To DC Comics,

You suck.

For, but not limited to, the reasons listed here, DC Comics has been found guilty of publishing utter shite and taking the company-wide crossover into over-bloated insanity.

• For saddling Will Pfieffer and Dwayne McDuffie with lame tie-ins while they are a perfect fit for the books they're writing. No one cares about Salvation Run, we want Catwoman running the East End and a good Justice League story.
• For giving Bruce Jones work.
• For Countdown. Garbage.
• For Infinity Man being the New God Killer. I'm sorry if that spoils it for you, but since they made it so damn easy to figure it out, you shouldn't be surprised. I mean, really, frickin' Infinity Man? Who didn't guess that and think, "It can't be Infinity Man. That's too easy." Fuck you, Stalin.
• For replacing Greg Rucka with Bruce Jones on Checkmate.
• For Trials of Shazam! and the fact that a twelve issue mini-series hasn't ended fifteen months later. And the hack job Winick did on Captain Marvel, Billy Batson & Freddie Freeman. Save your magic scripts for Juniper Lee and give us the superhero Captain Marvel is supposed to be.
• For bringing back The War That Time Forgot and having it written by Bruce Jones.
• For Gotham Underground being a prelude to Salvation Run but coming out at the same time.
• For The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul. What's the point if Ra's gets drugged and locked in Arkham the very next month?
• For A.J. Curry-Aquaman talking down to Superman & Batman. That was just crap.
• For the Forerunner back-up in Countdown to Adventure. Ugh.
• For the Eclipso back-up in Countdown to Mystery. What the hell is that, some filed away crap you just decided to throw on the back of Dr. Fate?
  

More Countdown Theories

Despite my many grievances with Countdown, I'm utterly fascinated by it. Obviously it's not because it's good, it's that the plot seems to be centered around almost everything Jack Kirby ever created for DC.

The most obvious known Kirby DC creations are the New Gods, and they're being systematically souljacked by a mysterious silhouette that may or may not be the Infinity Man. Add to that Darkseid is shown repeatedly scheming with his chess pieces in what must be the most complicated Risk strategy ever devised, especially since it seems to include Holly Robinson as an essential factor.

Early Kirby creations the Newsboy Legion pop up in their original lineup to help Jimmy Olsen figure out why he has those Silver Age powers(the powers are actually pre-Kirby Jimmy Olsen, but his New Gods stuff started out in that series). Their fate is up in the air because even though Countdown declared "JIMMY OLSEN MUST DIE!", that's obviously not gonna happen. What remains to be seen is if Cadmus and their many, many clones will survive the character purge Final Crisis seems to be. Lord knows Kon-El didn't survive the last one.

Command 'D', the secret hideout of the Atomic Knights who debuted in The Battle For Bludhaven, was originally the name of the bunker The Last Boy on Earth, Kamandi, was raised in and named after. Kamandi was the last boy because most of the human race was wiped out in something only refered to as The Great Disaster. For casual readers, The Great Disaster has been a long standing plot device to explain why there are no superheroes or records of the past in the future. Kamandi was raised and trained in Command 'D' by his grandfather, Buddy Blank, the original OMAC. Makes that annoying blonde kid in Countdown more interesting, doesn't it.

With Countdown only half over, there's still 6 months for more of Kirby's inventions to pop up. That boom tube Waller and the government are using to deport super-villains is probably sending them to Transilvane, the planet in the basement. It's the perfect prison and probably where Ray Palmer's been hiding out. Maybe Atlas is the guy killing off the New Gods. As a titan, he would consider himself a 'real' god. And, God willing, maybe these guys would show up for the hell of it.

Far out.

This COUNTDOWN Is Becoming A Quagmire!

I know I was harsh on Countdown when it first started, what with Superman telling Jimmy the secret identities of Batman's first sidekicks and the general bleh I feel towards most of the story(ies?). Now, though, I feel as though I have read enough of it to truly say it's just not that good.

When other books have "A Countdown Tie-in" slapped over their titles, you expect Countdown to give you the main story that the book is tying into. The thing is, when you read Countdown, it seems as though the book is a tie-in to other things, leaving you looking around for the whole story.

I think having a book dedicated to "linking" the DCU is a ingenious idea, but it's being done poorly. The central story is broken up into so many side pieces that are known to not be resolved in the series or until the very end that most people will probably wait until that mini-series comes out to read the story. It makes reading Countdown weekly seem like treading water. As it stands, Countdown could have been a series of back-up stories or inserts and would probably have been better received.

Just my opinion.

In Other Countdown Theories...

...Beardface is being controlled by, was replaced by or is Darkseid.

That's why no one realizes he has control over the Shadow Demons.

And if you haven't read Amazons Attack! #6, I just did you a favor.

Why DC Bugs Me

When I started this blog (well, not this one, but the first one), I wanted to give the internets a Marvel-tinted blog to balance out the more DC-centric ones out there. Even when I decided to talk about anything, I thought I'd talk about the big two evenly, because, well, they both have excellent comics or maddening practices.

Yet, every week, I'm here talking about the latest reason DC is destroying my brain.

The latest thing that really is getting to me is this. It's not Countdown to Mystery or Countdown to Adventure that's bugging me. It's Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer. Why the hell is this a miniseries? Fifty-two freaking issues isn't enough to tell this story? Isn't the Monitors story and the whole bit with Jason, Donna and Kyle supposed to be a storyarc in Countdown?

This new trend, having multiple mini-series to coincide with a miniseries, is happening in both DC and Marvel. But you know what makes them different? You don't have to read any of the extra Marvel series to understand the main story.

Think about it. Were any of the Civil War mini-series necessary for the series? But Infinite Crisis was the culmination of four previous mini-series, plus a mini-series that led into one of the four. Would IC make any sense if you had no clue what an OMAC was, when someone was pretending to be Luthor, or why the hell was Rann & Thanagar was at war? And then, they had specials to "end" the mini-series, but they only led back to IC.

And 52? Well, World War III just plain sucked. Yet, the majority of the year long gap plots were stuffed into those four issues, thus making them essential to the point of 52.

This may be an over-reaction, but to have a mini-series devoted to what's been so far established as one of the main points of Countdown is superfluous, and just a way to squeeze money out of the comic fans who are completists at heart. And it seems to be DC's new standard.

Countdown to Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen '08

Despite my many concerns with Countdown, the one thing that keeps me coming back every week is the fact that the main character of the series, the one tied into the two main plot lines is

The Goddamned Jimmy Olsen!

I don't know when Jimmy stepped up as one of my favorite characters. I wasn't into Superman books growing up, just occasionally picking up Bryne's Action back issues and anything that looked cool. And back then (just around the 80's I should say), Jimmy was a furniture piece, a prop to need Superman's help or say how cool Superman is.

I think it was in the 90's that Jimmy started to get some of his Silver Age moxy back. He would be working with Cadmus, being targeted by mad scientists and wearing science suits. It was great. Especially when rendered by Tom Grummet.

Then came Metropolis , a miniseries dealing with the Brainiac 13 tech that had taken over Metropolis. Lots of shenanigans were going on, people coming back from the dead and supervillains being bonded together and such, and investigating the story was Our Hero, James Bartholomew Olsen. His signal watch used as transceiver for the intelligence in the tech (Lex Luthor's daughter Lena, to be exact), Jimmy went through harrowing ordeals while keeping his laid back cool and making time with the cyber-Lena.

Then Gail Simone was writing Action Comics, and Jimmy was rushing headon to take pictures and save people. And it was shortly thereafter that I found blog posts about Silver Age Jimmy and his antics, while very weird, cemented Jimmy's position as one of my top favorite DC characters. And he's in august company with the likes of Tempest, Brainiac 5 and Lar Gand.

Just something I wanted to share.

Countdown To Challengers Of The Unknown & Other Theories

I read Countdown #48 today and some thoughts are congealing in my head and I just wanted to get them down and see what everyone thinks.

As far as where Countdown is heading, what it will mean long term for the DCU, I think they are setting up the New Earth Universe as the 'meeting spot' for all the other universes. It's long been the general opinion that Crisis On Infinite Earths came about when too many alternate universes were mixing together and in the exit interviews from the writers of 52, the universes of the new Megaverse are supposed to be independent of each other.


But New Earth is riddled with apparently extraneous characters from the multiverse, characters who were here from before the Megaverse was created. I think when all is said and done, The Monitors will designate New Earth to take the brunt of any mutiversal instability, with the new Challengers of the Unknown (Jason Todd, Donna Troy, Ion and some other displaced characters, probably) to deal with any problems that arise. From the promos for the new Booster Gold series, Hunter and the Carter Boys will be handling the Megaverse and time, and it kind of makes sense that a team in the present deals with threats rooted in one universe.


As for the events in Justice League and Justice Society, namely the scene from Justice League of America #0, I think that is New Earth's Justice League. In the picture, the Big Tree are looking at the computer display of the two Earths, the picture of the JLA and JSA is in the background. Batman says they have seen alternate universes and a full-on multiverse, and only one Earth has seen a full-on multiverse: New Earth. In the last issue of Infinite Crisis, the JSA make note that they not only remember their New Earth past, but remember a time when Batman and Superman were members of the JSA. Since the Megaverse is new, those universes haven't been in contact each other yet, making New Earth the only possible place for a Justice League with that photo in their base.


As for the "Legion Lost", a friend from the comic store has pointed out to me that Sensor Girl could not exist alongside Karate Kid, at least if they went out on a mission at the same time. Sensor Girl was Princess Projectra after she returned from sabbatical. Why was she on sabbatical? Because her husband, Karate Kid, was killed by Nemesis Kid. What I don't get is, if the Legion already know about the parallel Earths, why do they keep talking as if New Earth is their past? I get that Superman's Legion past was written back in during IC, but Waid's Legion is clearly the Legion of New Earth's future.


Speaking of Meltzer's missteps, this aside is about Amazons Attack! #2. I appreciate Pfeifer's commitment to continuity, but if I have to read one more series with the Justice League standing around calling each other by their first names, I'm going Dark Horse for the rest of my life.

Back to Countdown...Jimmy's encounter with Lightray makes me think the Infinity Man may make a reappearance. He was this super-powerful being that the Forever People could summon with their Mother Box. If Devon is correct, and this Jimmy is displaced, he and the other Challengers may summon him to take on Darkseid, whenever the Kilted Menace makes his play. Or it could be this guy , who was an honorary Legion of Super-Heroes member that gained power of space and time, but lost them during the original Crisis. Maybe he's the "last Legionnaire" Dawnstar and the others are looking for, because Lightning Lad is still in the future, apparently. Then again, Scip has a point about this, too.

I can't wait till the week of Aqua-Jimmy, to tell you the truth. Olsen has been exposed to more powers than Peter Petrelli.

Countdown:Reservations

Last week, Red Hood (Jason Todd) is portayed as a gung ho vigilante, a good guy who goes too far. It explains why he tries to save faux Lindsay Lohan from Duela Dent, but flies in the face of the past few months of Red Hood trying to set himself up as a gunrunner and kill the Green Arrow Family.

This week, Jimmy Olsen, Superman's pal, besides having the world's finest assistant, tries to get the real story of what killed Duela Dent. To that end, Supes gives him some backstory on the Red Hood, to help him understand better. I want to understand why Superman just gave Jimmy the keys to Batman's identity. I realize Richard Donner wants Jimmy to be stuck in the 50's cub reporter persona, but it wouldn't take much more than a Google search to link Jason Todd and Dick Grayson to Bruce Wayne.

Now, Red Hood tells Jimmy some alien kills Duela Dent and then another alien prevents the first from killing Red Hood. Of course, Jimmy, like anyone would be, is confused. So who does Red Hood suggest Jimmy talk to, and eventually Jimmy does interview as if he would really have any idea why aliens were out killing people? The freakin' Joker. Yeah, you get to have your Hannibal Lecter moment, but Jesus, it makes no sense. Would he really think Joker knows what's going on because it seems crazy, so Joker must know about it? That, my friends, is faulty reasoning.

It's way too early in the series for me to start seeing faults if I'm supposed to follow this thing all year. But it's got Jimmy Olsen so I can't be too mad at it.

52:Week Fifty-One

I'm just going to go on the record saying I liked 52 as a experiment and an anthology of stories. It would have been better to not have been reminded that it was supposed to touch upon on the One Year Later changes, but World War III aside, it was worth the money. As far as Week Fifty-One is concerned,

It ruled.

Montoya's and Black Adam's stories pretty much concluded weeks past and now we get the end of the story for the space heroes. Adam Strange gets something he's been needing for about a year now, only the updated version. Lobo finally brings the Emerald Eye of Ekron to the Triple Fish whatever, and gets released from his nonviolence oath. And Buddy,

Well, let's say Morrison is good to his friends. I hope the guy in the robe lives there. If not, get some clothes on, old man! And Starfire keeps her word.

The main shock of this issue has to be the evil in Skeets and what 52 means for at least three of the characters in this series. Maybe even Ambush Bug, too.

My favorite part of this issue must have came from Geoff Johns, though.

Anyway, really great series and I'm on the edge of that thing you sit in for the finale, or the prologue of Countdown, however you want to see it. Countdown may top 52, if only for the fact it features one of the greatest comic creations ever: