Why 52 Worked, and Countdown Doesn't....YET...

Four reasons 52 was fun to read:

• Renee Montoya
• Booster Gold
• Black Adam
• Ralph Dibny
  

52's greatest strength was also what brought it a lot of flack - the time and care it took focusing on the book's main characters, a bunch of dysfunctional DC third-stringers. So while the series did end up with tons of unanswered questions and no real unifying theme or plot line (oh, the multiverse...great...), it gave readers a chance to get to know the characters, so that we actually CARED about the crazy crap that happened to them over the course of a particularly bad year.

Countdown, now on it's sixth issue, has its scales tipped the other way - tons of plot, and practically no characterization. A lot of things have happened in six issues, but it all feels like setup. What are they setting up? Who cares? At this point, the comic just feels like a bunch of indistinguishable of characters constantly explaining the plot to each other.

I should add that I do fully expect this book to get better. Honestly. The creative team is just too good to keep producing a dull book. It's going to pick up any week now. Just not this week.

Instead we get Jason Todd and Donna Troy in Washington D.C. - we don't actually get to see the Amazon seige going on outside, that would be too exciting. No, they just go over what the reader already knows - Monitors are trying to straighten out the multiverse by killing characters, like them, who shouldn't be on Earth 1. Sounds good to me! Until this book makes me care about these characters, I have no stake in whether they're killed or not. Jason Todd was more interesting when he was dead anyway.

Oh well. This ish did have one fun panel where all the rogues go to Mars 2112 in their costumes. Enjoy.