33 and counting...

Starting with the cover, there's a new element in Countdown 33. Kyle Rayner is on the cover, and he's back wearing the 'crab-face' version of the Green Lantern uniform. Am I the only person who liked the crab-face mask? Back when he was the only Green Lantern, and his original costume didn't match the traditional Hal Jordan version, there was a lot of flack tossed DC's way. I liked the different costume. It looked good, and in the time-travel issues (where Kyle fights side-by-side with a young Hal Jordan) Kyle's design stood up well against the traditional model.

Inside? Yes, it's Kyle! The Challengers Of The Whatever are trying to get Donna Troy back from the evil Queen Belthera, and failing, when Kyle drops from the sky seemingly out of nowhere (durn, the Guardians Of The Universe really are omniscient!), he grabs right into the portal and drags Donna back.

It seems Kyle has been sent by the Guardians to tell Bob The Monitor that Ray Palmer (the previous iteration of The Atom) has left the nanoverse and headed out into the multiverse. Given that Bob is a Monitor, and the departures don't seem to have been all that recent, Isn't Bob supposed to know all this already? After all, monitoring things is supposed to be what the monitors do best. Between Bob and the rest of the Monitors, there certainly seems to be a pronounced lack of omniscience. Good thing the Guardians are on the ball.

Kyle seems awfully friendly to Donna Troy, considering that, last time I looked, he was her ex-boyfriend. Gee, it's nice to know they still get along so well.

Ryan Choi (The.. oh, you know who he is.) get snagged up by a giant hand. Where the hand might be coming from, I dunno. Considering they're in the nanoverse, at least two levels deep, it can't be someone from "our" level of reality. They've not bug sized, they're sub-atomic in scale. So where's the hand coming from? More importantly, who? If not for the bare skin on the hand, I'd almost suspect The Spectre. But no, despite the Neal Adams-inspired art this issue, I seriously doubt he'd be brought into this mix, especially at this late date.

Once The Atom is taken, the majority opinion is to forget him and move on in the search for Ray Palmer. I understand how important finding him may be, but I tend to agree with Kyle that one doesn't just leave a man behind. For good or ill, it comes across as much too cold. It definitely tends to prejudice me against the team. I thought a big part of the reason for the series of crises was to remove the moral ambiguities from the heroes, and let them be heroes again. This certainly isn't helping.

The art, by the way, has picked up in the last week or two, and the Neal Adams style rendering isn't bad, though there's a few panels with some clumsy interpretations of Keith Giffen's layouts. All-in-all, though, they're improving greatly in the art end of things.

Turning away from the sub-atomic realm, Wally West (The Flash) is still dealing with Trickster and Pied Piper. He becomes convinced of their innocence, takes them to a safe place, and warns them to stay put -- or else. Of course, Trickster's first instinct is to escape, and, well, that turns out about as well as anything else he does.

Mary Marvel and Klarion -- I'm having some trouble following just what happened here. Mainly what I got from it is that he's being controlled by Eclipso.

Jimmy Olsen is running for his life from folks who turn out to (arguably) be his friends. Not much more to say here.

The editors are finally throwing us a bone with a page of notes on story crossovers so far. It's a big help in finding where stuff is going on that's not shown in the book. I'd still like to see embedded editor's notes or a regular page of notes, but this is at least a big step in the right direction.