Dark Knights Rising (Review) |
*We suggest reading the "Main Event" issue first.
HJatGLC = Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps
Overview
Dark Nights: Metal (Review) is a huge event that brings in elements from the entire history of the DC Universe. It details a fight between the universe's heroes and the villains of the Dark Multiverse, led by Barbatos. The entire event is told through two prelude issues, eighteen tie-in issues, and six core event issues.
Before Reading
Most of the buildup for this event can be found in small places throughout Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's run on the Batman comic series. The moments from this series that most significantly contribute to Dark Nights: Metal (Review) are the introduction of the Court of Owls, in The Court of Owls (Review) and The City of Owls (Review); Batman's fight with the Joker, in Endgame (Review); and Batman's return to crimefighting, in Bloom (Review). The prelude issues also help give some good context for the event as a whole. However, they are not completely necessary to understand the story. Besides this, the event also makes a number of references to comics throughout the entire history of DC Comics. For a detailed list of these references see the "Continuity" section in our review of the main event.
After Reading
Dark Nights: Metal (Review) shakes up the entire DC Universe and is directly responsible for a number of storylines. The most immediate follow up to this event is Justice League: No Justice (Review), which shows how the Justice League deals with the aftermath of the Dark Multiverse's invasion. The fallout from this event also led to the creation of a number of new comic book series. These series fall into one of two separate imprints.
- The "Sandman Universe" comics include:
- House of Whispers
- The Books of Magic
- The Dreaming
- Lucifer
- The "New Age of Heroes" comics include: