Countdown to Final Crisis #43-41

[informationgeek]

Head Writer: Paul Dini
Writers for #43: Jimmy Palmoitti & Justin Gray
Writers for #42: Sean McKeever & Tony Bedard
Writer for #41: Adam Beechman
Artist for #43: Manuel Garcia & David Lopez
Artist for #42: Carlos Magno
Artist for #41: Dennis Calero
Senior Editor: Mike Marts
Associate Editor: Jeannie Schaefer


Back to Countdown, whether you like it or not.



We begin with #43, the funeral for Flash!


















Then to #42!



The two eventually escape by falling out a jet...











So Riddler and Mary find Clayface...








Finally, we wrap up this look with Countdown with #41...

Comments

[lego_joker]

So this is the point where even the cover artists realized what a gigantic crock of [censored] they'd been assigned to?

[tugrul]

Ahahaha! Sharp!

[thanekos]

" Are we working on a crock of [censored]? Tell me something, is this called Crock of [censored]? "

[q99]

If they did, they're sharp. *I* didn't realize it til awhile later.

[tcampbell1000]

I kind of love how the Riddler is the actual voice of reason here. The "Bob" bit is pretty cute too.

I'm not sure I buy that Bart would record a message for his funeral, but the character was in a lot of flux toward the end of his run so let's just call that interesting.

The problem is that most of this is just, well, aimless. 52 was a similarly rambling tour through the DC Universe, yet it (mostly) worked because it had much more compelling character hooks: Ralph Dibny trying to cope with the loss of his wife, the partnership that becomes so much more between Victor Sage and Renee Montoya, the rift between John Henry Irons and his niece Natasha.

Countdown, by way of contrast, has Jimmy Olsen and Mary Marvel fretting about the dependability or absence of their incredible super-powers, which is maybe not quite so relatable as any of the above plots. It also thinks it's a good idea to put three of the least interesting out of DC's THOUSANDS of characters-- Jason Todd, Donna Troy, and Rando Monitor #46-- front and center in a cosmic odyssey that's the most important thread in the book. You don't use a story like this to FIX BROKEN characters, you use it to let your less spotlighted characters SHINE. Even Legends of Tomorrow had the good sense to kill off Hawkman pretty early into its run.

Only the Trickster and the Piper run the risk of being interesting here, but they're mired in a plot that's broken before it begins. The notion of them wanting to pay their respects to Bart is kind of neat, but they just will not shut up about how stupid it was to show up during the funeral with all the superheroes present until events unfold that prove that, yes, that WAS a really stupid thing for them to do, but they ultimately get away with it anyway, so all their out-of-character stupidity in the sequence really doesn't even matter.

Also, 52's basic pitch is that "the world has to get along without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman for a year." Countdown's basic pitch is "We're warming up for another big series that you'll really like... counting down to it, if you will... but while you wait, let's kill some time."

[qalchemist]

I really, really liked the reformed Riddler.

I hoped that he would last longer than he actually did.

[icon_uk]

I do still suspect that the original choice for the Donna/Monitor/Former Robin arc was Dick Grayson, not Jason Todd. Dick and Donna developing a relationship works a lot better than Donna and Jason ever would, and Dick did shadowy mysteriously cosmic figures calling out "You should have died" because he survived "Infinite Crisis" when he wasn't originally intended to.

[q99]

Six writers for 3 issues!

No wonder this was a mess, 52 had 4 writers total iirc.

[panelsarewindows]

Not only that, but (no offense to these writers, I don't really know them that well) 4 of the best writers in the business. Geoff Johns,Mark Waid, Greg Rucka and Grant Morrison. Feel how you will about each of these creators, but you can't deny that's some real (and diverse range, stylistically) A* talent on display.

[informationgeek]

The writers for Countdown aren't too bad either. Jimmy Palmoitti & Justin Gray are fantastic with Power Girl and Jonah Hex (Palmoitti and Conner are doing good work with Harley Quinn & Starfire currently) Sean McKeever isn't too bad from experience and Tony Bedard puts out some decent, if average work. Paul Dini has done a great Detective Comics and Streets of Gotham series sans a few points, and has done great work in TV. Adam Beechman is the same way when it comes to TV, though his work in comics is very divisive (Don't bring up Cassandra Cain).

Countdown does not have a bad team of writers on it, but none of them could salvage this crap.

[q99]

'Sean McKeever isn't too bad from experience'

He's the one responsible for EvilCassandra Cain- which was bungled in more ways than making her evil. When given a series to fix it and more time to research, his response was 'ok, here's a wall of text why she can read now, and also you know her relationship with David Cain it's yea totally gone, he doesn't care about her now.'

'Adam Beechman'

Beechman... while not McKeever, I have found a generally underwhelming writer. Reading Mystique's book once, I was, "Wow, this is fantastic, I'm totally getting the next story, oh, why is this sooo underwhelming suddenly... *checks authors* Beechman." His Titan's run, similarly lost me, even though the events are ones that struck me as ones that should be cool I found his writing uninspiring and dull.

I have spent time mystified why DC used either of them before I found out they worked on countdown.


Palmoitti, Gray, and Dini, I agree are good most of the time, and Bedard's done some good stuff too (additionally some weaker stuff), but even so, a wider team is harder to coordinate, I do find those two above pretty lousy, even the good ones aren't quite Rucka, Waid, or Morrison, and most of the good ones are not the types normally to do large-scale world shaking stuff to boot (I guess Dini's run on Superman:TAS and JL gets somewhat into that, but comics wise Bat stuff seems to come so much more naturally to him. Hm, and Bedard did do big scale space stuff at Crossgen, but I don't see that spark here).

I think it's a case of taking 7 writers, some good, some IMO pretty bad, some in between, none of whom had this style as their main forte, mixing them together, and getting something weaker than the sum of their parts as a result.

While 52, you had 4 writers, two of whom lived epic and large-scale, all of whom were good at foreshadowing and long games, playing and enhancing each other's strengths.

[informationgeek]

You mixed up Beechman and McKeever there by the way, but yeah. None of them are as great the original four on 52.

[q99]

I did? Oops, yea. Also I somehow said 7 writers when there's 6 of them...

I've done that in the past. Both of their styles I find similar in the 'uninteresting me and loses me,' way, it's just one of them messed up a character I really like, while the other got more titles.


Even if one took out those two and just left Dini, Bedard, Palmoitti and Gray I still wouldn't expect a 52-ish book, though I'd expect something readable (and if you needed more, at least use, say, Winick! Yesh).

Hm, come to think of it Palmoitti and Gray iirc tend to work on smaller stories, and... *checks* yep, as-of when Countdown came out, they had had written in *one* comic run longer than 12 issues, Hawkman, clocking in at 21 issues. A lot of miniseries, but no long haul books.

Dini, in turn, did most of his comics as one-shots or short runs, kinda... episodic.

So I think of all the writers, only Bedard had been involved in long-haul plotted stories before, Bedard having some help from Waid in Crossgen. And Bedard's not the one everyone will take cues from.

The more I look at the team, the more I begin to realize why it failed. They went from 4 people who'd each done multiple many-year runs with lots of planning and forethought, to a team of 6, half of whom tend to write in short form, two others of whom are just generally unimpressive, and only one of who had actually been involved in an epic long-form plot before.

[q99]

Yes, the *weakest* I'd argue is Johns- and this was Johns at a good point, so that's not nothing. They also would be able to massage at other's weak points.

[trooper924]

Ah good. I needed something boring and directionless after Batman Odyssey assaulted my brain with pretentious nonsense.

[jaybee3]

This is painful. It's like a parody of comics rather than a straight comic. And I will never forgive the current DC regime for what they did to Mary Marvel - so utterly distasteful (and they really wanted us to forget she was really an underage girl who had just gotten out of a six month coma and yet..let's make her a sexy bad girl! NO. Just NO. This whole series was just one big giant humiliation conga for her - and yet why? The writers seemed to actively hate her (and did ZERO research on her backstory or character). Because she was nice and that's something you couldn't be in the DCU? I never got it.