#51- Another Girl, Another Planet

No one's going to argue that "Countdown" doesn't stumble coming out of the gate. Even the rare favorable reviews of the first issue are essentially being optimistic, dreaming of storylines to come and ignoring the story in front of them. The issue has been widely and rightfully disparaged for lacking the opening grab of other works

The cover pretty much announces the problem that will haunt the first few issues of the series. It's all-inclusive and sprawling, with every DC hero Andy Kubert can fit into a three-page spread. Some of the "guides to the series" are included: Mary Marvel out on the left fringe, Donna and Jason split by the right fold and maybe Karate Kid is in there somewhere (behind Big Barda? Tough to tell). The inclusion of Monarch/Captain Atom, Batgirl and one of the OMACs are interesting choices that might indicate interesting things to come, but for the most part, the cover, once again stamped with the "So Begins the End" tagline, gives no hints of what the series is going to be about.

Inside, there are serious problems with pacing. In short, the issue doesn't get enough done. The rooftop chase scene takes up a full third of the issue in the lead up to the "jaw-dropping" opening event. The Rogues' scene seems like something that would have been a page's worth of Keith Giffen's layouts. Narrative space is eaten up by a lot of big panels that show very little, including the two-page spread that opens the issue and the title, "Look to the Skies" has absolutely nothing to do with the action of the story, since nothing seems to come from the skies in this issue but a bit of rain.

Which brings up a side issue: is everything in this issue, save the scenes on Apokolips and at the Source Wall, supposed to be taking place in the same city? The consistent rooftop setting and confusing page layouts that crosscut between Duella, Mary and the Rogues seem to suggest we're in the same city, but the fact it isn't raining on Piper suggests we're not. Either way, where the hell is all of this going on?

Enough abuse, let's look at positives. Starting out with Darkseid is a good move, even if he doesn't really do anything. The absence of the New Gods was pretty obvious throughout "Infinite Crisis" and "52", so announcing their presence in "Countdown" at the start is a solid way to go. Darkseid completes the Big Three of DC villians (along with Luthor, who was prominent in "52" and the Joker, about whom more later) and leading off with him assures the reader that big things are afoot, even if those things are not yet apparent. Desaad's speech does a decent job of laying out the model for the start of the series: not a crash, just a small stone dropped in a very large lake.

Also interesting is the question of how exactly Duella Dent knows she's from a neighboring earth. Was it just the realization that she'd been rehashing an overdone concept with the Jokerette routine, or was Duella actually aware of herself as "an incongruity"? Her offhanded comment about Jason Todd's place in the cosmic scheme is clearly going to be the underlying question for a lot of the central cast in a very concrete way. Rather than vague wonderings about where one belongs in the universe, what does a person do when they learn that they explicitly don't belong in the universe?

The idea of multiple Monitors has potential, especially when you figure in a recent discussion with "Countdown" editor Mike Marts at Newsarama that suggests the personalities of particular Monitors could be influenced by the universes they, um, monitor. Nazi Monitor, anyone? Although it seems this idea might have been introduced over in the "Ion" series where DC has been secretly bringing back the multiverse. Am I correct in assuming that most of the DCU doesn't know what a Monitor looks like, other than Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner and the Psycho Pirate, whose face was recently relocated to the back of his head by Black Adam? Continuity-wise, do the veterans of the original "Crisis" recollect what happened? This is a point of ignorance for me, so help would be appreciated.

The real hook here for me is the Mary Marvel storyline, which is handled with humanity and humor. Her plight, introduced in just three pages, is more interesting to me than dueling Monitors, the murder of a fourth-string character or the pointless infighting of the Rogues.

The ending, with the repetition of two of the series's marketing taglines, is kind of a dull thud in terms of a cliffhanger, since we've already been alerted to the coming of a Great Disaster and the necessity of locating Ray Palmer, and dedicating a full panel to the Mutton-Chopped Monitor's shock only underlines the total lack of shock on the part of the reader. The last two pages seem grafted on, and as far as details on the Great Disaster go, this issue's not much more forthcoming than the Source Wall.