34 and counting...

And then there's Piper and Trickster, hanging upside down many stories above the streets of Gotham. As we all know, that's going to be the least of their problems. First a confrontation with the Batman, followed in quick succession (sorry!) by the Flash. To say Wally's pissed would be quite an understatement. After all, Pied Piper was his friend, and to have Piper participating in Bart's death was beyond unforgivable.

Still, Wally's reaction seems a bit -- off. When they claim that Bart's death wasn't their fault, and they were acting undercover; then tell Flash what Poison Ivy and Deathstroke are up to, he turns darker and angrier, possibly on the verge of murder. So, is this really Wally? Our Wally? What's really up here?

Jimmy Olsen, meanwhile, is being examined by John Henry Irons (aka Steel). They're using machines that are supposedly CAT scanners, albeit "metaphysically different", that look more like iPod-enabled barber chairs. Things, ahem, go wrong, and Jimmy, with swollen head (one suspects this is an evolved Future-Jimmy from the silver age) overloads and 'attacks' the machines. I'm just guessing here, but I think the core of Jimmy's issue is that he's carrying the Anti-Life Equation around in his head. This can't be good.

The Challengers of the Clueless are still dealing with Queen Belthera. There's a fight (You don't say!) and Donna Troy pushes the Queen into a portal into which the queen wanted to go anyways. At the last instant, Belthera grabs Donna and drags her through the portal with her. Why? I don't know, he's on third, and...


Aside from the senselessness of dragging Donna with her (and leaving Bob the Monitor behind), there's the question of when/how/why was Ryan Choi turned human again. One senses that Queen Belthera might be powerful in her magic, but isn't the brightest bulb in the fixture.

Aside from that, though, the change back obviously did happen, somewhere between issues. A lot of elements in Jimmy Olsen's story have been happening between issues, as well. Jimmy rips Clark Kent's shirt open, exposing the Superman Suit, and next we see, Superman is introducing Mister Action to the Justice League of America.

The Powers That Be say that what happened between wasn't shown because it was too obvious. Well, yeah, we can guess most of what happened, but why should we have to? Many things, interesting happenings and even discussions might have happened. After all, Jimmy now knows Superman's Secret Identity. Maybe they did in one of the Superman titles. I wouldn't know. I'm way behind on reading them, and shouldn't need to in order to know what's going on. This is just basic storytelling, people.

Again, here's where either an editor's note or a page-of-references would be invaluable. In a title like this, I'd really like that page. Something like Kurt Busiek did in Power Company. It'd point to the backstory elements and where they came from, as well as pointing the reader to connected happenings in other titles. I know Dan Didio doesn't like them, but they are really needed in order to make the book accessible, and to help it be the 'spine' it was meant to be.

Holly Robinson is still fighting in the arena, and her foe turns out to be, as expected, Harley Quinn. Athena tells the two of them that they've 'passed', and they're to be taken to Paradise Island to become full Amazons.

There's just one little detail. It's been revealed elsewhere, but not in Countdown, that this isn't really Athena.

Athena is being impersonated by Granny Goodness, one of Darkseid's minions, who's recruiting humans to form a new Female Furies. Kind of important stuff to know, and it's not as though it was being held as a surprise. After all, it's already been revealed in another title. Editor's note, anyone?

Mary Marvel encounters Klarion, and at least there's enough in the dialogue to tell us what's going on. To be continued...

Finally, Karate Kid and Una finish their meeting with Elias Orr, who tells them of Brother Eye, and directs them to a scientist named Buddy Blank. We're obviously getting closer to the world of Earth A.D.

Once they go off on their merry way, we discover who's Orr's employer. It's Desaad, another of Darkseid's minions. Seemingly on New Earth, all roads lead to Apokolips.

35 and holding...

It didn't strike me until today that comic shipments were going to be late this week because of the holiday. Whups! More tomorrow...

35 and counting...

We've arrived at Countdown 35. Please return your seatbacks and tray tables to their upright and locked position.

In the Palmerverse, um, nanoverse, our heroes (The Challengers of Whatever) awaken to find they're prisoners of Queen Belthera, who claims to rule the dimension. She transforms the Atom, Ryan Choi, into a bug creature. Malicious or uncaring and capricious? Umm. I'm going for malicious.

Perhaps a tad predictable, especially her 'turning' of Bob the Monitor, but then again, it does fit in with the Darkseid plot. Looks like he's going to have some competition for ruling the multiverse.

Mary Marvel, still under the influence of Eclipso, continues her battle with Zatanna. Now, however, Zatanna has regained her footing, and she wipes the floor with Mary. She not only shows her the door, she makes it impossible for Mary to ever find Shadowcrest again.

Jimmy Olsen, once again, has had his dreams shot down. Auditioning with the Justice League, his powers failed because he wasn't truly in danger.

Karate Kid and Una get their face-to-face with Elias Orr, who's apparently working for Checkmate. He claims to have the answers Val needs, but time will tell (so to speak).

The Monitors (or, as I prefer to think of them, the Legion of Righteous Self-Important Arrogant Busybodies *, fret about Kyle Rayner (formerly Green Lantern, Ion, and now Parallax) and the possibilities for chaos if a certain low-probability event happens. So, of course, they decide he should be killed, which attempt will presumably precipitate the very event they fear.

* It just occurred to me that the title could also rightfully belong to the Guardians of the Universe. Maybe that'll be another Countdown spin-off? Monitors Versus Guardians?

They also, by a 'wink and a nod', decide that Bob the Monitor must die, as well.

No Piper and Trickster segment this issue, but based on the next issue's cover I'm guessing they have a major role in that issue.

Holly Robinson begins her "purification ritual", and as she realizes she's being armored but not armed she grows increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. Once the battle starts she kicks butt. Not too big a surprise, since at one time she was Catwoman. The only person she doesn't wipe the floor with is a masked competitor whose mask carries a sort of smirk. I think I'll go out on a limb here and guess that behind the mask is Harley Quinn.

You've probably noticed that this week I haven't groused about the art. It's nothing spectacular, but good solid workmanlike drafting. I didn't see anything particularly eye-catching, just good solid art. It's kind of a shame that it's worth remarking on that the art is competent.

Again, the story this week was nothing to write home about, but the pacing was much better than in the early issues. Not trying to cover every story in every issue is a good move. It gives the story more room to breathe, allowing it to feel more like a story and not just an unconnected series of events. I still feel the difference is in the editorial side of things. Mike Carlin and his assistants have a much better feel for the material than the previous editorial folks.

Sean McKeever has a good touch with the dialogue and captions. My only objection is that he's overusing one transition technique, where in the last panel of one scene we get the first thought of the next scene. It's a technique that works, but by the time it's noticeable it's been overdone.

What can I say, if that's my biggest kvetch with the issue then the book is on the right track.

Don't forget, go out and spend that three dollars a week for Countdown. Despite it's faults, I believe the book is well worth your money. Let's show DC that there's a demand for this type of book.

Please remain seated until the blog comes to a complete and full stop. Thanks for flying KimAir, and have yourself a great day!

Lies, Damn Lies, and Previews

There's been a tendency in recent years for both DC and Marvel to lie about forthcoming developments. Both Dan Didio and Joe Quesada have done this and been caught repeatedly, and basically taken the attitude of 'got one by you, didn't I?'.

Gone seem to be the days where they'd just shut up about things they didn't want to reveal, or even being truthful but allowing the listener/reader to make wrong assumptions. It now seems to be accepted that lying is an acceptable tactic to keep plotlines secret.

I know that, with the pervasive communications about what's coming up, it takes more creativity to keep the wraps on. We've come a long way from waiting for the next issue of Mediascene or The Comic Reader to get a few tidbits, but that doesn't give the companies license to lie to the fans.

36 and counting...

DC's Countdown hits issue 36 this week. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, that doesn't mean we're 36 issues in. It means we have 36 left to go.

Now that that's settled:

We begin this week with the Challengers of the Beyond (or Challengers of Beyond, or Challengers from Beyond, or Challengers from the Beyond. It's all kind of confusing, since they were named in convention panels rather than in the book, and there's several versions of the name circulating. Some direction here, please?)...

Um.

We begin this week with the Challengers of the Whatever, still down in the nanoverse, seemingly stuck and fighting a party of insectoid creatures. They're pretty much defeated, Atom can't reach his belt controls to shrink his way free, but he can reach... Eh?

Is it just me, or is there a slight gap in logic here?

Oh, and a mystery (and english-speaking) armored character holds the "bang stick" in question. How? Where is the character speaking from? The visible forearm appears to be 'framed' by, um, tree limbs? The perspective of the scene makes it appear that he (?) is watching them on a screen (or in some sort of scrying portal). I'm wondering whether Giffen's layouts more clearly showed the character in front of a viewer and the penciller misinterpreted it. And the 'tree limbs'? There's indication in one panel (page 2, panel 2) that there's trees around, maybe. They could as easily be part of some floating rocks in this Brunner-inspired level. I'm deliberately not looking back to Countdown 37 to see whether there were trees around. If I have to do that to find out, the artist failed.
I've got a lot more criticisms of the art in this issue. I'll mention some elsewhere, but it looks like the artists just aren't very good. I'm sort of used to their slotting some second-tier artists into the mix on the weekly books, but this past two weeks we seem to be dredging down to the third-tier. I'm sorry if this offends anyone (mainly the artists in question and their wives and girlfriends), but it's true. They're just not ready for prime time -- a major book from one of the 'big two'.

At least this week we can see that the artists did render the book instead of tracing over the layouts. Some of the linework shows up a bit, well, strange. It's not that the artist has a quirky style, it's just a lack of experience. More on this later.

Aside from the art, nothing much has gone on with this plotline for a while. They've shrunk to a world which looks kinda like the Amazon-ish jungle where Ray Palmer used to live. They've shrunk from there to the Frank Brunner inspired cosmos where they got some hints to the Great Disaster. I know DC has faith in this 'team' -- there's a number of specials scheduled, and rumors of a regular monthly title later, so shouldn't they be having more happen than acting as a placeholder waiting for the specials?


Zatanna is still training Mary Marvel in magic, until Mary explodes over nothing. It turns into a major battle, tearing up Zatanna's house and unleashing various magical energies. Mary is operating on a level of pure emotion, not intellect, but there's more than that. It's not unlike Lindsay Lohan being told that she can't get plastered, do lines, and have semi-public sex on the riverboat in Disneyland. What's that you say? Reports are that she did just that? I'm sure it's just a pernicious rumor.

It's all about the sense of entitlement that means there's a blow-up when anyone tells her "no". She's been increasingly unstable since gaining Teth Amon's (Black Adam's) powers, but this time it's way over the top. Is it the levels of power that're hard to adjust to, or something intrinsic in the powers? You might think so, but no.

It's Eclipso. Jean Loring must have found her way free. Where did this happen? Is this a new development, or did I miss it in a title I don't read? She's manipulating Mary, freeing her from moral constraints and all maturity in her responses. Why? We'll find out, though I suspect this thread may yet converge with the impending Great Disaster plotline.

Speaking of which, last week the book was rife with foreshadowing. This week, nothing. It might be coincidence, but it reads to me like someone made the decision that they should be inserted last week to please the fans, and this week it's been forgotten. There's a lot of improvement in the pacing recently, but this seems awkward. The references, maybe, could be sprinkled a tad more evenly? Larding one issue with it, then dropping it next issue just seems clumsy.

There seems to be lots of folks around 'New Earth' who have more than an inkling of the Great Disaster and what it all means, but aside from cryptic comments they haven't shared their knowledge, even among the hero community. Why? There must be a damn good reason, but we haven't a clue what the reason might be.

Jimmy Olsen is living inside his own head, thinking he's about to be admitted to the Justice League of America. Dream on, Jimmy.

The art here is particularly weak. Jimmy, when he's shown, looks 'flat'. I'm thinking this is another of those 'inexperienced artist' issues. It's as though the layouts called for certain perspectives, and the artist isn't quite up to the task of illustrating the shots. I'm really thinking DC needs to re-evaluate who they're assigning to the art duties on Countdown. They don't need to lock their A-list artists on the book (although it'd be fascinating to see), but they DO need to use artists who are at least competent. At the very least what about assigning inkers who are able (and authorized) to 'fix' the art when it falls short?

One nice touch, done by someone with a wicked sense of humor (whom I suspect to be Keith Giffen) is the 'Last Supper' arrangement of the JLA. Any significance to Batman being in the Jesus position?

Karate Kid and Una arrive at the hidden base of the 'legendary' Elias Orr. He was identified to me as being a former henchperson of Lex Luthor. Maybe so -- was he one of the scientists in 52? Here's another of those places where a scorecard is needed. I know they're resisting it fiercely (though they've done it at least once) but either editor's notes or a text page are needed to point readers to needed background info. They seem to feel it's both unnecessary and disruptive to the book, but it is really annoying when those moments arrive (in every issue to date) where we need to know more about who these people are and why we should care (and in some cases, how did they get into their current situation).

There's been a fair amount of criticism on the title, and DC (or at least Dan Didio) has been quite defensive about their handling of Countdown. I like the book a lot, but there are some things that need fixing (such as the art) and listening (and maybe even taking action) won't hurt. Don't be defensive. The criticism isn't to impress with our incisive wit, but to help evaluate and improve the book. Happy readers are ones who will return to spend more money on the product, so why not try and please them just a tad?

Maybe it's just the way the art was done in this issue, but there's more than a passing resemblance between Elias Orr and R. J. Brande. Given this is a Legion of Super-Heroes thread, that's an interesting coincidence.

There's no Holly Robinson / Harley Quinn segment this week, which is a bit of a shame, since the Holly segments and Piper / Trickster segments are my favorites.

Speaking of Piper and Trickster, they left off last issue as prisoners of Poison Ivy, and this issue they talk their way out of it by pretending to have been sent by her new (and unnamed) patron. They manage to string her along until the patron shows up, and boy, he's pissed!

It's Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, the Terminator.

This (along with the Holly / Harley plot) where I have no idea where the story is going. It doesn't look like it's going to lead into Salvation Run, but then again who knows?

37 and counting...

The tone of Countdown is evolving. No longer just a series of unconnected events, the story is finally moving forward. Karate Kid is told that whatever disease he has, it's either an alien virus or one from the future. Both, maybe?

This sets Una off, with under her breath mutterings about the coming of the Great Disaster. We're seeing a lot of recent indications that it's upon us, and I suppose it's about time. as I recall, when Jack Kirby originally created stories involving the disaster, it was supposed to have arrived in August of 1984. If that's wrong, it's my swiss-cheesed memory to blame. But I'd swear I once read a story back in the Kirby era that set the Great Disaster for August 28, 1984. Any verification -- or corrections?

By the way, Oracle appears to have an MRI unit in her hidden base of operations. Even for the ultimate data geek, this seems a bit much. It's not like she used to be a physician or something (and even if she had been it would be a bit ludicrous). Barbara Gordon was a librarian who wound up in Washington as a congresscritter. Normally members of congress aren't known for keeping MRI gadgets in their offices. Even Bill Frist passed that opportunity by.

Oracle comes up with the dossier on a 'mythical' biotech whiz named Elias Orr, who just might be good enough to help Karate Kid. I'm not sure why, but that name feels like it should be ringing a bell somewhere. Does anyone recall seeing a character of that name somewhere in the past of DC or it's ancestor companies? (Fawcett, Charlton, Quality, Wildstorm, etc?)

Mary Marvel and Zatanna arrive at Zatanna's ancestral home, which seems to be a mixture of the House of Mystery and Hogwarts. Her home, Shadowcrest, seems to be designed along the Tardis lines, that is, much bigger on the inside than the outside. I almost expected to find Skeeve and Aahz backing through a door while escaping some sort of pickle.

I have to note, by the way, that throughout this issue, the women all seem to have overly-large eyes and big heads. I know that neotony is a commonly-used way to make characters seem more cute, but it's done to excess here. Zatanna, on page 5, goes from a raven-haired Mary Jane Watson to someone who's had about three times too much botox in the course of two panels. What happened here? I'm suspecting that someone tried following Keith Giffen's layouts a bit too slavishly, without drafting the characters themselves, and wound up thoughtlessly following lines that were never intended for a final rendering. Whatever happened, it looks grotesque.

(I should probably mention that the art accompanying this article is NOT from this issue of Countdown.)
Who Dat?

Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Bob the Monitor, Jason Choi (aka The Atom) are now, I understand, considered to be the group Challengers of Beyond. The impression I'm getting is that, after Countdown, this may become it's own title. In the meantime, they've already announced some specials featuring the Challs.

Down at another level of the Palmerverse (which still sounds stoopid to me; anyone mind if I just settle for calling it the nanoverse?) they've found a group of, um, wizards who're performing some sort of ceremony. They chat with one (small) witch, who looks suspiciously like someone from the Levitz/Giffen Legion of Super-Heroes.

In short, Ray Palmer has been and gone, and now the Great Disaster is nearly here, which is why the wizards are scarpering off Right Now!

Piper and Trickster have a knack, doncha know, for being able to fall into a flower bed and end up deep in the fertilizer. That's actually an apt simile, because here they break into a greenhouse to steal vegetables (lo, see how the mighty have fallen) and discover it's the lair of Poison Ivy. As to the question, "what are the odds?", Trickster says it best. "This is Gotham! You can't swing a dead sidekick here without hitting a super-villain! We shoulda known the odds'd be pretty damn good!"

Speaking of Poison Ivy, her erstwhile partner, Harley Quinn is showing more signs that she's not over the thing that made her idolize and copy the Joker, she's just transferred her allegiance to Athena. There looks to be, possibly, a bit of a crush on Holly Robinson, as well.

Finally, Jimmy Olson is mulling over his attempt at joining the Teen Titans. Knowing it didn't go at all well, he tries to think through how his powers work. And, in mid-mull, he makes a discovery... He realizes that Clark Kent is Superman!

How? Dunno, but I'd guess it has much the same mechanism by which he knew who Jason Todd was when he saw the Red Hood.

The penciling in this issue is credited to "David Lopez with Mike Norton". Inks are "Don Hillman II with Rod Ramos" The only one here that's much familiar to me is Rod Ramos. I know he's better than what I'm seeing here. By and large I don't think the problem is with the inkers. The penciling, though, looks like someone just enlarged Keith Giffen's layouts and did a light penciling on top of them.

One strong indication is that a lot of things I'm seeing look much like Keith Giffen's type of raw layouts. A lot of the time, his layouts aren't so much drawn as cartooned, to give the person doing pencils an idea of what to draw. I'm seeing an awful lot of that bleeding through. Page 12 has a good example. In the first panel, Piper and Trickster are running, and Trickster is rendered like someone out of the old Mad, back when it was a comic. It looks like, instead of interpreting the layouts, they're tracing them and just adding detail, some of which isn't appropriate for a finished page. See again the Zatanna faces back on page 5.

Something needs to be done to prevent this in future issues. The art teams aren't having to race to do every issue, so why does the art look like it was done in incredible haste?