#44- Family Feud

This is the speed we should have been moving at all along. Granted, we're still in "building up steam" mode, but for perhaps the first time, players are actually moving around on the board. The pacing within the issue is stronger than what we've seen so far, with three to four page check-ins on most of our major characters (sans Jason and Donna) that actually fulfill the issue's title, "Change of Address".

On the downside, the series still feels nowhere near self-contained. As expected, the key beat in the Rogues storyline is only referenced and not shown here. How do Piper and Trickster end up severed from the rest of the Rogues anyway? In an effort to focus on what's here and not what isn't, I will say that for the first time I'm actually interested in the Rogues storyline, but every appearance that came before this served no purpose whatsoever and openly clashed with the storyline in "The Flash". The two key players in that book were apparently never invited to the Rogue soirees we saw in "Countdown". While there's still no indication what this storyline has to do with any others, it's nice that it's finally become a storyline. And naturally, someone is watching Piper and Trickster from the shadows, since the basic rule of thumb for this series has been that someone is always watching from the shadows.

The Holly Robinson material remains utterly incomprehensible. The Amazons are Attacking Washington DC and simultaneously lounging in Sapphic bliss over in Metropolis? My first guess is that this is an embassy, but the pages are laid out such that we don't see enough of the building's exterior to really be sure. Of course, the Themsicryan embassy was replaced by Khandaq's embassy back in "52", but that might have been addressed somewhere in "Wonder Woman". As far as I can tell, Holly has no previous connection to the Amazons, but more importantly, shouldn't these here Amazons be more focused on Attacking than on recruiting continuity-glitched street urchins? The only possible explanation I can come up with now (and this involves some serious stretching) is that the 'zons have an interest in anamolies related to Donna, but if that's the case, we should have seen some interaction between Donna and the Amazons beyond the fact she's nearby the Attack scene.
It's nice to see Jimmy using his investigative skills to investigate. Sort of. Of course, you realize this is all a tease for the return of Turtle Boy. Or possibly this:Among the big stars here are the Marvel family and the new rules of Magic. Keeping in mind that the architects of the old rules of Magic in the DCU included Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, the updated Bible being scribed by Bill Willingham and Judd Winick is going to come across as a little less fully-cooked. But if Billy is Shazam is the Rock of Eternity, and the whole Marvel family is (possibly) filed under T for Transuniversal anomaly, the state of Magic in the DCU seems a little perilous. The magic meets sci-fi stuff has always made my skin crawl and I thought DC was wise to avoid the issue throughout "Infinite Crisis" and "52" by keeping the two separate, but this will have to be raised at some point. Speaking of raised, the hemline of Mary's skirt has officially hit absurd.

Incidentally, at what point did the Seven Deadlies get new names? Is anything gained by changing Sloth's name to Laziness? Has Greed been changed to "Wantin' Stuff" somewhere off panel?

Finally, we have the Monarch recruiting pitch, which is able to undo a thousand generations of race-programming in the span of five minutes, despite its vagueness and poor grammar. It's difficult to tell here if Monarch has been assembling an army or is about to be attacked by one, and since the Monitors are currently at odds with one another, it's equally unclear which Monitor agenda Monarch is opposed to.

In the structural oddities department, it seems like "Countdown" is missing fairly easy chances to establish a sense of narrative symmetry. The Rogues on the run would seem to pair up nicely with the situation we'd expect to find Karate Kid in after the events of "The Lightning Saga", but KK's absent entirely from this issue. Likewise, Jimmy experimenting with his new powers would have paired nicely with Mary's exploration of her powers, but coming several issues later, it comes across as a bit repetitive, leaving off at the same "what's going on with those wacky powers" moment Mary's narrative stopped at in issue #46. And I imagine we're in for a long sales pitch to Donna and Jason from the Mutton Chop Monitor within the next two issues, but why not play it off Monarch's speech? If this series is going to move this slowly, it could at least move elegantly.