First Quarter Rundown

Since the oppressive heat in my apartment is making it impossible to finish the chapter I'm supposed to be working on, it seems like the perfect time to do a first quarter breakdown of "Countdown" so far. We're thirteen issues in now, so there should be an opportunity to start making overall assessments. Unless you're a member of the DC editorial and writing staffs, who seem to believe no such assessments can be made until the very end.

Let's start out with time of possession. The complete lack of crossover between storylines makes this an easy enough assessment. With pages of comics in print, raw scores are as follows:

Jimmy Olsen: 60 pgs.
The Challengers: 54 pgs.
The Rogues: 49 pgs.
Mary Marvel: 41 pgs.
Karate Kid: 21 pgs.
Forerunner: 21 pgs.
Holly Robinson: 19 pgs.
Darkseid: 10 pgs.

As far as narrative yardage, let's start with

Darkseid: So far we know that Darkseid has both an army and a chessboard. He may be manipulating certain events on earth, as the series starts off with him placing Duella Dent in proximity to Jason Todd, but there's been no further evidence of his involvement. We know that there's currently an opportunity to destroy him. Oh, and according to a two page spread, he's apparently one of the "New Gods". Huh, you don't say.

Holly Robinson: Like most of our characters, Holly's on the run. For the moment, she's serving as the voice of reason, or at least the voice of derisive sarcasm in the Athena Women's Shelter, which is either in Gotham or Metropolis, but seems to have settled into the latter.

The Athenian storyline that Holly's our window into may or may not be related to the big "Amazons Attack" event, but from what I can tell, that storyline is such a clusterfuck, I'm not going anywhere near it. Aside from not getting her ass arrested, Holly doesn't seem to have any motivation or drive and her predominant character trait seems to be "pluck". As the first quarter ends, Holly is about to go to an Athenian Self-Esteem-Building Workshop. This storyline has also given the artists a chance to draw entirely gratuitous panels of young women bathing.

Forerunner: With a hairstyle lifted from the "Star Wars" prequels, Forerunner is supposedly the character find of 2007. Her interests include honor and killing stuff. According to Monarch, she is the "forerunner" to a race known as (wait for it) the Forerunners. A race the Monitors bred for killin' and have apparently decided to wipe out entirely, using one woman as their proxy. We haven't seen 'runner lately, but last time we did, she was heading across the multiverse to kill whoever offed her people. Could be a long trip.

The confusion of Forerunner/Forerunners is just one more of the fascinating inconsistencies of "Countdown". I know there's an impulse to call them "mistakes" but let's wait til all the facts are in. Oh, and Monarch's face being fleshy instead of Captain Atom-y under the mask? Yeah, that was a mistake.

Karate Kid: When KK entered the scene, he was posing as someone named Trident and taking swings at Batman. He spent some time imprisoned by the JLA, spent some more time imprisoned by the JLA, spent some time not quite as imprisoned but still fairly imprisoned by the JLA. He chats with a couple JLAers, which amounted to "Hey, something sure is wrong here, huh?" He joined up with One Third of a Triplicate Girl and ran off, ending up in Oracle's personal space looking for answers as to what might be wrong. Because apparently it's wrong with him, in particular.

Is it the lack of personality? Could KK's lack of a perceptible personality lead to the Final Crisis?

Like our girl Holly, KK is on the run, but unlike Holly there is no apparent reason why. Even if you've read "The Lightning Saga", you're left with no idea who KK is hiding from. Can't be Batman, he was chatting up Batman a couple issues ago. Probably not Supes, they go way back. Also like Holly, we've got no real sense of whay KK might be running towards. Hopefully Babs can shed some light on this mess.

Okay, those are the really messy storylines. With the exception of maybe the Forerunner thing, which despite its flaws seems to have some direction in front of it. Let's move on to the bigger stories and see how we're doing.

Mary Marvel: You know, except for the ass and crotch shots, this storyline's not going too badly. Mary wakes from a year long coma and finds herself powerless and sets out to get some powers. And she does, but they might not be what she expects. So at the urging of the Riddler, she goes looking for guidance and is about to meet up with Zatanna. Look, kids: it's a narrative arc!

Granted, it's a little hobbled by the fact that the ad campaigns have been touting an Eclipso'd MM since back in the "52" days, but Mary's got a lot of the qualities the above-mentioned characters so far lack. Personality and clear motive to their actions. Everytime MM shows up (usually descending on the camera-eye crotch-first), we know why she is where she is, which is pretty refreshing. I'm not sure how this storyline ties into the Great Disaster/Final Crisis noise, but it's an interesting enough story to keep reading.

Plus it hasn't yet required me to read a single comic outside of "Countdown"

The Rogues: Seriously, these guys should not have shown up until after the Flash got offed. The early Rogues sections drove me up a wall with their half-assed Tarantino dialogue, repetetive homophobia is funny motif and general lack of any edge whatsoever. Every appearance before issue 44 is entirely discardable.

Since then, a little better. The writers seem to have a slightly better sense of Piper and Trickster than they did the rest of the Rogues, and the reintroduction of the Suicide Squad, who clearly have some agenda involving making villians disappear, has made this story tolerable. Actually, the mere fact it's gotten Montoya back on the page makes it tolerable. But it still feels like a story only barely started.

The Challengers: If I was betting on a story to lead most directly into a Final Crisis, my money would be on this one. It's got scope, even if it got off to a rocky start with Jason Todd making pretty uncanny logical leaps to determine he and Donna are being hunted by the Monitors. Speaking of logical leaps, it would be nice if the readers were getting some clues as to what the trail of Ray Palmer is.

Overall, I'm okay with this story. Donna's character needs to be fleshed out a bit more (this is not a call for bigger breasts, folks at DC. Female characters can also have "well-developed" personalities), and hopefully the inclusion of Kyle Rayner in the group will contribute a little more in the way of personal dynamics. How they're getting Kyle out of his current state and into "Countdown" has got me riveted. I hope someone told Paul Dini that Kyle Rayner is, how you say, super evil right now.

And finally...

Jimmy Olsen: This storyline started out with promise and has sort of jumped the rails since. Jimmy investigated the death of Duella Dent for about ten minutes, then investigated the death of his friend Lightray for about ten minutes, then decided to take up sewing. I was excited at the possibility that lowly Jimmy Olsen was going to put together the puzzle of the Great Disaster, but what we've gotten instead is clear evidence why Jim is a photographer and not an investigative reporter.

But here's the thing about Jimmy.

As of right now, Jimmy is the only player in "Countdown" who retains ties to the superhero community. Everyone else is on the run from something or other. Narratively, this holds possibility. Big events are in the offing, and while the Big Five (formerly known as the Big Three) would be well equipped to stop them, all the puzzle pieces lie in the hands of outcasts and fugitives. If I was making a guess, I'd say Jimmy's story will idle in superheroic tomfoolery for a bit until something puts Jimmy on the run like the rest of the cast. I'm casting my vote now for a Jimmy Olsen/Forager team-up.

Overall, it's not as bad as it could be. It's sluggish, yes. The art has been inconsistent and the editorial gaffs really do have to stop; there are four editors currently on the title, one of them should be reading it. But on reading it all together, I don't hate it. In fact I kind of like it. This may be due more to speculation on what's to come on my part, but I'm pretty firmly on board, and the issues seem to be getting better as time goes on.

To contrast this with the quarter mark in "52", by that point I was in love with the series, had a firm grasp on several well-developed (personality-wise) characters and, rather than speculating, was anxious to see what the writers would come up with next. There were scenes that were out and out brilliant and most everything else was at a consistently high quality level. Four of the top writers in the industry with a universe-wide, year-long sandbox to play in will do that for you.

To contrast this with what's going on currently in the "Green Lantern" books, they took a bunch of characters I couldn't care less about (not a Corps fan, me) and had me on board within the first few pages. I'm buying books I wouldn't have even leafed through two months ago and they're at the top of my read pile. Clear motivation will do that for you.
Not that we're comparing.

Writer Tony Bedard promises everything will be batshit crazy by #30. Which is good, this title could use a little more batshit crazy. Not to mention the "higher caliber" artists Mike Carlin's teasing folks with ("52" got in a nice rhythm of competent art broken up by occassional guest work by guys like Jiminez and Robertson. Anyone approaching that level would get me through an extra month of "Countdown" even if the plot didn't pick up). And less ass shots. Please, again, enough.