Warning: contains spoilers for Dark Nights: Death Metal The Multiverse Who Laughs #1!
In the latest tie-in anthology issue to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Dark Nights: Death Metal event, the Batman Who Laughs has become the Darkest Knight, and he’s already created a plethora of new, dark worlds of his own design, forging an entire Dark Multiverse. This Dark Multiverse features all kinds of twisted and dark takes on the DC Universe stories and heroes fans know and love. In one of the short stories featured in this new tie-in, Wonder Woman goes down her own dark path, brutally killing Zeus and the entire Greek pantheon of gods.
The short story “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark Multiverse” is the first story in the Multiverse Who Laughs tie-in issue, coming from writers Scott Snyder, Joshua Williamson, James Tynion IV, with art by Juan Gedeon. The story sees the Batman Who Laughs’ second in command, known as the Robin King, sitting back in an armchair to tell readers and his army of Groblins the stories from the new worlds their dark lord has created. Many of his stories are subversions of the standard origins and stories of DC heroes, opting instead for much darker and more sinister versions of the characters, including Princess Diana of Themyscira, otherwise known as Wonder Woman.
In the short story, the Robin King tells the tale of Wonder Woman, and how she chose war instead of peace on one of the Darkest Knight’s worlds. On this particular Earth, she did not bring peace to the world of men, but brought war to the the gods, savagely killing her own father Zeus in a deadly and gruesome manner in The Multiverse Who Laughs.
Not only did Wonder Woman pop her father Zeus’ head off with her Lasso of Truth; she also went after all the other gods too. According to the Robin King, she supposedly killed them all, and also took all of their powers. This morbidly tracks, seeing as though the art from Gedeon features Wonder Wonder glowing blue and crackling with powerful lightning, indicating that she took Zeus’ powers after killing him – it turns out that on this world, Diana was closer to Kratos from God of War than her usual depiction as an ambassador of peace. Of course, the whole point is to undermine what makes Diana a hero, but it’s interesting that this version is also far more powerful, underlining the dangerous new rules of the Dark Multiverse: that hope and altruism are antithetical to success.
Wonder Woman’s dark journey isn’t the only tale the Robin King has to tell. He also shares plenty of other dark and twisted stories from across the Dark Multiverse, prefacing them all by saying that these are stories are ultimately more real than the originals, as those are filled with idealism and dreams. According to the Robin King, his stories are more real, seeing as though they are full of darkness and lacking in any kind of hope, just like real life supposedly is. However, the heroes (and even villains) of the primary Earth are actively working to prove this warped and corrupt line of thinking wrong, working in unison to defeat the Darkest Knight and his forces once and for all, and hoping to bring back hope itself into the DC Multiverse and create a brighter future after Dark Nights: Death Metal that would rival any story the Robin King could possibly tell to taint their true stories.
