Dark Nights: Metal: Dark Knights Rising (2018 comic) = Finished

Dark Nights: Metal is a big ol' event about evil versions of Batman emerging from damned universes in the dark multiverse to (stay with me) drag the main DC Universe Earth in the light multiverse (STAY WITH ME YOU'RE ALMOST THROUGH THIS) into an eternal dark.

The Dark Knights Rising collection details the origin story of each of these Batmen. Most of them tended to be fairly rote. Batman finally took someone's life and went down a slippery slope, or claimed revenge, or stole someone's powers to solve a problem...Reading them all in a row showed that quite familiar patterns were at work, here. 

However, one story in particular showed me how to truly nail making a superhero go bad--how to make it stick.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

The lead among this small army of twisted Batpeople is The Batman Who Laughs--an obvious reference to the Joker.

In this universe, Joker pulled Batman into an alley and bound him to the point of bleeding. Ropes cutting into his mouth, Batman is forced to watch as Joker leads one family after another into the alley, shoots both parents in the head, and leaves their child standing--an endless recreation of Bruce Wayne's inciting incident, played out until he finally breaks. And break he does.

Batman tears through the bindings out of sheer rage, beats Joker to a pulp (panel after inset panel is dedicated to the spectacle of individual teeth flying out of his mouth), and finally snaps Joker's neck.

After the fact, we see Batman chatting to Superman about what to do with the surviving, neurotoxin afflicted children with rictus grins. He reassures Superman that he won't go down the slippery slope. Superman goes on to tell Batman that he's personally assisting with the children's recovery effort, because they need to be with someone they can't hurt. One child attempted to rip out a nurse's throat--

and Batman laughs at the story.

He apologizes, but he laughed.

A variety of horrors are described in the next pages. From the murder of the Batfamily after the root cause for Batman's shift is revealed, to the utter destruction of the Justice League. It's all well-written and chillingly rendered, but this is the turning point for me. This is the most quiet, terrifying scene in the book.

So many superhero subversions or reversals focus on the after. AFTER Superman goes bad, what does Batman become? AFTER Sylvester Kyle dies at the hand of a metahuman, what is Bryce Wayne driven to do? The execution of these stories can result in classics, but the fundamental framing of the question is almost always the same. It's the problem facing the rest of the collection. They focus on the blood and death that can be wreaked...but you can only describe awful fallout in so many ways before you're treading ancient ground. These scenes aren't the core of what makes a superhero gone dark story effective.

The core, is the oh-so-neglected turning point.

The story is the compromise.

It's the terror inspired by capturing that single moment you look at someone you know--even love--and realize that something is deeply wrong.
Then the moment passes, and everything is fine.

But it's not...is it?