The first few issues of “Countdown” were… underwhelming. However, I mean that in a slightly positive way, considering the less-than-stellar reputation the series has. In fact, there are some somewhat decent ideas here, the first of which has to do with the rebirth of the multiverse in “52” and Superboy Prime changing reality via his fists in “Infinite Crisis.” “Countdown” introduces the council of Monitors that would later be seen in “Final Crisis,” and one murderous Monitor’s desire to purge the multiverse of spatial/temporal anomalies. This begins with him murdering Duela Dent, the “Joker’s Daughter,” in cold blood on the streets of Gotham, and he is originally condemned by the other Monitors for his rash acts. Soon, however, he convinces most of the other Monitors to join him in his crusade in hopes to preserve the integrity of the multiverse, with his next targets being Jason Todd, Donna Troy, and Kyle Rayner. It’s a decent hook, if not necessarily a unique one, and one that could probably support its own miniseries.
As a quick aside, I as of yet have no idea why Kyle is included. Jason obviously was brought back to life by Superboy Prime’s aforementioned reality-changing tantrum, and Donna is a walking continuity error, but I can’t remember anything from this era that would make Kyle a target. Is it just because he had his Ion powers around this time? Guess I’ll see!
The other more overt connection to “Final Crisis” is the death of the New Gods and Jimmy Olsen’s flareup of superpowers that may or may not be connected to their death. As a concept, it’s a fun little homage to the “Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen” comics of Superdickery fame. In execution, it’s a little hard to suspend my disbelief that Jimmy doesn’t know what’s going on with himself. In the first six issues Jimmy has two random spurts of superpowers. The first of these is when he’s in Arkham to interview the Joker about the death of the Joker’s Daughter (who, he learns, is not the Joker’s daughter), only to be attacked by an escaped Killer Croc. However, rather than being mangled into a blood pulp, Jimmy stretches out a la Ralph Dibny and escapes unharmed. The second such instance is when the New God Lightray falls from the sky to die. Whatever horrific events caused his demise are also causing the sky to erupt in assorted explosions, and Jimmy rescues a young couple and their child from being crushed by debris in a sudden spurt of super-speed. Jimmy chalks both of these up to “adrenaline” (in the former case, he believes he just hallucinated the whole stretching-out thing). I know criticizing characters for being “stupid” is often shallow criticism, but I do hope the next time this happens Jimmy wonders “hmm, perhaps something is going on with me” rather than just chalking it up to the miracle powers of adrenochrome — uh, I mean adrenaline.
There are a few other plots going on at this point to note. Former rogue Rogues Pied Piper and Trickster are getting back with the old gang and trying to prove they’re still evil enough to participate in some new plot of Captain Cold and Inertia (folks who were reading at the time will know that this is a plot point in the short-lived “Flash: The Fastest Man Alive” series). There are also a couple of poorly explained scenes involving Karate Kid, who thinks he is “Trident,” fighting Batman and then being imprisoned by the Justice League (a scene I’ll touch on a bit more later). As the series progresses these will start to go somewhere (kind of), but for now it’s just typical getting-the-ball-rolling type stuff that is slowed down further due to the series juggling so many plot lines.
The worst of the arcs so far concerns Mary Marvel. Mary has just woken up from a coma to learn she is now powerless. She desperately wants her powers to return, but is unable to get in contact with Freddie Freeman, who currently holds the mantle of Shazam. After being chased by what I assume are would-be rapists one night she coincidentally stumbles into a building being used by Black Adam, who does to the assailants what Black Adam does to most people who get in this way (that is to say, he viciously murders them). When Mary tells Adam of her plight, he decides to pass his powers onto her, viewing them more as a curse than a gift (real “52” heads know). Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad plot in and of itself, bur the whole idea of the quintessential superhero “good girl” becoming a “bad girl” is clearly one that one of the guys involved with the book came up with while he had his hands down his pants. Think I’m being unfair? The first panel of the new Mary Marvel is her appearing in her new skintight black outfit and Adam remarking “…look how you’ve grown.” Jesus guys, how’d that make it to the printers?
Continued belowSo far the writing in “Countdown” hasn’t met my expectations – but in this case, that’s a good thing, as I was expecting something far worse. It’s just okay, for the most parts. None of the writers have a distinct voice that’s cutting through the others, which may be a good on a project like this. However, there is one major flaw that is apparent right from the start. Unlike “52,” “Countdown” was chronologically concurrent with the other books DC was putting out at the time, and it draws on events going on various minis and ongoings. This isn’t a bad idea, and in fact if I didn’t know you were talking about “Countdown” the idea of a broader DC universe weekly series would be intriguing to me. The problem is that so little context is given for these other events. For example, the Karate Kid plot: when Karate Kid first appears, it is mid-fight with Batman in the Batcave. They fight for a few pages until Black Lightning gets the drop on him out of nowhere and knocks him unconscious. Nowhere in this scene is any context given for why this is happening. Thankfully, I read “The Lightning Saga” about a decade ago, and so I vaguely remember that this springs out of those events, but nothing in the dialogue really gives the reader any bearing on why the two are fighting, how Val got there, when this started, nothing. I feel like this was a point of time when editorial was avoiding captions saying stuff like “Surely you readers didn’t miss the most recent issue of Justice League – in stores now!” but if you’re going to forego that then for God’s sake give readers who aren’t reading every book something to go off of.
Another example is issue #47, which ends with a full-page teaser/cliffhanger tying into another timeless classic of the era, “Amazons Attack!” The Amazons are attacking Washington! Whoa! Surely that must be important to the events of “Countdown” if that is getting a full page rather than a few lines of dialogue. However, the effect this has on the events are the book are, so far, minimal. We see Donna and Jason in D.C. shortly after said Amazons have attacked, but it’s more a set piece than anything relevant to what’s going on. Again, to repeat a phrase I’m probably going to use a bunch while talking about this series, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering that “Amazons Attack!” isn’t actually that important to “Countdown” in the first place, but why promote it so much in the first place?
That question is rhetorical, I know it’s to convince more poor, unfortunate souls to buy “Amazons Attack!”
It’s going to be hard to talk about the art too much without doing an issue-by-issue breakdown, which I’d like to avoid. So far, there isn’t too much to complain about. Besides maybe issue #48, illustrated by David López, there also isn’t much good to talk about. Most of the artists turn in decent superhero action art, work that’s certainly readable and fine to look at but far from the best work on the shelves. However, I am already starting to see a problem that is probably only going to get worse, and that’s consistency. The pressure to meet deadlines is, of course, always an issue in comics, and in a weekly series that’s going to be even more severe. However, I would say all the artists so far except for López are already showing strain, and the quality fluctuates from page to page more than I’m used to in a standard monthly comic book. The best example is issue #47, with pencils by Paul Derenick. The first couple of pages, a dream scene where Jimmy sees himself embedded in the Source Wall, are the best pages in the whole series so far, pages I’d love to see in any mainstream superhero book. But the technical quality of the remainder of the issue doesn’t come anywhere close to those first few. Probably not a coincidence, this is the first of the issues to be credited to multiple inkers.
Is this to be expected of a weekly series? Certainly, and perhaps it shows just how much the weekly format inherently devalues artists. However, it is a bit concerning that it is already this notable of an issue, this early.
So, what’s the verdict six issues in? It’s…okay, I guess. I’ve certainly read worse comics in my time. But six of fifty-one isn’t much; there’s still plenty of time for things to go terribly, terribly wrong. Join me next week to see if I have started to regret my ill-conceived decision.
