Comic Book Review: Countdown #29

The Revolution has been impressed with Dini serving up two good reads in consecutive weeks. Is it possible that Countdown will finally begin to live up to its hype? I hope so. Despite all of its problems, Countdown has plenty of potential. I hope that Dini is able to put together a strong run to the finish on this title. Let’s go head and hit this review for Countdown #29.

Creative Team
Writers: Paul Dini & Adam Beechen
Penciler: Manuel Garcia
Inker: Mark McKenna

Art Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Story Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 6.5 Night Girls out of 10

Synopsis: We begin with a group of metahumans named Gorgon, Barracuda, Dreamslayer and Tracer defeating Donna, Kyle, Jason, Bob and Jokester. They bring our heroes back to their leader, Lord Havok. Havok says they will extract what information they can from these travelers and then kill them.

We cut to the “bad” Monitor finally tracking Bob down to Earth 8. The Monitor grabs a gun and teleports off to Earth-8.

We shift to Jimmy Olsen in the sewers below Metropolis. Suddenly, the Newsboy Legion appears on the scene. The Newsboy Legion tells Jimmy that they heard about his problems with his powers and that he can stay with them while he tries and gets his powers under control.

We hop over to Holly Robinson battling the sharks and sea serpents off the coast of Paradise Island. We see some of the other ladies getting chomped on and eaten by the sharks. Holly battles her way past the creatures and makes it to shore. There she sees Harley Quinn also arriving on shore with a severed shark’s head on her spear.

We slide over to Trickster, Piper and Double Down all eating at a diner off the interstate. Double Down apologizes for threatening the two Rogues. Double Down tells how Zatanna defeated him at the wedding. Double Down then retreated and hid in the first car he could find.

Double Down says that the rumor is that the attack on Green Arrow and Black Canary’s wedding was a retaliatory strike against the “good guys” because of the heroes rounding up all the costume criminals. Evidently, the costume criminals are shipped off somewhere and then they are never seen again.

We cut to Mary Marvel and Eclipso. They are in Turkey where there was a terrible drought killing the farmers’ crops and livestock. Mary has made a flood. Now everything is in danger of being swept away by the rising tide and rain. The farmers beg Mary to stop. Mary cruelly counters that the farmers asked her to end their drought.

Mary kills their livestock with lightning bolts and then tells the farmers that they are now fishermen. Mary tells the farmers that if they keep complaining that she will turn them into fish. Mary and Eclipso fly off. Eclipso tells Mary that with a few lessons from her that Mary will be ready. Mary asks ready for what. Eclipso says that Mary will soon see.

We shift back to Earth 8, where our heroes are strapped to a giant torture machine. Lord Havok says that the heroes are resisting the machine and won’t give him any information so he orders them to be killed. Suddenly, the evil Monitor teleports onto the scene.

We slide over to Karate Kid, Una and Buddy in front of Brother Eye. Brother Eye is angry that he has been placed in isolation for a long time and now only when he can be exploited is he sought out. That this is unacceptable. Brother Eye says that he will no longer be alone. That they will remain with him forever. The door to the chamber slams shut and then Brother Eye blasts Karate Kid with an energy beam.

We hop back to Earth-8. Our heroes have broken free from the machine while the evil Monitor brawls with Lord Havok’s metahuman army. Suddenly, Monarch and Forerunner appear on the scene. The evil Monitor rants that he will kill the Earth jumping heroes like he did Duela. Jokester is crushed by the news that his daughter is dead.

Our heroes make a run for it. The evil Monitor shoots Jokester in the back and kills him. Kyle has just enough power to transport our heroes to another part of Lord Havok’s castle. The evil Monitor, thinking Kyle teleported them off the planet, is mad that they got away and teleports away from Earth-8.

Monarch then offers Lord Havok and his army of metahumans to join him. Kyle, Jason, Donna and Bob listen to Monarch’s offer to Lord Havok to join Monarch’s evil horde in their goal to conquer the Multiverse. End of story.

We then get a two page back-up story on the origin of the Penguin. End of issue.

Comments
The Good: Countdown #29 was a solid read, but it wasn’t as good as the past two issues. That is slightly disappointing since I thought Dini had really cranked up the intensity on this title several notches. Dini and Beechen do deliver a well paced issue. We get a nice balance of action scenes and dialogue heavy scenes. This makes for a nicely structured issue. The dialogue isn’t anything amazing, but it is serviceable and gets the job done.

As always, the scenes with Trickster and Piper were well done. These two Rogues are an excellent team and always receive the strongest dialogue. Double Down is another loveable loser who fits in rather well with our two Rogues. Dini does finally give us something new and interesting concerning this plotline by revealing that the attack on Green Arrow and Black Canary’s wedding was done as a retaliatory strike for the rounding up of costumed criminals that has been going on lately in the DCU.

Dini is doing a great job getting the reader to be sympathetic to the plight of the C-list costumed villains in the DCU who are being hunted down by the government. I’m still curious to see what role these two Rogues will play in the larger scheme of Countdown. Hopefully, they will prove themselves to be heroes by the end of this story.

The Mary Marvel scene was well done. Finally, we get to see a fully fledged evil Black Mary. It is about time that Dini kick started this plotline and pushed it toward the heart of its story. I dig a villainous Mary Marvel and am interested to see what Eclipso has in store for our fallen heroine. I’m a sucker for a hero turned evil story and this plotline is finally starting to deliver on its potential.

The Karate Kid scene was pretty cool. Dini throws an unexpected twist in this plotline by having Brother Eye get pissed off about being locked away in a secured location for an undetermined amount of time and only approached when something is needed from him. Brother Eye’s anger is totally understandable. It should be entertaining to see how Karate Kid gets himself out of this mess.

Dini serves up an entertaining ending in this issue. For the first time, we finally get all the various players involved in all the Earth jumping going on in the Multiverse on the same Earth at the same time. The Challengers, the evil Monitor, Monarch and Forerunner all converge at Lord Havok’s castle. That made for a rather exciting finish.

I’m glad that Dini finally merged these two plotlines together and provided some much needed progress for both plotlines at the same time. Now the Challengers know about Monarch’s plans for conquering the Multiverse by using his own horde of metahumans from all the parallel Earths. It should be interesting to see how the Challengers respond to this newly acquired information and how it will affect their search for Ray Palmer. If nothing else, it should spur them on to find Ray as fast as possible so they can return to New Earth and inform the rest of the super hero community about Monarch’s impending attack.

And what about Bob the Monitor and the evil Monitor? They both know about Monarch hopping from Earth to Earth now. However, Bob knows all of the Monarch’s plans while the evil Monitor does not. Will Bob risk getting killed by his fellow Monitors and attempt to return to the Nexus and convince them of the imminent threat posed by Monarch and his forces?

I like Garcia’s pencils; however, I’m just not a fan of McKenna’s inks. Having said that, Garcia and McKenna do manage to combine to give Countdown #29 a better than average look.

The Bad: I didn’t find Earth-8 to be that interesting at all. I didn’t recognize any of the characters so that probably prevented much of my enjoyment of this Earth. This was certainly the most boring visit to a parallel Earth that we have gotten up to this point.

I am stunned that Dini would kill off the Jokester. That made absolutely no sense at all to me. Dini just introduced the Jokester’s character only two issues ago in Countdown #31. Then Jokester gets a spotlight issue in the Crime Society #1 one-shot issue. And then his character gets killed off. And in such a terrible fashion on top of it all. Jokester gets shot in the back while running away. A poster to the Revolution pointed out that Jokester was acutally trying to save either Donna or Kyle from getting hit by the laser blast. And I looked back at the issue and that is what Jokester does.

It makes no sense to kill off Jokester’s character so soon after he has been introduced and even given his own one-shot issue. I honestly thought that Dini had something more interesting and larger in store for Jokester’s character than just being simple cannon fodder. It is too bad. I thought that the Jokester had plenty of potential and was a rather fascinating character.

The Jimmy Olsen plotline is completely stagnant. I loved this plotline at the beginning of Countdown, but Dini has utterly neglected it as of late. Dini seems to be endlessly stretching out this plotline by giving us pure filler scenes over the past several issues. The Newsboy Legion was a neat cameo, but I’m not too sure if any current readers recognize or even care about them.

And, as always, the Holly Robinson plotline was completely uninteresting and lame. This plotline continues to be the only plotline that has bored me to tears since the outset of Countdown. And I see little chance of this plotline ever grabbing my interest. Especially since the Holly Robinson plotline seems to be more and more of a tie-in with the Amazons Attack storyline. And that is definitely a storyline that I want nothing to do with.

Overall: Countdown #29 was a slightly better than average read, but not quite up to par with the past two issues. I still think that Dini can pull things together and deliver an entertaining finish to this title. Even though Countdown is improving, I still can’t recommend shelling out your hard earned money each week for this title. I’m sure that Countdown will be a much more enjoyable read when it comes out as a trade paperback.