f13.net

So for those who absolutely hate the multiverse in the DCU, you'll probably hate Countdown. It's all about the Multiverse.

For me, I liked Countdown #51. The artwork was a little more bland than I expected of Jesus Saiz, but it was workable. I think Palmiotti's inks don't suit this guy's pencils. It's a Darkseid/Source Wall/Monitor story, and like 52, it looks to focus on some of the lesser known parts of the DCU. I mean Duella and Jason Todd? Why? I've never liked the Red Hood dealie too much, but at least Todd's not running around as Nightwing anymore. Mary Marvel though, is a welcome return. I love the Marvel family.

Is Black Adam in it? Cause if he is I am so there.

That is his name right?  Jeez the DC universe is a fog to me now. 

I loves me some Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, they did the best DC comics.

No Black Adam yet.  After 52/WWIII they should probably hold of on using him for a while anyway.  They built up a pretty good storyline for him in 52 only to blow it all so they could do a four issue retread of the Superboy fights from IC.  That payoff wasn't worth offing the rest of the Black Marvel family.

Geoff Johns loves Black Adam. He will be back, and he may be in Countdown, or at least in JSA. I thought the way they ended his story in 52 was good, but the WWIII books were excessive and didn't add anything.

Can't really get into Countdown.  Jimmy Olson and Red Hood aren't characters I can really get into.  I can't say that I know anything about Duela nor any reason why I should care that she was killed, and this series thus far has been kind of crappy as far as explaining who a lot of these characters are.  Only the Mary Marvel aspect of the story appeals to me thus far.

"You flip-flop more than a Massachusetts senator".

Priceless. 

Somewhat Countdown related, this week resulted in the death of one Flash and the return of another.  I'm not a particularly huge fan of the Flash (with the possible exception of Jay in the JSA), and haven't followed the current series, but reading through issue #13 I think he had a decent death.  I also think there was a lot of wasted potential with the character though and his death has the obvious stink of DC just not having a clue what to do with the character.  They barely had time to fully explore his post-IC status-quo before the sent him off to join Conner (the last few years haven't been good for Tim Drake, what with losing his father and two of his best friends now and all).

I haven't read that Flash issue yet, but DC had NO FUCKING CLUE how to deal with Bart Allen as Flash. I don't think it was a bad idea, but the original writers they got on the series (the guys who wrote the John Wesley Shipp Flash TV series) were just fucking awful. Terrible, terrible writing, that gave no real flesh to the new Bart. The guy who followed them was better, but was really only just catching any sort of stride, for lack of a better term. The sales were probably abysmal based on the original writers shittiness.

Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl have had the same problems. WW's is worse, because they can't seem to figure out when they want to finish the story that set up WW's new status quo in the universe, AND they wanted to have another big (and very very stupid) crossover in Amazons Attack. Hawkgirl has just been badly written and drawn, by two industry greats who seem to have lost what made them great at one time (Walt Simonson and Howard Chaykin).

Both Flash and Wonder Woman are getting new writers (Waid and Simone, respectively) which should help a fuckton. Hawkgirl is just swinging in the breeze.

JLA and JSA are definately the bright spots in DC's lineup right now.  It's a shame Meltzer's final issue on JLA is #12.  The JLA/JSA crossover was a lot of fun and Meltzer and Johns really seem to be a lot alike (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=117681).  Looking forward to seeing what Johns does with the Kingdom Come related arc he has coming up in JSA in a few months though.

I think if McDuffie can bring some of that same charm he brought to the JLU cartoon to the JL book, it'll be just fine. I'd be more worried about Teen Titans. The first non-Johns issue hasn't been what I'd call very interesting. Maybe because it's saddled with both Amazons Attack and Countdown crossover shit.

Seriously, what the fuck is up with Amazons Attack? It's just an awful fucking idea, badly written, narratively all over the board. The editors at Marvel and DC need to take a moritorium on event mini-series for at least a fucking year.

I've pretty much avoided reading anything related to Amazons Attack.  I could tell just from the name that it wasn't going to be anything I was interested in reading.

Oh, and the "Shut up you stupid fuck" award goes to Tad Williams, current writer on Aquaman for this gem he posted about a month back on the DC boards:



Yeah, when the book isn't selling well go ahead and blame the readers.  Oh, and try to dangle a carrot in front of their face by saying that you may (but no promises) bring back the original Aquaman at some point if they keep reading and sales go up.  As for the idea that if the book gets canceled, Orin isn't coming back, and Tad Williams is his only hope...  yeah, it's not like there's at least two or three "events" going at any given time lately where DC could bring bring the character back to his old status quo to make the event seem more important, is there Tad?

Oh fuck me. I stopped reading Aquaman a few issues back because I just couldn't get into the new status quo. The new guy wasn't that interesting, and it never felt like an Aquaman book. It felt like Conan underwater. It was one of Busiek's rare misses, IMO. I didn't even know they had for sure said that Octo-Face was the old Aquaman, though it was pretty obvious from the book. I haven't even read Williams' take on it.

The readers don't like the new Aquaman. I'm not surprised. Unlike when Green Lantern or Green Arrow got replaced, the new Aquaman has not been interesting, whereas Kyle Rayner and Conner Hawke were both interesting characters who were written well. But really, Aquaman hasn't been at all interesting since Peter David's run years ago, when Orin first lost the hand. The latest series, even before the OYL stuff, was mostly writers flailing around trying to make the character interesting without going back to the David Pissed-Off King of Atlantis status. I think Aquaman can be an interesting character, but very few know how to pull it off. The Sub Diego series got close, but just fell flat, as did Conan of the Low Seas.

Heard a lot of good things about Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special.  In particular that it was pretty much a sequel to Rebirth (which I loved), and I'd also heard that some fairly major events take place in it.  That second part there is actually a bit of an understatement really.  In fact, by the end I felt like maybe Johns threw too much in there.  The number of major threats that return in this book... to just call it a Green Lantern special is really pretty misleading.  It will be hard to do a story with all these characters justice without turning it into another major, universe-changing crossover, the likes of which I'm pretty much burned-out on.  If it's just limited to Green Lantern books, then I'll give Johns the benefit of the doubt for now, since I really enjoy a lot of his work.

The back-up story in this book (also by Johns) was a nice addition also.  As mentioned elsewhere, I've been been big on DC so I don't know how much of what is shown here is pre-existing continuity and how much was added by Johns.  Either way, it's nice to have some background on Sinestro's motivations and goals, as I've typically only ever seen him as some cackling villain who's only focus seems to be getting revenge on Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corp.  In fact, perhaps it should have been run at the front of the book.

I have to second all the good stuff about Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special. Top-notch book from page one to the end. The Sinestro stuff in the backup was likely all new stuff added onto an existing event. As for major threats, yeah, that really doesn't even do it justice. If Countdown had half the punch this book has, it'd be something special. As it is, the Sinestro Corps stuff should be more important than what they are dillydallying around with in Countdown.

The latest Countdown (#43) and Teen Titans(#48) are just painful to read. It doesn't help that they are wound inextricably (and badly) with that Amazons Attack drek. I cannot for the life of me figure out who would think this many major events going on at one time in multiple books was a good idea, other than maybe Joe Quesada.

Continuing to use this thread as a catchall for DC stuff:

(http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/Oct07/JSA_Cv10_solicit.jpg)

From the October solicits:



Also, the Sinestro Corps story continued in Green Lantern #21 last week.  Nothing as shocking as most of what took place in the first part, but it was a solid issue.

I like Chris Eckert on Countdown (http://www.funnybookbabylon.com/2007/09/07/downcounting-a-guide-for-the-perplexed-35-34-doubleshot/#more-393). It's a pretty terrible book most of the time--especially the editing.

Yeah Countdown started at meh and has spiraled into worse incoherence every issue. It hasn't helped that they've tried very badly to tie it into every book out there, and that thanks to Amazons Attack, the timeline is well and truly fucked. It isn't just an editorial failure, it's a monumental narrative failure. The best Countdown issue hasn't even measured up to the worst backup 52 story.

Oh and has Lex Luthor now been confirmed as having lived in Smallville and been friends with Clark Kent? It appears so. Bleh.

Making Jimmy Olsen a focus of the series was a mistake. He's barely acceptable as a side character in Superman stories. He is way too idiotic to be interesting on his own.

I still can't figure out why anyone would think putting Jason Todd and Donna Troy together would make sense, or why you'd put Todd into some cosmic multiversal story.

So many bad things.

Yeah, it's not even the editing that's a problem, it's the whack-job decisions about the actual narrative arcs to build the series around.

I hated the actual execution of Civil War but I'll give Marvel some degree of credit for trying to tell a story that was important for their fictional world that at least had the conceptual potential to be tightly imagined and tied into all their books coherently. 52 could be a mess in contrast, but at least it had a shitload of fun ideas, like the Island of Mad Scientists.

Countdown? It fucking started with the killing of the Joker's Daughter. Oh noes! A character that even DC completists like myself have to kind of scratch our heads and say, "I guess I sort of vaguely remember her back in the really old shitty post-Mr. Jupiter Teen Titans that had Mal Duncan in them and then I know she had a more recent version, but..." It's like opening a big company cross-over by killing off Tyroc and the Rainbow Raider. Then it's "let's collect every bad idea Judd Winick has had and add in all the other bad ideas we can think of in recent  years and put them together in a plot that is fairly close to what a bunch of monkeys with typewriters might come up with".

Still haven't read an issue of Countdown since the 3rd or 4th issue in.  Still reading the Sinestro Corps stuff though, and my only complaint is that they probably could have paced it a little bit faster.  I mean, I really don't need a dozen scenes where Ganthet tries to tell the other Gaurdians that they're giving into fear, only to have him get ignored time and time again.  Green Lantern #23 finally started to give us a bit of a payoff here though, as the Guardians get rid of the restriction on the rings that prevents them from using lethal force (which give the Green Lanter Corps a collective WTF moment as each of them is notified by their rings of lethal force being enabled).

Some other good geek moments too, like Hal arming himself with a bunch of yellow rings when his ring runs out of power.  Plus the setup for the next issue, with the Sinestro Corps making a strike on Earth with Hal, John, and Guy as the only Green Lanterns there to fight them has me hooked.  The storyline in Green Lantern Corps is somewhat less entertaining, but it's still a good extended fight scene with Kilowog leading the defense of Mogo (the Green Lantern planet the directs rings to new owners when their previous owners die).

Booster Gold #2 has a somewhat more humorous tie-in.  Entertaining book there.

If you are enjoying the Sinestro Corps series then for the love of God don't pick up Countdown. I was just a tad pissed off to see that one of the plot points was spoiled in the latest Countdown issue. Useless bloody DC editors

Oh yes, HORRIBLY spoiled. I have no idea WTF the editors or writers were thinking, but it's bad business either way.

I can't remember if Green Lantern has had any delays at all.  If so, this could be highlighting the inherent problems with putting out a weekly series, taking place in current continuity, that ties into just about every major book.  They can't delay Countdown until the end of the Sinestro Wars, because they want to boast about keeping a weekly series going on time.  Unlike 52, they also don't have the luxury of taking place in a year with no other stories to conflict with.  They've essentially painted themselves into a corner, an apparently would rather spoil a major storyline than loose face by delaying Countdown so they could either edit it, or release it after the issue they're spoiling.

Well, it's not like this is the first time Countdown has spoiled things. It was pretty badly coincided with the Amazons Attack bollocks as well. What a fucking abortion of an idea that was.

Part of me wants to tear into Geoff Johns a bit here.  Tales of the Sinestro Corp:  Superman Prime (DC no longer has the rights to the Superboy name), features the 3rd battle we've seen between Superboy Superman Prime, and the majority of the DC heroes.  The fourth battle if you want to count the Black Adam vs. the DCU fight, which was essentially the same thing (although I've blocked enough of that WWIII "event" out of my head that I couldn't tell you who wrote it).  This fight will also be crossing over into the next issue of Green Lantern Corps where hel'll be taking on Ion.

I want to give Johns shit over all this, but I can't because he makes these fights so fucking entertaining, and at the same time develops Prime's character a bit and explains what his real motivations are in teaming up with the Sinestro Corps.

I haven't read that yet, but I like Superboy Prime. I just think using him so soon after the Crisis is too soon. He needs to be one of the ultimate alpha villains.

But taking on ION? Didn't Kyle Rayner get Ion removed from his body? Who the fuck is Ion then?

Green Lantern Corps #17, which came out Wednesday as well, introduces the new Ion.

DC announced their next weekly series, Trinity, written by Kurt Busiek and featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.  It doesn't seem to be tying in to Countdown or Final Crisis, or anything else, and it begs the question, that while I understand the idea behind doing a weekly book, why is DC insisting on sticking with the yearly format?  Ideally, when you sit down to do a limited series, you determine the number of issues needed by the length of the story you're trying to tell.  Determining the number of issues you're going to have, and then working backwards from that only leads to either extreme compression or decompression.

I like Busiek's work most of the time, but 12 pages of main story and 10 pages of backups for a full year seems like a trainwreck.

EPIC FUCKING FAIL.

Countdown has been a complete trainwreck of meh storytelling. 52 was tight. Countdown has been all over the place, with no real coherent storyline, way too many goddamn spinoff mini-series and books that just pad shit out for no reason. While I think Busiek can do a good job, especially if they trim down the number of characters involved, 12 pages of main story followed by 10 page backups that will likely barely be read and won't form a coherent story seems a wasted effort. Why not just make a full issue monthly and let the story flow organically?

DC had such an opportunity with the post-IC OYL stories, and many of them have been weak. Countdown has weakened the line further. Though I still think there are more good stories here than over in post-Civil War Marvel land, it's only by degrees.

As this draws to a close, it really drives home that it isn't just Countdown and all its tie-in series that failed. The whole company is more or less in a sustained creative meltdown right now. Just think of all the clusterfuck stuff involved in One Year Later books to get a clear feel for it. DC can't seem to get the right people on the right books at the right time. When they do have the right people, they constantly screw around with their ability to produce the books in a coherent fashion by dropping dumb editorial mandates on them. Gail Simone develops Secret Six, then editorial decides she can't play with Deadshot any longer because he's needed for Suicide Squad, then they decide Suicide Squad can't be a go because they're doing Salvation Run, then they decide Simone can do Secret Six again. Let's do Death of the New Gods as preparation for Final Crisis, but let's not put the culmination of the series in the actual series, but stick it back in Countdown instead. Let's make Mary Marvel evil, no just kidding she's not, oh wait yes she is. Let's make Cassandra Cain evil no whoops that was bad let's do something else. Let's do Amazons Attack! great idea only shit that kind of wrecked Wonder Woman didn't it ok let's pretend it didn't happen.

I love DC characters much more than I love Marvel ones, by and large. And I'm not really wild about Civil War/Bendisverse. But give Marvel and Quesada credit: with a few major exceptions (OYL), they've got a clear sense of the kind of books they want to be producing, and the editorial approach they're going to take to most of them. DiDio's editorial direction, on the other hand, feels like a drunk swerving across a ten-lane highway, other cars crashing and veering off in all directions around him.

As to D.C., I only read Batman/Gotham City centric series and pretend the rest doesn't exist.  My worst fear for Final Crisis is that the "one of the big 3 will die!" rumor comes true and the writers take the path of least resistance ("Bruce Wayne" dies, but Batman is still around). 

In fairness, and I really like Simone, Secret Six was pretty damn bad.  Cool characters, but just poorly executed.

DC just needs to stop doing the goddamn weekly series format. 52 worked because it had 5 great fucking writers banging away on it, and even then, it still had stuff fall through the cracks. The first mistake was putting WWIII in a mini-series of its own. From then on, that gave DC license to do that with all the event books. I mean, how many fucking "SEARCH FOR RAY PALMER" one-shots did they do, none of which actually revealed FINDING Palmer, just searching through a bunch of Elseworlds books. And they added a few others as well, many of which I just can't read. Countdown has just been a stupid story, and I partly blame that on the focus on the New Gods/Darkseid/Apokolips story. Rarely is any story improved by its inclusion in that pantheon. The characters have never done anything for me, other than when individuals have been put in the Justice League.

Don't even get me started on Amazons Attack. That was a retarded, shit-stained abortion from the word go.

One Year Later didn't really work out that well. Flash had to be killed off and rebooted, Titans had to be rebooted sort of, Outsiders had to be rebooted. There were good stories that came out of it, but a lot of their choices for writers were terrible, and the good ones were editorially mismanaged. Superman's books are the perfect example. There were some good stories with good art, but editorial couldn't stop fucking with the writers.

Here's another abortion: this week's Batman.

You've got Grant Morrison on the title. Ok, I think maybe even the God of All Comics has had a bit of difficulty getting a handle on the story he wants to tell. I suspect he's the one responsible for that fucking hideous all-text issue with the Joker, for example. But there's been some interesting stuff percolating, and the Club of Heroes story in particular was wonderful. But here they go, about to kick off a heavily advertised culminating Morrison story, Batman RIP, and what do they do? They get an art job looks like a fetal-alcohol syndrome version of Rob Liefield, and some story material that a competent editor should have told Morrison was just not working (the Jezebel Jet material).

Something is wrong on Saturn 3.

Morrison's Batman run has left me completely flat. It just hasn't felt like an in-continuity set of stories, and his characterization which was so good in JLA has been off.

Finished reading Countdown #1.

What... the... fuck? Despite not really being on any kind of parallel power level, we're going to monitor the Monitors? HUH? We have a new old-style Mohawked OMAC? None of the Legion of Super-Heroes stuff was resolved or explained. What a fucking waste of 52 issues, and there's still one more to go. Blearg.

Likely being saved for the Legion of Three Worlds mini. (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=152225)

(http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/FinalCrisis/Legion/AC863-23.jpg)
(http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/FinalCrisis/Legion/AC863-24.jpg)

Oh come on. Goddamnit, even if it is Geoff Johns, WE'VE HAD ENOUGH UNIVERSE-SPANNING CRISIS.

Fuck's sake.

gaygaygay

I can't help laughing at the middle of that pic, where Superman looks like he's giving the other side a wave hello while Superman Prime looks like he's pointing in order to help his side work out who to attack in the vast nothingness of space.

Plus: Legion of Super-Heroes. Hillarious stuff.

It does seem like DC is recylcing the same plot a lot. A superperson from some other dimension - wow original!

What else did you think Countdown to Final Crisis was building up to?

I had hoped a clear, coherent story that didn't make me want to stab people in charge.

I hope too much.

Final Crisis itself is being written by Morrison, so there's about a 50% chance that ends up clear and coherent.  Apparently some of the stuff he did in Seven Soldiers is tied into it.

I rather enjoyed 52, but countdown was just a bunch of DC taking a shit on my face and not even paying me for the privilege.

I've still only read the first few issues of Countdown.  I've been known to read shitty books before when I feel like having something to rant about (see New Avengers), but when I heard that Countdown started spoiling shit going on in other books I was reading, I made it a point to avoid even glancing at the book.

So I'm the only one who thought 52 sucked, eh?

I thought there were storylines in it that I was completely not interested in, and that it was hard to judge like a regular comic since it was more like an anthology hybrid.  It didn't have the job of focusing on a particular group of characters or a main storyline.  Generally I thought the positive outweighed the negative, with the Bootser Gold, Elongated Man, Black Adam, and The Question storylines being the ones I liked the most.

It had interesting bits here and there, but overall my investment in the stories remained lukewarm at most and the resolution to each fell flat.

It never felt like things were happening naturally- it felt like they were happening because that's what the writers decided they needed to happen.  That's a feeling I don't get when I'm reading a good story.

The only things that seemed like maybe they didn't happen naturally were the return of the multiverse at the end, and possibly the World War III thing since it seemed like they were building up to an actual "World War" and then backed off that idea somewhere down the road and decided just to have everyone fight Black Adam in a four issue tie-in instead.

Fuck. After his latest Batman run and the 7 Soldiers, I just don't know about Morrison. Half of the 7 were just outright uninteresting and uninspired, and none of them really hit a homerun for me. When he's on, he's shit hot, when he's not on, the stories just get muddled. He needs to bring back the Invisibles and forget this mainstream super-hero stuff.

As for 52, I loved it for the most part. The weakest bit was the World War 3 offshoot shit. The Booster Gold/Multiverse story was pure gold, IMO, and most of the other stuff was decent at its worst. Now what's been done outside of 52 around it was horribly uneven.

sigh i can't even recognize 10 of the super villains in that cover. Not very super.

It's a Legion story, and thus takes place in the 31'st Century.  Unless you read a lot of Legion stuff, there's no reason why you would recognize most of the characters.

Why would a two year storyline culminate in a story involving 31st century characters?

For Countdown Millennium to start up once Final Crisis is over, of course. 

It doesn't.  Final Crisis:  Legion of 3 Worlds is just one of the tie-in minis.

OH fuck me. My head just assploded.

I know I'll regret asking this, but is it safe to say that Superman is now as powerful as he was pre-Crisis? I don't see how Byrne's Man of Steel could take on Superboy one on one for even a panel. :-P

I think he's come close to reacquiring most of his pre-Crisis powers and near god-like status. It's been kind of interesting to watch that creep up. Morrison kicked into overdrive, but at least he had some interesting reasons for doing so circa DC 1,000,000.