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Showing posts with label Writer: Duncan Rouleau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writer: Duncan Rouleau. Show all posts

Monday 19 September 2011

Metal Men


Writer and Artist: Duncan Rouleau
Story based on ideas by: Grant Morrison
Colors: Moose Baumann and Pete Pantazis
Letterer: Pat Brosseau
Publisher: DC Comics

What’s it about?
This trade paperback collects the eight issues of the 2007-08 Metal Men mini-series.

The Metal Men are a rather obscure team of DC Comics characters. They were originally conceived as a super team of intelligent robots fighting other robotic menaces under the guidance of their creator Doctor Will Magnus during the Silver Age of comics.
They sort of fell under the radar over the years, that is until after the big Crisis when DC decided to revamp  various old concepts. By giving several of its proprieties a test run to see which characters could support a book in the then-modern market. (amongst others, The Martian Manhunter, Angel & The Ape or even Green Arrow were given a mini-series with only a handful of them ending up with a regular on-going series)
The Metal Men were then reimagined as fellow scientist (and friends) of Doc. Magnus turned into robots in a freak accident. But the concept sort of felt odd, turning these robots into cheap knock-offs of the Fantastic Four or the Doom Patrol.

After that, they weren't much seen anymore for a decade, besides little apperances here and there in other DC books or events.

That is were writer Grant Morrison comes in.
During DC's big yearly story arc 52, narrating a missing year from the perspective of "B and C-lister" type of characters, Morrison decided to give a sub-plot to DC's evil scientists on the imaginary island of Oolong Island. A story in which the Metal Men creator Magnus was abducted by the evil Chang Tzu and forced to work on some top secret projects.
After that, Morrison wanted to write a mini-series which would have seen the return of the Metal Men, based upong Magnus' experience from 52 and building up on his own development in that story.

Finally, Morrison stepping out for other projects (his work on Batman) DC gave the greenlight for this idea and it was creator Duncan Rouleau who took creative control as both writer and artist for this Metal Men book.

"Metal Men" is both a continuation of Will Magnus as seen in 52 and a reimagining of these characters' origin story.