Metal Men, by Duncan Rouleau

The first time I read about the new Metal Men series I was astonished. I enjoyed these characters since I read the old run by Walter Simonson back in the first series. With this new series, DC added an archive edition and a showcase book, that was what I really wanted in the first time.

But when this compilation came out as a hardcover, something makes me notice that this was no common comic book. And the “something special” was Duncan Rouleau.

Duncan Rouleau could be easily traced: he is the co-creator of the Ben 10 series. If you search for this series in Google you will find over 365.000.000 pages dedicated to it. Wow!

To tell you the truth, I am not watching new cartoons today, so I missed this series. Rouleau created a great product and many ten year old kids mirror in his hero.

But I must say that I read the Metal Men Hardcover with out any neither prejudice nor admiration. And I simply enjoyed and love it. It is a difficult story of time travel and its modulating results. David Magnus, big brother of our own Dr. Magnus, creator of the Metal Men is the pseudo-villain of the story.

Stepping accidentally into a time machine by Doctor Morrow (from T.O. Morrow, that’s the way the old wonderful series was); David Magnus found that the Metal Men could be the end of all Humanity. And he wants to stop his little brother.

To accomplish that, he steals the ancient artifact that was in fact the “responsometer”, the device that lets the Metal Men behave like the metals they represents and as a result, become more human as their feelings and intelligence develops.
In doing that, David gains a bunch of behemoth enemies that follows him through out the changes in the time line.

One of the greatest foes that they must fight are this Death Metal Men, a twisted version of the main characters but as radioactive counterparts. I think that this could be a homage of this kind of music. If it is so, I simply love it.

And the coolest of the cool are this retro version of the Metal Men. The time line mixes and the different Metal Men fight their enemies to a glorious victory.

The style this creator showcases could be considered as amerimanga, but this is a mistake. His drawings are very American and remains me of the style Chris Bachalo developed in his Steampunk series. Very attractive and quite Baroque. I must say that I simply enjoyed this magazine and I hope that DC would bring us the opportunity of reading this cool character for a long run.

Well, there is no video of the Metal Men but here is the embed of the theme song of Ben 10.





[via Eddiexav272]