I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.

More than likely, no one is still reading this, as it's been effectively defunct for almost six months. I've been loyally, if somewhat miserably, reading Countdown that whole time, but to be honest, I just haven't had much to say. When I started this blog, I was coming off the high of 52, and a crucial part of that series for me was Doug Wolk's 52 Pickup blog. Returning home late from bartending on a Wednesday night, I'd crack a beer, read through the new issue and, the next morning at work, match it up with Doug's annotations. Wow, that sentence makes me sound like the nerdiest alcoholic on the planet.

There were two reasons Doug could do what he did. The first is that Doug is incredibly bright. The second is that 52 was bursting with ideas. The spinoffs from 52 were necessary because the four writers involved had packed more stuff into the book than they could possibly deal with in the bounds of the story. What's more, the story itself, centered on a handful of second (or third) string characters, developed those characters in such a way as to make them narratively and commercially viable again.

There were two reasons the writers could do what they did. The first is that they are not only four of the most talented writers in the industry, but they're all writers with the long eye. Each of those gentlemen has, on several occasions, proven that they have a gift for long form serial narrative and in most cases, for rehabilitating lackluster characters. Morrison made his career on it, but Rucka was, to me, central to pulling Batman out of a continuity rut, and Johns and Waid have done the same for Green Lantern and the Flash, respectively. This project was tailor made for these guys, or they were tailor made for it, depending on how you want to look at it. And the second reason is that DC gave them more or less free reign. Granted, there must have been some editorial mandate along the lines of "Hey, at the end we'd like a multiverse", but that doesn't exactly staple a writer's hands to his back; it's a fairly open-ended mandate, as these things go.

Contrast that with the mandate given to Paul Dini. Dini is not a bad writer, and I sincerely hope this project doesn't destroy his career, although it will surely haunt him for the rest of his days. But Dini's strengths have always been in writing short, iconic stories about iconic characters. The brilliant thing about his work on Batman: The Animated Series was his ability to make Batman seem more Batman-esque than he did in the regular comics. Dini followed this up with a series of large format one-shots with Alex Ross, who has the exact same strengths as Dini: Ross is fairly limited as a storyteller, but when it comes to making Superman (or any other hero) look as full-on godlike as possible, Ross is the go to guy. But Dini has never even attempted a long form story and has never been shackled to characters that in any way resemble human beings. Why on earth would DC editorial tap him to plot their spinal column?

But in fact, any writer would have failed at this task. Dini was given a start point and a very definite endpoint. He was in fact supposed to dovetail his story into another story by Grant Morrison, a writer who is kind of his exact opposite. Look at Dini's Detective and Morrison's Batman. Both great books, both appealing to, I'm guessing here, very different audiences. Both creating "timeless" Batman stories, in their own way: Dini by ignoring continuity in favor of concept, Morrison by making continuity the concept. I've suspected throughout Countdown that Dini was sneaking in backhanded digs against Morrison by portraying Grant's babies poorly (I mean, did he really have to make Klarion the witch boy such a asshole? And then there was that Invisibles dig in Arkham right at the outset), but who could blame him if he did?

The issue of editorial mandate brings me to my final point here. Countdown was doomed from the start; it was structured entirely from the outside, by editors who, while they may have many good qualities, are not writers. Any writer can tell you the crucial moment in working a story is when you're bent over the thing like a coroner and suddenly it sits up, politely removes the scalpel from your hand and says, "I'm sorry, but the type of story you thought you were telling? I'm not that kind of story at all. Let me tell you a little about myself." I believe this can happen within a collaboration of writers, but I don't believe it can happen as a result of an editorial mandate.

I'd like to bring Marvel into this for a minute. Marvel has an epic every couple months, and for the past two years, they've generally been okay. I mean, you can take whatever issues you want with the characterization in Civil War or the pacing of House of M, but they've been nowhere near as egregious as Countdown. All of the Marvel events come out of a similar approach. Editorial says, "We need an epic. Anyone got an epic?" and someone (usually Bendis) says, "Yeah, I've got this epic." And so the writer (usually Bendis) gets to have their epic and editorial figures out what to do in the aftermath. This used to be the model at DC as well: at the annual conferences of Batman or Superman writers, someone would present an idea, the idea would gestate among the writers and editorial would help direct the fallout. This was certainly the case with DC's most successful epic this year, the Sinestro Corps War. Which I loved. It was packed full of ideas and personality, it was clumsy and big and dumb, but the story was primary, the aftermath resulted from it. Countdown was always about aftermath. It was a pre-fabricated epic. It was like your dad planning the family vacation including a dozen required tourist stops on the way to Disneyland. At each stop, everyone ceremoniously and disinterestedly loads out of the car, stands in front of the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota and then loads back into the hot, sweaty, uncomfortable car. If you're lucky, the whole mess doesn't break down somewhere in the middle. But all anyone in the car wants is to get to Disneyland, goddammit!

Anyway, here we are at Disneyland. Grant Morrison is doing astounding superhero work right now and he's been given all the toys in the chest. The whole thing is going to be done up in sexy Chip Kidd-designed covers. That teaser image of Wonder Woman with tusks is hell of cool. Those of us who've read all of Countdown have paid a little higher admission price than everyone else and we came in a busted up Volvo that needed a new engine in Sioux City and lost its AC somewhere in the Great Plains, and its easy to look askance at those folks who just stepped off the plane and wound up in Disneyland. But the point is, we're here, the rides look awesome, and getting there isn't always half the fun.