With DC’s weekly monolith 52 heading into its second quarter this week with the release of Week Fourteen, it’s no surprise that some people are looking back at what’s come before. Wizard takes a stab at trying to work out what the story’s all about:

From a plot standpoint, the series is quite a bear to summarize (believe us, we had to do it!), but over the course of the past 13 weeks there have been a few specific threads adding up to point readers in the direction of what exactly all of this means… Obviously, Montoya and the Question are headed to Kahndaq to investigate the strange “Kirby-esque” weaponry Intergang has been ferreting into Gotham, but don’t forget that the country’s ruler Black Adam also had a run in with Intergang during Week Three. Speaking of Intergang, the crime organization has had a long connection to the more dastardly members of Jack Kirby’s New Gods Pantheon, and with Devilance showing up in space, it’s a safe bet that the Kahndaq crew will be dealing with more denizens of the Source before this is all over. …Back in Metropolis, we’ve seen some crossover between former Justice League International “buddies” Ralph Dibney and Booster Gold. While the pair don’t seem to see eye-to-eye these days, both are embroiled in investigations revolving around recent trauma, with Ralph seeking a spiritual solution and Booster drifting towards science. With the mad scientists missing (a fact investigated by both Doc Magnus and the Question), we’re betting all the mysteries we’ve seen so far will dovetail together before too long.

Brian Hibbs, meanwhile, explains fellow Savage Critic Jeff Lester’s problem with the series’ construction:

[T]he central conceit that each book is a week, no more and no less, is crippling the dramatic through-line of the book… it has been a full real month since we’ve even seen Booster or John Henry; even longer since we’ve heard back about the teleportation accident — is Hawkgirl still 40 feet tall two months later? While “3 pages each of the 6 leads” would have been a worse structure, there really needed to be some sort of checking in with each protagonist week-by-week — even if it is just a panel or two. How is it that it takes 2 weeks or more to get to the middle east? Even a panel of Renee on the phone on hold trying to get a flight, and being told they’re all filled up because people with the meta-gene are fleeing to the region or something (anything) would have been preferable. See, unlike a monthly title where the reader largely needs to be recapped and hand-walked through the story-threads because enough time has passed and we’ve forgotten, in a weekly release, he audience is directly behind you, and needs forward momentum, more than anything else. Look at all of the complaints about the back half of the first season of LOST, for example. No one wants to see you spin wheels — we want PROGRESS.

Of course, if you’re looking for more indepth issue-specific insight into the series instead of people trying to work out what’s wrong or going on, you could do much worse than Douglas Wolk’s 52 Pickup.

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