#50- The Return of the No-Prize

With the second issue, DC introduces its new editorial policy that all incongruities of continuity and logic are actually "clues". Veteran Marvel zombies will surely recognize this strategy from letter cols of old. Looks like when the multiverse came back, it brought the No-Prize with it.

Something needs to be said about DC's overall defensive stance on this series. I'm willing to roll with the "It's not a mistake, it's a clue" line, but the "It's not bad, you just don't understand it" line that came out fo the DC offices early on was downright insulting. There are slews of pretty savvy readers out there who, rightfully, blasted the opening issues of this series as being badly paced and being told they don't get it by the heads at DC is not going to bring them around. "Countdown" is going to have to do it on the page to keep its already skeptical readership.

I am hoping the apparent errors in this issue are actually pointing to something in the story, but they would have to account for how Jimmy Olsen knows the entire Bat-family on a first name basis (with the exception of Bruce and possibly Tim), how Jimmy also knew that Jason witnessed Duella's murder, how Arkham changed from its standard iron-bar Goth look to the "Silence of the Lambs" set, and how the Joker recovered from his disfigurement in Morrison's "Batman", has been running around killing magicians in Dini's "Detective" and is still sitting in a cell to play Hannibal to Jimmy's Clarice here in "Countdown".

Speaking of Morrison, is the "4-D beings" line supposed to be a dig? They're playing with a lot of Grant's toys here and handling them pretty roughly. Dini's already dismissed Grant's take on the New Gods as being just a Seven Soldiers thing, not to mention the sheer disrespect of calling a Scotsman a limey. And Morrison's revamp of the Joker has been dismissed entirely in favor of...well, that's not really clear yet.

I like the possibility of the Joker's insanity allowing him access an awareness of what's going on, cosmos-wise, but it's an idea that could derail pretty quickly. I hope we see more of the Joker in some iteration. What would a proud papa Joker look like?

I also like that we got some character history on Jason Todd in this issue, through the lens (catch that?) of Jimmy Olsen. Would have been that hard to have Batman or Black Lightning do the same on the Karate Kid situation? Wikipedia managed to sum it up in a couple paragraphs, couldn't the "Countdown" team throw a little exposition our way? It was nice to know that Columbia Pictures had to borrow the rights to the name for the Ralph Macchio film.