If you’re a comic book fan, you’ve probably heard of Countdown to Final Crisis. It was a weekly series put out by DC, and was intended to lay the groundwork for their next huge crossover event, entitled Final Crisis. It was done in the same style as the critically acclaimed series, 52. The idea behind both 52 and Countdown was to have a story that featured lesser-known characters and allowed them to shine without Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman overshadowing them. Unlike 52, however, Countdown did not do its job successfully. Like…at all. It was considered to be one of the worst event comics put out by DC in quite some time. The fans hated it and the critics tore it apart in their reviews. So what went wrong?
Let me first give a brief overview of what worked about 52.
52 takes place in the wake of Infinite Crisis, another large-scale DC crossover event. Its purpose was to fill in the gap left when the editors, in their “wisdom” decided that the whole of DC’s continuity was going to jump ahead One Year Later. Though the story has several different plot threads, all of them deal in some way with the fallout from the events in Infinite Crisis. The strength of this series is the way in which threads from each of the plots continually intertwine. You really get the sense that, even though they’re separate stories, each of them is subtly connected and that they’re all leading to one large conclusion. The exception to this is a subplot involving Starfire, Adam Strange and Animal Man trying to get back to Earth and linking up with Lobo along the way. This is also the weakest of the subplots in my opinion, and probably should have been put in a tie-in issue instead. But that’s material for another review. What I feel was 52’s greatest strength was the way it made me actually care about characters I knew little or nothing about. That was one of the chief aims of the series, and the writers pulled it off beautifully. And as a side-note concerning characters, 52 did something that I have wanted for years; it had a subplot about a homosexual character in which the main crux of the story was not the fact that she was a homosexual character. This type of writing is extremely rare and, in my humble opinion, it is more progressive than writing that constantly makes a massive deal about a character’s homosexuality. But, again, I’m going off on a bit of a tangent. However this tangent is somewhat relevant, since Countdown did just about everything wrong with its own “gay character” subplot. More on that later. Another big reason why I loved 52 was the dialogue. It wasn’t the greatest, wittiest, or most thought-provoking dialogue ever written. But each of the characters had a distinctive “voice.” This is something that I find is often lost in big crossover events. Writers try making dialogue for characters they might not necessarily be familiar with, and it all ends up blending together. All of these points boil down to the fact that 52 was just really well-written. That’s why it worked so well.
Why, then, did Countdown fail where 52 succeeded? Because Countdown was just plain badly written. The story lacked any sort of central focus, the subplots barely connected and the dialogue of all the characters was completely lifeless and totally interchangeable.
Let’s start tearing this thing apart with the story itself. Is there a central plot point that ties everything together? No. Instead, we have three barely coherent plots with important events that randomly trail off into tie-in issues. First you have the plot involving the mysterious murders of the New Gods. This was started in Countdown, but was finished in a tie-in book called Death of the New Gods. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the other two plots, other than the fact that Darkseid is apparently playing chess with one of the Monitors and is aware of the Great Disaster. This brings me to the Great Disaster plot. I think this was intended to be the main plot, since it is this plot that eventually brings all of the characters together into one place, but it’s so ridiculous and badly contrived that it just falls totally flat. And finally, you have Monarch gathering his army to conquer the Multiverse. This is quite possibly the stupidest of the three plots. Not only is Monarch himself a cluster fuck of retcons and just flat-out bad writing, but his invasion honestly makes absolutely no sense whatsoever in light of the disaster that threatens to wipe out everything he’s trying to conquer! Honestly, I think they just started writing Countdown with no idea of how they were going to finish it.
But what about characters? Did Countdown achieve what 52 achieved by making me care about minor characters? No. No, it did not. I started reading Countdown, not caring about many of the characters and that’s exactly how I finished it. In fact, there were some characters that I liked less after reading Countdown. Chief among these are Jason Todd and Mary Marvel. Jason Todd was the second Robin and was a total and complete dick. He so disliked by fans that the writers put out a poll to decide whether he lived or died. The results came in, and he was subsequently beaten to death by the Joker with a crowbar. But since this is a comic book world, he got better and came back with double the dickishness. So one would think that the writers would take advantage of the opportunity to try and redeem his characters, to make fans like him again. Instead, they spent 52 issues showing us why we didn’t like him in the first place. Mary Marvel, on the other hand, was a sweet, good-hearted sidekick to Captain Marvel. After suddenly losing her powers and somehow surviving a three-mile fall, she wound up in a coma and was, for no adequately explained reason, abandoned by everyone she loved. She starts Countdown off by accepting dark powers from Black Adam and she spends the rest of the time being a royal bitch. But she comes to realize that the powers are corrupting her and she willingly gives them up in order to stop a villain named Eclipso. She then helps rescue the Greek Pantheon from Apokolips and they restore her original powers. Then, for absolutely no good reason, she accepts the dark powers again when Darkseid offers them to her. …Ugh.
Oh, and that whole “gay subplot” thing I mentioned before comes in the form of kinda, but not really-reformed villains Pied Piper and Trickster falling back in with their old cohorts, the Rogues. The two get in deep trouble when the Rogues brutally murder the Flash, and they end up on the run from heroes, villains and anti-heroes alike. Pied Piper happens to be gay, and by god the writers aren’t about to let you forget it. No, it isn’t exactly the main focus of the plot. But we have to put up with Trickster making homophobic comments at almost every turn. It’s incredibly distracting, but even so, I would have forgiven it if the plot had been going somewhere. But in the end, it’s entirely pointless to the main story. And there’s not even any resolution to the conflict between Trickster and Piper. And they don’t just fail to offer resolution. They trick you into thinking that there’s about to be resolution, and then they pull the rug out from under you. Here’s the situation; as I said, Trickster is constantly making cruel, homophobic remarks about Piper. And Piper is constantly rising to the bait. But at one point, they finally seem to have escaped their pursuers. They’re on a train heading away from the big cities where they’re being hunted. Trickster makes a gay joke, but one that is clearly not meant to be malicious. And Piper actually laughs, despite the fact that it’s a gay joke. It seems the two have almost reached an understanding and are about to resolve their differences. Maybe we’ll even find out why Trickster is so homophobic. …But then Deadshot shows up and puts a bullet through Trickster’s head. And after that, even though this makes no sense whatsoever, Piper starts hallucinating and hearing Trickster’s dead body making more homophobic comments. Sigh. Thanks for that, DC. Thanks a ton.
Speaking of Trickster and Piper, their plot deserves extra scorn because of how it trails off into a tie-in comic and then snaps back into the main comic, leaving us wondering who, what, when, where, why and how the hell. This is as good a place as any to go off on a rant against tie-ins. They can be a great idea or a god-awfully TERRIBLE idea. A good series has tie-ins that expand on a minor plot point that’s not relevant to the larger story, or else give details on an event peripherally connected to the events in the main story. For example, going back to 52, it had a tie-in entitled World War III, which dealt with Black Adam’s war against the rest of humanity. It wasn’t essential to the plot, so it was good material for a tie-in. A bad series has tie-ins featuring major events that are essential to understanding the plot, forcing you to go out and buy them. Case in point, Countdown. The death of the Flash was a big deal. Not only was it the death of a major character, but it was the whole reason Piper and Trickster were on the run in the first place. So relegating it to a tie-in was just a blatant attempt to bleed a few more bucks out of us poor fools who were still hoping Countdown would turn out to be as good as 52.
Anyways, the only subplot I kinda like is the one involving Harley Quinn and former Catwoman, Holly Robinson. The two wind up in a shelter for young women, supposedly run by Athena. She tells them that her plan is to make a new breed of Amazon warriors, since the original ones were dispersed and mindwiped after the events of Amazons Attack. In reality, “Athena” is actually New God, Granny Goodness and her real plan is to create a new breed of Female Furies to serve Darkseid. Despite the unfortunate association with Amazons Attack, it’s well-written and the plot is worthy of its own book.
What’s really sad about all this is that the chief writer on this thing was Paul Dini, the man responsible for much of the writing on Batman: The Animated Series. He’s the one who created Harley Quinn, the first original character from the DC Animated Universe to be introduced into the comics. But to his credit, he isn’t fully to blame for Countdown’s failure. The blame falls on two little words which never bode well for comics: Editorial Mandate. When Editors start trying to do the job of Writers, the comics always suffer.
Ultimately, Countdown to Final Crisis will only ever be remembered as a model of How Not to Do Crossover Events. Hopefully, DC will learn from their mistakes and never make something this bad again.
Buuuuuut that’s probably wishful thinking.
