Countdown to Final Crisis just keeps getting worse and worse with each passing week. I have no hope for this title to be a good read. I’m sure that Countdown to Final Crisis #21 will continue this downward trend. Maybe we’ll get some senseless killing or some “shit will get blown up.” Lucky me. Let’s go ahead and hit this review for Countdown to Final Crisis #21.
Creative Team
Writers: Paul Dini, Sean McKeever & Keith Giffen
Pencils: Jamal Igle
Inks: Mark McKenna
Art Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Story Rating: 2 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 4 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: We begin with Piper shocked and stunned that Trickster is dead. Piper rides in the train car in silence. We shift to Apokolips where Desaad picks up the Trickster chess piece off the chess board and comments how life is so fragile. Desaad tells Granny Goodness that he trusts in Darkseid and does not fear the end of the Fourth World. Granny Goodness then tells Desaad that her work as Athena may result in human women worthy of becoming Fatal Furies. Granny morphs into her Athena disguise and tells Desaad to tell Darkseid that the Greek gods still resist their captivity.
We cut to Paradise Island where Holly and Harley are running though more obstacle courses at the urging of their Amazonian trainers. Harley and Holly decide to ditch the boot camp training and go have some fun and investigate a mysterious looking cave. Inside the cave we see a shadowy figure holding a sword. Harley and Holly then enter the cave even though Holly thinks this is a bad idea.
We shift to Gotham City on Earth-12. We see the Batman from the Batman Beyond Animated Series beating up bad guys. The Challengers can’t find Ray Palmer on Earth-12. Suddenly, a Monitor appears on the scene. The Monitor’s name is Nix Uotan. Bob the Monitor is surprised that all the Monitors now have names. The “evil” Monitor from Earth-8 is named Solomon. Nix says that all the Monitors have decided to follow Solomon and that Bob will be stopped. That they are tracking Bob and he can’t escape them. Nix says that he knows they are searching for Ray Palmer, but that Ray Palmer is unimportant.
Nix and Bob start brawling with each other. Bob takes down Nix and the Challengers make their escape from Earth-12. We see the Challengers travelling through the Bleed. Bob mentions that Nix revealed more than he intended to and that Bob now knows exactly where Ray Palmer is.
We hop over to Bludhaven. Firestorm quickly reforms and takes down the Atomic Knights. Karate Kid thanks Firestorm for his help. Karate Kid, Una, Buddy and the grandson continue on into the lab. Karate Kid comes up on a locked container that he knows he must open.
We cut to Brother Eye noting that Karate Kid is in place. Brother Eye then activates the protocol trigger. We see Brother Eye turn all the military men at NORAD into OMACs. Brother Eye then announces that its upgrades are now complete. That Brother Eye is now mobile. That the Morticoccus host is in final gestation and viral release is imminent. Brother Eye is now a huge eye shaped ship. Brother Eye makes his way to Bludhaven and says “Eye am the shepherd. Eye am the way.” (And “Eye” don’t care.) End of story.
We then get a two page back-up story about the origin of Granny Goodness. End of issue.
Comments
The Good: Countdown #21 was another lame read. No surprise there. Having said that, there were at least two positives about this issue. At least now Bob finally knows where Ray Palmer is located. Thank god for that fact. Maybe we can finally get this plotline moving with a purpose instead of the endlessly repetitious scenes that we have been getting each and every week.
The other positive about Countdown to Final Crisis #21 is that all the Monitors now have names. I appreciate that development since it will make it easier on me when re-capping the issues and trying to differentiate between the different Monitors.
Igle and McKenna combine to produce some rather ordinary artwork. Igle’s pencils, while not usually spectacular, certainly get the job done. McKenna’s inking has never impressed me and is probably what makes the artwork look so average.
The Bad: Countdown to Final Crisis #21 was just a poorly constructed and executed issue. Dini and McKeever foist some pretty bad dialogue onto the reader. The dialogue is cheesy at best and just flat out generic at worst. All of the different characters are largely colorless and nondescript. Nobody has much of a distinct personality. There is absolutely no chemistry at all between any of the characters in this issue.
The writers have failed to create any type of flow on Countdown. A large part of that problem is due to the terrible plotting on this story. The plotlines move spasmodically. They lie dormant for long stretches at a time or languish in neutral. Then we get sudden and random bursts of activity on the plotlines that seem to lack any inner coherency or purpose. All the various disparate plotlines don’t mesh well with each other and create a title that feels terribly disjointed.
The pacing on this issue is terribly slow. The reader gets the depressing feeling that we are simply spinning our wheels and are going absolutely nowhere. At no point does it appear that Dini has a point or purpose to anything that is going on in Countdown. I mean, other than to “blow shit up.”
The Piper scene was largely useless and could have easily been left out Piper scene largely useless. Once again, the reader is left with the feeling that the scene was nothing more than a time waster stretching out a plotline clearly not substantial enough for a 52 issue title.
The Desaad and Granny Goodness scene was boring as well. The reader got absolutely nothing new in this scene. Instead, all we got was a re-hash of things that we already knew before. This scene also felt like a huge time waster where Dini was just trying to stretch out these plotlines as long as possible in order to fill up 52 issues.
The Holly Robinson was completely dull. There is absolutely nothing about this plotline that I find even remotely interesting. The minute we shift to this pathetic plotline, I immediately slip into a comatose state. And I could care less who the shadowy figure with the sword in the cave is. The only thing that would interest me is if the figure with the sword is Jason Voorhees and he slices and dices Holly and Harley into little tiny bloody bits. Now that would make for a great read. But, unfortunately, DC only kills cool characters. The lame ones never die.
I found the scene with the Challengers to be so mind numbingly repetitious. Have we not gotten this very same scene with the very same dialogue about a hundred times before? I get it already. I know the philosophical disagreement between Bob and his fellow Monitors. Enough already. And if I have to hear the same mindless blathering about the importance of finding Ray Palmer and how he isn’t on whatever planet they are currently on I think I’m going to go insane. I fell like Bill Murray from Groundhog Day when it comes to the scenes with the Challengers. It is the same discussions and same scene over and over with each issue.
The Brother Eye plotline is simply a confusing and jumbled mess. The Morticoccus host. The virus. Karate Kid’s role. All of it. I have no idea what the hell is going on or how any of this fits together in a coherent and entertaining fashion. And at this point, I could honestly care less about finding out any answers to the mysteries of the Brother Eye plotline since it is such a sloppily constructed plotline.
Overall: Countdown to Final Crisis #21 continues the downward trend as each issue just gets worse and worse. I can’t imagine that Countdown can get much worse that it currently is. However, I’m sure that DC will find new and creative ways to suck on this title with the remaining issues. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this title to anyone at all. This title is not worth your hard earned money. Go buy Daredevil or Captain America instead.
2 thoughts on “Comic Book Review: Countdown to Final Crisis #21”
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I’d have to agree that Countdown is becoming a hot mess. And the problem is precisely because its goal is to tear the entire DC Universe apart.
In my opinion, 52 succeeded because it was about building things up; it was about creating and establishing the multiverse. At 52’s end, there was a huge sense of endless possibility. 52 revolved around the concept of victory in overwhelming odds. Think of the D-List heroes that managed to win the day in the end–that’s inspiring.
Countdown is the exact opposite. It is destroying and killing off characters and concepts that have barely had enough time to establish themselves, rather yet become anything substantial. And the Countdown heroes haven’t done diddly-squat to rectify the situation; it seems like they’ve been moving around every weak in random directions with hardly any purpose.
And I am pissed that the Multiverse is probably going to kick the bucket, once again. If this is the case, I think this is an incredibly bad move, in a conceptual AND marketing perspective.
Destroying the Multiverse (the creation of which was the whole purpose of 52 and Infinite Crisis) would be telling readers that DC has just been wasting our time for the past two years. And it would be eliminating an incredible potential for new, creative storylines.
Marvel’s multiverse has always been one of their greatest strengths. Think of Marvel Zombies, Ultimate Universe, Supreme Universe, 1601, etc. These were intriguing stories that provided a bumper-crop of extra titles that made huge profits for Marvel each time. DC had the potential to do a similar thing with their own Multiverse, and now it seems like it’s being broken down before anything significant has even been done with it. It’s a damn shame.
Oh well, what can you do? Just hope that the damage is kept to a minimum, I guess.
What do you do?! Reboot!
Ok, well, that isn’t always the answer but let’s look at the situation in both companies and see what we can do to fix things… or what is already being done.
On both DC and Marvel – I hate the following concepts COMPLETELY: time travel, multiple universes, and the inability to have someone dead STAY dead. These three things turn me completely off to reading anything involving them. Why? Because nothing done in them has lasting effects… they are the magical “way out” of a bad choice.
In Marvel, I like the fact that they did something bold and swerved the main universe in a direction wildly different from our own. However, in doing this, they have firmly established that everything that came before was asinine because where the hell are the flying cars and unstable molecule clothing that the Fantastic Four have been using since the 60s? Why hasn’t all that wonderful technology made ANY changes up to this point? There are no consequences for anything in the Marvel universe, because if there were, they’d have had to stray away from mimicking our own reality a long damn time ago. Strike One.
Most things in the Marvel universe that are “large scale” all come from outer space. Galactus, the Skrull infestation, and so on are the only “large scale” issues that they can come up with without turning hero against hero. Why can’t an establish SINGLE villain concoct a master plan that causes a large scale impact? Because no human could possibly be that smart all by themselves, so it MUST be from outer space. Strike Two.
There has been an odd “suspension of time” in the Marvel universe that only seems to slip “now and then”. What I’m referring to is the never aging characters, except where an illustration of some progress needs to be made. Reed Richards and Sue Richards got married in the 60s or 70s and then all the way in the 90s they decided that they were old enough to move on and let the Thing run the FF. Well, they’d been basically the same age until that point, so it was only convenient to move them out of the FF to change things up. Are they older now? Not in my eyes, they seem to be back at it without any age effects. Strike Three. Marvel’s OUT!
DC has been leaning on this multiple universes angle for FAR TOO LONG. I like the one shot Elseworlds type thing but to have universes crossing on a regular basis just shows a lack of creativity. It is just a different version of the “outer space” Marvel tool. Strike One.
While characters age in DC, being replaced by new people, some characters seem to be stuck in the ageless rut. Bruce Wayne has to be 106 years old by now, right? Batman Beyond has proven that Bruce Wayne doesn’t NEED to be in the driver’s seat of the Batmobile, so why doesn’t Dick Grayson hang up the Nightwing tights and don the Batman cowl? Neither Marvel nor DC seems to have a good answer for the passage of time. Strike Two.
DC has put so much time and effort into 2 characters that trying to do anything with their second or third tier seems like such a stretch. Sure, Superman and Batman are iconic and established but if it wasn’t for Smallville and Batman Begins, I doubt I’d even care about these two characters anymore. GL, Flash, and WW all have their second tier status (while pretending to be top tier) but next to the top 2, they don’t compare. DC has put all their eggs in one basket and now seems to be scrambling to diversify their stock into C-list and D-list characters while they have our attentions. Too little, too late in my opinion. Strike Three. DC is OUT!
While “reboot” is thrown around a little bit heavily lately, I think that a relaunch of an alternative title without having to share a universe would be a great thing. I’d love to read about a Batman or (my favorite character ever) Captain Marvel that doesn’t EVER interact with any other heroes (because there are none). Crossovers are a novelty, not an answer.
Sorry for the rant, but no one else will really understand. Viva la revolution!