Writers: Paul Dini, Adam Beechen
Story Consultant: Keith Giffen
Artists: Ron Lim (p), Jimmy Palmiotti, John Stanisci (i)
Publisher: DC Comics
Committed to counting down everything you NEED to know about Countdown to Final Crisis #25!
9. And They Said It Couldn’t Last. And they’d be right. It didn’t.
8. Barely Covers It. I should’ve known by the cover that I was going to be in for another Countdown letdown. I’ll be perfectly frank about it: guys, this is crap. Pure, unmitigated crap. I usually don’t resort to such base descriptions, but there just isn’t any two ways around it. “Sir” Hollis’ depiction on the cover is the worst kind of blatant sensationalism, and I’m embarrassed for the original female member of the original Atomic Knights she represents. Countdown’s had a rampaging plethora of ridiculous cover graphics of “hot” women but none so ridiculous as this. DC, why not just have her nude? Why not just have a sign on her that says “No Missionary Position for Me, Please”? Is this all you have? Why do you feel so obviously bad about your product that you insist on going for the lowest of lowest common denominators? Do female DC staffers and creative personnel feel good about this? I’m no feminist, but I know when a line has been crossed and good taste has been thrown to the ether. The line is so far back there, it just isn’t funny.
7. What Are Words For? Karate Kid, Firestorm, and the Atomic Knights dominate this issue, but I wish it was with a deft hand they ruled. Adam Beechen delivers the weakest Countdown dialogue of all as he tries vainly to present a picture of a hammer meeting an anvil. What could have been a tense scene of Val and Co. going head-to-head with the protectors of blown-up Bludhaven, the Atomic Knights, quickly devolved into horrendous cliché and what comes off as a small child’s idea of tough-guy talk. How many more times can a writer use “This ends now” before every last comic reader is utterly sick of it? How about “I’m thinking different.”? Yow. “Not gonna happen.”? Yeesh. There’s so much wasted potential here, and not just with the dialogue: an eclectic band of characters picking their way through the ruins of a destroyed city, coming to cross-purposes with a modern version of one of the Silver Age’s best science-fiction concepts. But Karate Kid’s group is boring and impotent, and the new Atomic Knights are beat rather handily (Firestorm couldn’t have just done his little air supply trick at the beginning of the fight???). The locale is not played up nor the festering dynamics of the players; it’s just more of the same by-the-numbers Countdown conflict and confusion. Giffen, are you really consulting on this?
6. Beating the Conundrum. The Knights work for whom? Firestorm works for whom? Val is searching for what? Buddy Blank and his grandson are along for what? Una exists why? No real clue, even if I had a dime, Genius Jones.
5. Rogues Return. Sitting out last issue should have made Trickster and Piper’s story more interesting for its absence. Unfortunately, we get a phoned in appearance, by-the-book: A villain is after the two, they trick their way out of his clutches, deliver several panels of godawful and embarrassing gay jokes and they run off into the sunset. Be kind, rewind.
4. Forgot Where He Parked. Jimmy Olsen’s stuck on Apokolips, being marched through Armaghetto towards an unknown fate. Ripe with possibilities, eh? I thought so too, but it’s another tepid check-in where poor ol’ Jim is square in his element: confusion. He doesn’t know what’s going or why. He’s simply there. You know, like your average Countdown reviewer.
3. Captive Audience. At least something interesting happens with Mary Marvel: she’s suddenly on Apokolips now, being presented to Darkseid by Eclipso herself, as a “powerful supplicant, newly baptized in the ways of darkness.” Mary looks bewildered (you’re in good company, baby) and Darkseid invites her to “know true darkness.” Okay, you have my attention. Will you throw it away again, DC? Or will you reward it with something worthwhile?
2. Titanic Two-Fer? There’ve been cliffhangers for decades in comics. Some of them good, others not so much. There may never have been a cliffhanger like the strange fusion of Firestorm and Desaad – and I’m not so sure it’s something we had ever hoped to see, or needed to see. I’m hoping it can be cool, but somehow, it just feels…wrong.
1. Quick, Slow, Quick-Quick, Slow. Fourteen pages devoted to one of the storylines. That’s a step in the right direction, I think. Two storylines converging. That’s another step with the good foot, in my opinion. The tools are there, the set-ups are there, the characters are present too; all we need now is the feeling that someone behind the scenes gives a damn about doing something with it all.
Liftoff.
Major Tom to Ground Control: Send me up some Dramamine, I’m getting sick and tired of having to hide my Countdown covers when I get home.
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