Last year, I smarted off that “52 … looks like a happy accident, and Countdown could be an accident waiting to happen.”

Wish I’d been wrong.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.

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I’ve lived with Countdown and many of its tie-ins for the better part of a year now; so I’ll start by saying thank goodness it’s over. The best thing about it was that it didn’t end on a cliffhanger. Also, it shipped on time.

Those are backhanded compliments, but compliments nonetheless. Despite its titular association with Final Crisis and its original mission as FC’s prelude, I’m not sure I could have taken a year-long maxiseries which led into another “to be continued.” I was eager for Countdown to end not just to be rid of its shortcomings, but because I tend to like stories which actually stop. Good for Countdown for doing that.

The rest of it, however, is another matter. Although Countdown started and finished with Darkseid and the Monitors, the 48 or so issues in between went off in a number of different directions, and sometimes had to be wrenched back on track. Countdown’s position as the ostensible “spine” of the DC superhero line further exacerbated its lack of focus, since its first few months crossed over with Amazons Attack, Bart Allen’s death, “The Lightning Saga,” the Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding, “The Sinestro Corps War” (indirectly), and Salvation Run.

Of course, Countdown would have been complicated even without those side trips. In almost every issue it tried to juggle a half-dozen threads (the Challengers, Harley & Holly, Jimmy Olsen, Mary Marvel, Piper & Trickster, and Karate Kid & Una), some of which maintained only tenuous connections to the Darkseid through-line. For example, not having read Salvation Run, I didn’t know about DeSaad’s involvement on planet Salvation until I looked at Wikipedia.

In any event, starting around issue #16, those threads converged in a few different apocalyptic (no pun intended) sequences. First, an idyllic Earth-51 was utterly destroyed during a battle between Monarch’s armies, the Monitors, and Superman-Prime. Next, our cast witnessed the obliteration of Apokolips by Brother Eye and its OMACs. After that, a rebuilt Earth-51 was devastated by unstoppable plague. That brought us to the last big battle, which ended last week with Darkseid’s death.

So, that’s it, right? Well, not exactly: this week’s final issue provides an epilogue where a) Ray, Kyle, Donna, and Forager vow to “monitor the Monitors”; b) Mary Marvel remains antisocial; and c) Brother Eye, now apparently orbiting Earth-51, creates a more Kirbyesque OMAC. I’m guessing that Final Crisis will revisit most (if not all) of those events, simply because there wouldn’t be much point to Countdown otherwise.

Unfortunately, Countdown was the worst kind of “process” superhero story: a series of stunts which manipulated characters and events to get from one plot point to another. None of the principals had any great moment of personal discovery, and most were shoved around by some external force. After a while I was buying Countdown for informational purposes first and artistic merits second, which is the absolute worst way to approach any work. (Still, I’m glad to have the issues themselves, because it would have been impossible to follow just from the Wikipedia summaries.)

Furthermore, Countdown was designed to be plot-heavy, in order to demonstrate the extent to which DC’s superhero titles were interconnected. To this end, it sacrificed its own individuality. Despite a bullpen of five writers and sixteen pencillers,* and Paul Dini supervising and Keith Giffen consulting, Jimmy Olsen and Harley Quinn weren’t particularly funny, Jason Todd was one-dimensional, and Donna Troy and Kyle Rayner were consistently bland. (I’ll get to Mary Marvel later.) The main Monitors (Bob, Solomon, Nix**) looked too much alike; and their power levels seemed to vary with their functions in the overall story. I couldn’t tell you how Darkseid’s plan would have worked, or how the Monitors could have affected it. That said, Countdown seemed most effective when it settled down with a consistent week-to-week creative team (or at least a consistent co-writer).

In fact, starting with the 2008 issues, a single co-writer stayed with a sequence for at least three issues: Tony Bedard on issues 16-13 (Earth-51), Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti on issues 12-8 (Apokolips), Adam Beechen on issues 7-5 (Great Disaster), and Sean McKeever on issues 4-2 (Darkseid). Of these arcs, the Bedard and Beechen issues fared the best. While Gray & Palmiotti’s final five issues united the entire cast on Apokolips, and did a lot towards winding up the overall plot, they were necessarily more complicated and less organized than the other end-of-the-world mini-arcs. Likewise, my problems with issues 4-2 have more to do with the overall plot choices than with McKeever’s script.

First, take Mary Marvel. She spends most of the series turning (or turned) to the proverbial dark side, but repents after freeing her divine patrons. They reward her by restoring her powers. However, for no good reason (literally), she then joins Darkseid and turns bad again, which is where the series leaves her. I can hear DC saying “Mary’s story isn’t over yet,” and I’m sure it gets some charge out of Black Mary, but those are disingenous, artificial excuses.

Second, the entire Piper/Trickster thread has no real connection to the main Darkseid/multiverse plot until DeSaad reveals that he’s been behind it all along. This is a little easier to swallow in light of DeSaad’s involvement behind the scenes of Salvation Run, but again, I wouldn’t have known about that without Wikipedia. It goes without saying that I shouldn’t have to get a significant part of the story from another source.

That brings me to Orion’s unexpected, barely explained appearance in issue #2.*** It’s one thing to kill Darkseid, only to have him healthy enough to foment Final Crisis in five weeks. It’s another to have him killed by a character who practically comes out of nowhere. As stoopid as it might sound, I would have preferred Darkseid’s defeat at the hands of the Atom and Giant Turtle-Boy Jimmy, because they were actively involved in the series. Really, the more I think about it, the more Orion’s role seems to have come from editorial fiat: in order for the “Fifth World” to start, Darkseid must die, and in order for Darkseid to die, Orion has to kill him. The fudging about the fire-pits feels like a compromise in order to let our heroes at least watch the action.

While I did think the Earth-51 sequences were relative highlights of the series (well, except for the “eaten alive by rats” bits), in hindsight they too feel like distractions. The first Earth-51 sequence, which ended with another fight-to-the-apparent-death between Superman-Prime and Monarch, came more from the series’ exploitation of the multiverse than, say, an exploration of Ray Palmer’s character. Monarch’s multiversal army turned out to be a lot of stunt casting, and the brief burst of attention given to Forerunner didn’t go anywhere. The second sequence, which turned the rebuilt Earth-51 into the home of OMAC and Kamandi, was more multiverse exploitation, only this time combined with unnecessary Jack Kirby homages.

Still, Countdown apparently took advantage of the room it had to explore those alternate universes. It even outsourced parts of the story to tie-ins (Arena, The Search For Ray Palmer, Death of the New Gods) and other series. Instead of tightening its main plot, though, this made Countdown Proper somewhat flabby. While it deliberately avoided 52’s rigid structure, the series adopted its own set of rules, including “checking in” almost every week on the various subplots. This meant that the process of introducing, advancing, and resolving each plot element often wasn’t confined to just one issue. Since Countdown put out 20 pages of story every week, the series got padded.

Indeed, despite relying upon lead-ins, lead-outs, and cliffhangers every 20-odd pages, Countdown often felt like it was “written for the trade.” This gave it a very herky- jerky rhythm which only smoothed out when the cast came together. Similarly, it lacked 52’s real-time pacing, but was clearly intended to be experienced on an every-week basis (ideally, I’m sure, in conjunction with many other fine DC books). Perhaps it even aspired to be the ultimate expression of the New Comics Wednesday direct-market culture: read, digested, and integrated regularly into the expanding knowledge bases of DC’s ideal fans. (Nevertheless, Countdown didn’t seem to work well even on an organizational level, since the crossovers’ timelines didn’t quite line up. Where did Superman-Prime get that black suit, anyway…?)

I wonder how many of the people who stuck with Countdown fit that profile. According to ICV2, retailers ordered just over 91,000 copies of the first issue. For issue #9, eight weeks ago, the numbers had stabilized just above 67,000 copies. In the words of Marc-Olivier Frisch, “[i]f DC hadn’t hyped the book as a major event and produced a dozen spin-off titles, Countdown to Final Crisis would have to be considered a big success.”

No doubt DC takes some comfort in the fact that it can sell 67,000 copies per week of a series which is pilloried virtually as soon as each issue appears. However, I kinda hope the company focuses more on the qualifiers and less on the “big success” part of Frisch’s statement. DC under Dan DiDio apparently covets the sort of communal, neighborhood-style shared universe which emerged from Marvel in the ‘60s; but you just can’t will that into existence, even with four years’ worth of crossovers.

This is not to say that DC should abandon its shared-universe dreams. They may still come true, but I doubt they’ll come from the top down. I’ve said it before: the company needs discrete storylines in diverse titles, produced by creative teams who have some breathing room; and DC does seem to be moving in that direction. It’s especially encouraging that Trinity, with its consistent creative team and disconnect from week-to-week continuity, looks more like 52 than it does Countdown. Indeed, over the past year Kurt Busiek’s Superman work had nods to Countdown that felt more organic that most of the latter’s crossover elements.

Whether more subtlety could have saved Countdown may be a question best left to those with more time on their hands. Who knows — in a year or so I may go through it all again in light of Final Crisis. It might make more sense then, or it might be even more incoherent. The ideas behind it certainly had potential — Jimmy Olsen, Donna Troy, and Mary Marvel vs. Darkseid — but for a number of reasons, Countdown couldn’t close the deal.

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* The writing team of Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti worked on a total of 15 issues, compared with 11 each for Tony Bedard, Adam Beechen, and Sean McKeever. Paul Dini wrote three issues solo.

Tom Derenick led all pencillers by working on all or part of 11 issues. He was followed by Jesus Saiz and Carlos Magno (7 each); Manuel Garcia (5); Scott Kolins and Jim Calafiore (4 each); Pete Woods, Mike Norton, and David Lopez (3 each); and Ron Lim, Jamal Igle, and Al Barrionuevo (2 each). Jim Starlin, Howard Porter, Freddie Williams II, and Dennis Calero each pencilled one issue.

** Selected anagrams for “Nix Uotan”: Taxi Noun, Axon Unit, Tax Union.

*** I didn’t read Death of the New Gods, but the parts of issue #8 which I have seen aren’t too helpful.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Comic Books, DC Comics, Grumpy Old Fan, Version 1.0 Blog@. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.