#47- Genocide means only having to say you're sorry.

"Sorry"? The magic word that gives a rampaging killer back his god like powers is "sorry"? Not even a little "droevig" or "apesadumbrado" so that maybe we don't run the risk of Teth-Adam spilling someone's coffee and suddenly regaining the ability to beat down most of the Eastern Hemisphere?

All right, let's get past the Teth-Adam thing, because I really did like this issue and I'm never going to see Adam as anything more than a watered-down version of Kid Miracleman anyway.

Jimmy's nightmare makes for a good beginning, but with this second appearance of the Source Wall in "Countdown" some questions need to be asked. For one thing, why is the Source Wall so much scarier looking in Jimmy's dream? When the Mutton Chop Monitor (MCM) approached in in #51, it was just some vaguely New Gods-lookin' fellows posed something like the Vitruvian Man, but in Jimmy's dream it's snarling monsters aplenty. The MCM says the Source Wall is the "barrier of each of the respective universes", which is fine, although it makes for a mighty snaky (not to mention permeable) Source Wall. And if the purpose of the Source Wall is to form a barrier between universes, what happened to the Source?

My understanding is that there's currently no one we'd recognized grafted onto the Source Wall, although Darkseid and his dad have both been bricks in the wall at various points, as has Ares before he split to join the Mighty Avengers. Hal Jordan passed through it during his Spectre days and found a huge Green Latern battery, which is a little like meeting God and finding out he looks eerily like your dad.

Rather than following up on strong opening, we shift over to Holly Robinson, who you might remember as...actually, you might not remember her at all. She was created by Frank Miller for "Batman: Year One" and had a brief stint as Catwoman. Of course, "Countdown" readers will gather all of this from the whip surreptitiously poking out of her duffel bag. Just like the Karate Kid intro, this appearance does little more than flag the character as someone Dini and Co. want us to care about.

The Watcher's Council, I mean, the Monitor's meeting does a good job of advancing the Monitor plot, although if Bearded Monitor alone is "one of the most powerful sentients" in the whole shooting match, it's tough to imagine Jason Todd, Donna Troy and Kyle Rayner lasting long against a whole posse of them. I'm a little unclear on how the inquest from a couple issues back transformed into a student council rally, though. And Mutton Chop Monitor learns that even overusing the word "crisis" doesn't always win an argument.

Surprise! The Rogues story is still going absolutely nowhere!

I'm not touching the "Amazons Attack" ad that finishes out this issue, although at some point I'm going to have to discuss the interaction between this book and other crossovers, especially if it continues to be as clumsy as this one.

Finally, I'm going to have faith that Teth-Adam has played his part in "Countdown" and won't be heard from again. You do have to wonder how far he's going to make it in Gotham City with no powers and that sporty little dress. Even though it's pretty clear things are going to get worse before they get better for Ms. Marvel, this could open up an exploration of the nature of the Black Marvel family's power. Osiris was maybe a little too clumsy to really be called a good guy, and Isis did recant all that goodness and mercy noise on her death bed, but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to an established hero powered by the same gods who refused to stop Black Adam's rampage.

Okay, this was a whole lot of catching up. We are now officially going to start weekly installments on this mother. Thanks for bearing with me so far, hopefully from here on out things will feel less rushed and I'll feel a little less cornerered in by what's already been said about the issue at hand. Onward to #46!