Ranking DC's Tales of the Dark Multiverse

In the previous entry I talked about the second volume of DC's Tales of the Dark Multiverse.  Then I got thinking:  how would I rank the 10 stories from the two volumes?  So what the hell, I'm ranking them.

1.  Death of Superman:  I liked this take on the classic 90s story.  The gist was that Lois Lane is embittered by Superman's death and uses the power of the Eradicator to try to finish Superman's work.  Inevitably she gets more and more brutal in her tactics.  Everything backfires when the real Superman returns and is killed forever.  My only problem was it ended without any real resolution.  I would have liked a whole graphic novel to fully explore it.

2.  Flashpoint:  I also liked this take on the 2011-ish event.  The gist is that Barry Allen tries to change time, fucks things up, dies, and Reverse Flash fucks things up even more.  Like the Death of Superman one, my main complaint was it was too short.  It's another where a longer story could have made it feel more complete.

3.  Blackest Night:  This was not too bad of a spinoff though one of those that was maybe a little contrived.  Sinestro tried to use the power of the White Lantern to save the universe, but failed and so most everyone in the universe are Black Lanterns (aka zombies).  With Dove, Lobo, and Mr. Miracle he tries one final Hail Mary to save the universe, but things go awry and a new universe is born based on Lobo, which is even worse than basing a whole universe on Deadpool.  Sinestro is left to try to find a way to escape the hell of his own making.  So kind of a fitting comeuppance, though it sucks it took zombifying most of the universe.

4. War of the Gods:  This one I didn't like as much but mostly because it's not an event I'm really familiar with.  It was from 1991 and I don't think all that well remembered except among comic nerds.  The gist is Wonder Woman is possessed by the witch Hectate, who kills a bunch of heroes until magic users bind her deep underground.  This had probably the closest to a happy ending of many of these stories as at least many heroes survived and even Wonder Woman survives--mostly.  If I were more familiar with the event, I might have liked it more.  (Fun Fact:  the Hectate thing is brought back in The Witching Hour featuring Wonder Woman and the Justice League Dark.)

5.  Infinite Crisis:  This is another that wasn't too bad but it's something kind of obscure.  It's really stems from the event before Infinite Crisis called Identity Crisis.  Basically Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) gets involved with a group called Checkmate and a system called OMAC/Brother Eye that was designed by Bruce Wayne to spy on the world.  Ted winds up taking over the system and while he has good intentions, things spin out of control until he's basically turned all the superheroes of the world into drones.  I was somewhat familiar with this event but still it's probably not something people would really be familiar with.

6.  Crisis on Infinite Earths:  This really comes from Last Days of the Justice Society, which came after the Crisis.  Basically the JSA are left as the main heroes on Earth and have to fight the evil Norse flame monster Surtur.  But when they fail, Green Lantern (Alan Scott) makes a deal to lead Surtur to more planets so long as he never returns to Earth.  Kind of a depressing story, but what do you expect?  Another where I don't think a lot of people would really be too familiar with it, though Surtur would probably be familiar from Thor Ragnarok.

7:  The Judas Contract:  This is another depressing story.  Tara, who betrays the Teen Titans in the Judas Contract, instead takes some kind of steroid that amps her Earth-controlling powers.  She ends up killing Superman and most other heroes and enslaving what's left of humanity as Gaia.  Another story where someone who has good intentions winds up going wrong and turning evil.  The scenario felt really contrived; if they had to do a Judas Contract one, why not just postulate what might happen if Deathstroke had actually killed all the Teen Titans?

8.  Hush:  This was OK but it's not really that great.  Loosely based on the Hush story of Batman comics, but there seemed like a lot of unnecessary shit and it didn't really tie into the original story that much or that well.  

9.  Knightfall:  The first story, I was really interested to read it--and then disappointed.  The concept should have been great:  what if Azrael had defeated Bruce Wayne and retained the Batman cowl?  And maybe if it had been written by Dennis O'Neil or one of the writers from the 90s it could have been good.  Instead, Scott Snyder had no interest in Azrael and contrives to keep Bruce Wayne alive so he can retake the mantle--only as a worse version of Batman.  I felt cheated.

10:  Metal:  Making a dumb, contrived event even more dumb and contrived!  An example of dumb, contrived storytelling:  the evil Jokerized 'Batman Who Laughs' uses the hand of Zatanna's corpse to cast spells to stop the good guys.  Some comic book nerd might disagree, but I'm pretty sure that's not how magic works; I don't think you can use a dead magician's hand like a magic wand.  Mostly I think it was just a cheap device made to add some difficulty to the fight.  So, really, shit like that is why I didn't like this or the event that spawned it in general.

There you go, that's my list.  If you read the stories, then you can make your own list.