OK - no. I do not approve. This sort of thing worked with 'JLI', but this ain't JLI, this is the Metal Men, and the Metal Men dont. Work. This. Way. Let's start with Gold. Gold is now an obnoxious, self-centered twit, a parody of all the 'handsome, valiant and brave' take-charge hero types. This does not work. Gold is supposed to be the team's voice of reason, the one character who never gets involved in the team's endless squabbles, and, incidentally, one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. He's the second-in-command, the guy who takes charge when Doc's not around. He holds the team together. THIS guy, on the other hand, is a narcissistic poltroon who NOBODY takes seriously, and who's one step away from Captain Hammer in terms of overall charm and personality. Next, there's Copper. I'll be the first to admit that I don't actually know much about her, since I haven't read the issues where she was introduced, but what little I HAVE read about her, she was originally something like the team accountant, am I right? Does this character seem anything remotely LIKE that? Heck no - she's now the 'eager young recruit' type. This is fine when it's done right, but here, she's basically another Tin, without the endearing parts. She's 100% spunk and zero brains or usefulness. (Also, the way the Metal Men treat her is WILDLY out of character. She's essentially their SISTER, for crying out loud!) As for the others - well, Tina is actually acting fairly reasonably, given what she has to put up with here, although she seems way more grumpy than she ought to be. (I won't comment on whether her relationship with Doc still works, since I haven't seen any examples of it yet.) Iron and Lead are OK, although Iron is a tad snarkier than necessary. Instead of being a hotheaded, egocentric jerk, Mercury is now a crazed fanboy jerk, which I don't like at all - it's a very one-note characterization, and serves as little more than a running gag. As for Tin - well, as I said in my last post on this subject, Tin is way too much of a nebbish even for him. At his worst, he was never this much of a wimp, and since his urge to prove his own worth has largely been transferred to Copper, he now has little reason to ebe on the team at all, which is dismaying to me, as he was always one of my favorites. Basically, this isn't the Metal Men. This is the JLI in Metal Man drag. Now, I liked the JLI, but the way they were written worked precisely because they were being themselves - there was just the right mixture of personalities. THIS, on the other hand, is all the more annoying aspects of the JLI without any of the straight man-types to keep them in check. Why was this done? What on Earth was the point? The Metal Men, written right, are the perfect example of a finely-tuned mixture of personalities and relationships that's worked perfectly well for nigh-on fifty years now. It already HAS everything you need in a team - the Doc/Tina relationship for a bittersweet yet wacky center, Gold as the heroic straight-man, Iron as the 'strong man' type, Lead as the easygoing, dependable type, Mercury as the team hothead and burr-under-the-saddle, and Tin as the shy, insecure type with a desperate urge to prove himself. Everything necessary is already built in - you have conflict with Doc and Tina and Mercury; you have pathos with Tin, and you have full-on heroism with Gold - and, for that matter, with the rest of the team, who are always ready to sacrifice their robotic lives at the drop of a hat to help their creator and aid humanity. Not to mention, of course, the fact that said creator ranges from perfectly calm to somewhat irritable to a complete screaming nutball at the drop of a hat. Changing this finely oiled machine of a team into a second-rate JLI knockoff is monstrously unnecessary. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy that the Metal Men have a place in the DCU at all, for all the reasons I listed above. I can wait things out until someone starts writing them properly again. But don't expect me to be happy in the meantime. I am not. I am a sad panda. I think I'll end this post before I can no longer resist the terrible urge to run through moonlit fields screaming 'WHY?!' at the heavens. (Normally, I'd go right ahead, but it's COLD tonight.)