For a sequel to the needless crossover Dark Nights: Metal, writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo are borrowing elements from horror thrillers like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th, with Wonder Woman brandishing one of the most outrageous, exaggerated weapons ever seen in her arsenal, as IGN’s comics section announced:

Dark Nights: Metal creators Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are gearing up for a new Justice League adventure, and DC is teasing that story with an image of Wonder Woman wielding the Chainsaw of Truth.

This new teaser image appears in Justice League #39, the final chapter of Snyder’s run on the series. It shows an armored, battle-scarred Diana wielding what appears to be a chainsaw forged of Nth Metal and powered by her own Lasso of Truth.

So not only is she armed with a weapon that would be funny if it weren’t for how grisly it actually is, they’re also basing its structure on the material used by Hawkman for his anti-gravity belts. They’ve been taking WW awfully far in the past 15 years or so, to make her borderline deadly for the sake of “seriousness”, but only succeed in reaching unintentionally comedic heights.

As Snyder alluded, this new project is the culmination of several years of storytelling. Metal set the stage for the current volume of Justice League, which pits the League against Lex Luthor’s Legion of Doom. Luthor is now a servant of a dark goddess called Perpetua, with the goal of proving that Doom is a stronger force than Justice and that humanity’s selfish, fearful nature will ultimately win out. That conflict is also at the heart of DC’s Year of the Villain event, as the evolved “Apex Lex” approaches various villains with offers of greater power.

Lex usually isn’t the kind of villain who plays second fiddle to another, and the overall plot is just a rehash of 1996’s Underworld Unleashed crossover. If that’s how the recent League series was launched, that’s why it’s bound to be worthless.

Fortunately, Snyder also reassured readers they won’t need to have read all 39 issues of Justice League to enjoy Mayhem. After all, a book with a chainsaw-wielding Wonder Woman pretty much sells itself. […]

We don’t need to read his overrated writing at all, so we’re not missing anything, and I’m not sold on the sight of seeing Diana using a chainsaw for battles. That these scribes would resort to crossovers is itself the problem, and if that’s the only way they’re willing to produce their scripting, there’s no need to waste money on this.

Update: and in case it isn’t entirely clear what Snyder’s story leads to as an event/crossover, The Hollywood Reporter has more:

The heroes run through the doors, of course, setting up a cliffhanger that, perhaps surprisingly, won’t be resolved in the next issue, which features the start of an all-new story by the new creative team of Robert Venditti and Doug Mahnke. So, where does the story continue…? DC is keeping that answer a secret for now, but the final page of the issue offers a couple of hints.

In addition to teasing the next Justice League issue, the page — which features an image of Wonder Woman later posted on Twitter, as can be seen below — promotes the miniseries Hell Arisen, which features Lex Luthor and his assembled “Legion of Doom” in conflict with the Batman Who Laughs and the characters he’s corrupted, as well as an untitled future project by Snyder and Greg Capullo, co-creators of Dark Nights: Metal, with the tagline — in the same font as the logo for Metal — “Get ready for the encore!”

If this is correct, it’s all leading into the above miniseries, which is just what nobody needs. The way they’re doing this idiocy became farcical long ago.

Originally published here.