42 and counting...

Beginning with the death of the Flash (from Trickster's dream point-of-view), Countdown 42 is finally bringing in the event that the whole "Rogues" storyline was about. I think it was a mistake having the whole rogue build-up here, and then have them do the deed offscreen (in Flash 13), and then return to Countdown without even a look-in at what happened. Not everyone who reads Countdown reads Flash, and the folks who'll later read the collected edition won't have immediate knowledge of the events of Flash 13. So yeah, I think belatedly showing what happened is a good idea.

Then we see they've been captured and handcuffed together by Deadshot and Multiplex. Who they're working for is (pardon the expression) up in the air, though they do make it clear they're working for some sort of government agency. The captured duo do manage to stage an escape, only to discover (belatedly) that they were being held in a moving airplane.

The expression "look before you leap" comes to mind.

Mary Marvel, probably because of the long-term coma, is a tad out-of-date on who's who in the DC universe. Not knowing that the Riddler is now one of the good guys, she's on the verge of taking, um, drastic action against him when she spots him in the vicinity of a robbery. Convinced to give him a chance to prove himself, they wind up fighting Clayface. Mary goes awfully close to the line... She throws Clayface into orbit, with the idea that he'll be freeze-dried, and eventually re-enter. As she puts it, "He's just dirt... and dirt will come back to earth sooner or later!"

We can see how she seems -- split -- in her reaction to what she did. Part of her is shocked and horrified at her actions, the other part takes a 'good riddance to bad rubbish' attitude. It certainly seems as though she inherited more than just her powers from Black Adam. Riddler suggests, not entirely in jest, that she find a mentor, one who specializes in dealing with anger management issues. DC has already hinted that she gets involved with Eclipso, whom I suspect isn't who the Riddler had in mind.

Batman and Karate Kid have a brief scene that -- well, I can't actually figure out what's the purpose of the scene. It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know, and doesn't do anything to illuminate the characters. We know it's a couple of pages transplanted from another issue. So... was this just put here to fill two pages that would have otherwise have been occupied by something that was deleted? Perhaps we're seeing the first effects of the change in editorship?

Holly Robinson and Harleen Quinzel (Harley Quinn) have a discussion about Harley's recovery, and her recruitment by Athena. Granted that Athena is a god (small "g" type), I'd have thought Harleen was too far gone to ever break away from the Joker. So, is she posing as cured? Or, has she finally put Joker into her past?

Jimmy Olson is still working on the idea of becoming a super-hero, without a lot of success. There's not much more to be said about that, at least for now.

Donna Troy, Jason Todd, and the Monitor pay a visit to Ryan Choi (the Atom 3), enlisting his help in searching for his predecessor, Ray Palmer (Atom 2). We've been told that Ray is the key to averting the Great Disaster. We'll see.

Palmerverse?

43 and counting...

Well, it's about time!

The story is finally starting to move. Whether it's because Mike Carlin is now co-editing, I don't know, but it is an auspicious beginning to his coming on board.

So, the main thread this issue is the funeral of Bart Allen (Flash IV). He wasn't Flash for very long, but in his roles as Impulse, Kid Flash, and Flash, he was central to a lot of things going on within the DC Universe.

The Flashes are native to the Central City/Keystone City twin cities on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border (no prizes for guessing which lies within which state!), and they do seem to have a somewhat different relationship to the locals than pretty much any other super-heroes I can think of.

(On an aside, why don't se see the term "super-hero" much any more? Old timers are called "mystery men", and modern ones are "metahumans", but nobody seems to use "super-hero" nowadays.)

The first part of the issue is narrated by Jimmy Olson, who goes into some depth on the special relationship between Flash and the twin cities. Oh, by the way, isn't the Flash Museum in Central City? Or is this another of the 'discontinuities' that will be addressed in the series? (Kind of like the whole JSA/All-Star Squadron being transplanted to Washington DC thing?)

Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Bart Allen's identities are now a matter of public knowledge. Now the only Flash whose identity isn't known is Wally West. Ironically, originally he was the only Flash who was open with his identity. I know the in-story rationale is that most of the family and friends of the various Flashes are gone, but there's a few key persons left. Joan Garrick (Jay's wife), Iris (West) Allen (Barry's widow, Bart's Grandmother, and Wally's Aunt), and Linda (Park) West (Wally's wife) and Wally and Linda's twins. It's not going to be hard at all for folks to put two and two together and figure out that Wally is Flash III, and there are some nasties out there who would love a chance to do to the Flash's loved ones what they did to Flash.

The Rogues are still out there.

Two of them are at the funeral.

Pied Piper and the Trickster showed up. Piper, I suspect, really did show up to pay his respects. Trickster, moreso, because he's the Piper's friend. Nice thought, guys, but not the smartest move in the world.

Monitor (well, one of them) is there, with Donna Troy and Jason Todd. He wants them to take off right away to search for Ray Palmer (Atom II), who vanished (literally!) at the end of Identity Crisis. They know more about this than we do, but the basic idea is that Ray is the key to averting the "Great Disaster".

I'm not sure where the "Great Disaster" plot is going, but since in my (admittedly bad) memory it was supposed to have happened in 1984, I am curious to see how this all plays out.

One suspects that Monarch (aka Captain Atom) has a large hand in this, as will Sinestro and his all-new Sinestro Corps, especially as the leaders of the Corps seem to be almost anyone who's been responsible for a "Crisis" in the past decade or two. Including the supposedly dead-and-gone Anti-Monitor, responsible for the original Crisis on Infinite Earths way back in 1985!

On a (presumably) less cosmic note, Holly Robinson has been taken in at a women's shelter run by Athena (yes, the Greek Goddess), and is just starting to relax when she meets one of her fellow guests, a former psychiatrist named Harleen Quinzel. You might know her better as Harley Quinn, the Joker's girlfriend!

Definitely, the story has finally started moving forward. Hopefully now we can get some momentum going.

44 and counting... (Finally!)

Here we are, with a much-delayed look at Countdown 44. Many thanks to Piper for picking this up for me.

This week I'm not going to do a page-by-page review of the issue.

From the start, I've been a supporter of the book. It started off with what I considered a really good kick-off. The story took a character whom nobody cared about since she was created by Bob Rozakis, and made us care about her -- and then promptly killed her off.

Not that I'm happy about the death of the Joker's Daughter, but it was well-done and started the series off with a bang. And it was well followed-up upon, what with Jimmy Olson visiting the Joker himself.

There was lots of character bits and plot set-up. And it's been good. But we're about eight weeks into the series and nothing much has happened here. Oh, things have happened, such as the death of Flash IV (Bart) at the hands of the Rogues, or the revival of Flash III (Wally) at the hands of the Legion of Super-Heroes, the attack on Washington, DC by the Amazons, etc.

But they've all happened offscreen! Here in Countdown we've seen the build-up to some of it, and the aftermath of other parts, but not the actual events. Granted, the place for the death of the Flash was in his own title, but here it feels so peripheral that it hardly justifies Countdown as being the "spine" of the DC Universe.

(As an aside, the death of Flash II (Barry) was done within the pages of Crisis on Infinite Earths, but in that case the Flash Comic was being canceled, and the story there ended immediately prior to Crisis.)

The problem with Countdown, it seems to me, isn't with the writing -- everything I've seen appears well-written, but it's poorly paced, and it appears (so far) that most of what Countdown consists of is interstitial material. Nothing that's critical to other series', but material that kind of fills in the blanks from other stories.

Now, there's story throughlines in Countdown that appear to be specific to the series -- Mary Marvel, Jimmy Olson, and (possibily) Holly Robinson. Everything else, though, seems to be just filler material for other series. Even Forerunner appears to be there to provide a lead-in to her own feature.

Head writer on Countdown is Paul Dini, so the slow (some might call it "lack of") pacing seems puzzling. Paul is a much better writer than this. I'm inclined, at this point, to ascribe the problems with pacing (and ill-handled interconnecting to the universe) to the book's editor, Mike Marts. I know he's basically unfamiliar with the DC Universe, but the principles of storytelling should be pretty much pan-universal.

I know there's a LOT of dissatisfaction with the book among fans, and I'm guessing that it has translated into flagging sales for the series. Given one thing that was announced last week, it looks like the Powers That Be at DC have taken note and are doing a mid-course correction.

Starting with the next issue (this week's forthcoming Countdown 43) Mike Carlin is joining as co-editor, and over the next dozen or so issues Mike Marts is transitioning off the book. Mike Carlin is experienced at the weekly thing, since he was editor of the Superman books some years back when the franchise was run as a de-facto weekly comic. Anyone remember the "corner boxes" (actually triangles) that showed where the books fell in sequence?

No disrespect intended to Mike Marts, but I'm guessing that he wasn't well-suited to doing the weekly-comic-with-lots-of-interconnections-to-other-editors-books thing. I'm certainly expecting the pacing to improve dramatically as Mike Carlin's vision begins to have a presence in Countdown.

And, oh, by the way, haven't we had enough crotch shots of Mary Marvel? We get the idea. Lets move on.

45 and holding... (Updated)

There may be a day or three delay in my post on Countdown 44. I don't have the book in hand yet, and it may be another day or two before I have a chance to pick it up. Oh, well. I'll be right back with my review and synopsis.

UPDATE: It's Sunday, July 1 and I still don't have my comics from last Wednesday. *sighs* Nothing much to be done about it just now, I fear. As a few of you may know, I've got some health issues going on, and they've been interfering somewhat with my doing things this past week.

I even tried, as an expedient for getting the write-up done, going to Demonoid and downloading the comic, but it seems their health this week is even worse than mine. Sheesh! Some weeks you just can't win for losing.

The Fastest Man Alive?

It should be taken as a given that everything on this blog is spoiler warning worthy. This post is, more than even the usual. You've been warned.

So.. In Flash #13, released yesterday, The Flash (Bart Allen) was killed. Kilt daid. Not that there aren't holes left so that, if the powers-that-be wanted, they could bring him back. He was killed in the presence of his grandmother, Iris West Allen, widow of the second (Barry Allen) Flash. Let's just say it wasn't a very happy issue.

In Justice League #10, also released yesterday, the Flash is brought back to life. This story has been ongoing for several months, straddling between Justice League and Justice Society, and it's been a few months since I figured out that it was leading towards reviving The Flash.

Only thing is, I was betting on it's being Barry Allen. Surprise! Who got revived was Wally West (Flash 3), his wife, Linda Park, and their twins (looking somewhat older than when we last saw them). Good going to them!

But... one little kicker... at the end, back in the Legion of Super-Heroes time, Brainiac 5 holds one of the lightning rods that were used, and a 'reflection' in the rod hints that Barry Allen is back, as well. Well, whaddya know?

45 and counting...

Given the cover of this week's Countdown, wouldn't you figure that Karate Kid and the Justice League would be kicking some butt this issue? Well, not exactly. I'll explain in a moment.

p 1-4: Now there's some serious butt-kicking. Donna Troy and Jason Todd vs Forerunner. It's kind of the finish to a scene interrupted in progress last week, so it's kind of oddly placed; the climax to an issue as the beginning of the next one. Still, it works as a scene, and I suppose it'll be a bit less out-of-place when it's in a collection and will read smoothly with the preceding part. I do wonder a bit, though, have collection sales gotten to the point where they are now the 'dog', and single issue sales are the 'tail'?

p 5-9: Jimmy Olson is being watched. And no, I'm not referring to the bearded man on the street. Look carefully at the building behind him -- the one where Sleez was killed last week -- there's someone watching out a ground floor window throughout the scene. Who? Hard to say at this point, but in certain panels the silhouette is suggestive.

So, Jimmy's going to enter "Who Wants To Be a Superhero?" Umm. No. He does seem to want to recapture the feeling, in the worst way, though. I suspect he may end up doing so, in the worst way, of course.

p 10-12: Many years ago, when I lived in Indianapolis, I attended a showing of the stage play(s) WARP! (I was going to link here to Wikipedia, and for the first time EVER found a topic upon which they don't have coverage!) During an intermission, I was standing in the lobby, looking at some photos from the play, when another audience member sidled up to me, looked at the pictures for a few seconds, then without preamble turned to me and said "I just love women with knives." Needless to say, I beat a hasty retreat.

I get a similar vibe when I see some of the comments on Donna Troy with the machine gun. I just feel a bit icky and want to take a long shower -- not at the sight of her with the gun, but at the tenor of some of the remarks. Yick!

p 13: Short Holly Robinson scene here. Nothing much worth mentioning, except that the shadowed figure is definitely NOT the same person who was watching Jimmy. Not unless the person is both a shape changer and able to be two places at once.

p 14-16: So, both sides in the little intramural Monitor scrap are considered renegades. And yet, the greater body of monitors seem content do do nothing but bitch at the warring two.

p 17-18: We finally see the Justice League and 'guests'. It's mostly a character-expository scene, no butt-kicking here. I do like the "Sarah Conner" comment.

p19-20: Forerunner feels disgraced, shreds her hair, and, oh, yeah, by the way, Monarch shows up. Nice cliffhanger, this time.