Let Us Never Speak of This Again

Countdown to a Proper Burial

You want to know what's really sad? This is probably the best issue of the entire series.

The ludicrous Jimmy Olsen-Darkseid smackdown/Kirby homage (or whatever) advertised on the front cover turns out, mercifully, to be a red herring. The real fight this issue is (spoilers on) a father-son matchup between Darseid and Orion. First, the good news: the fight looks amazing. Every Scott Kolins issue of Countdown looks sensationsal, obviously, but he really pulls out all the stops here. There are more Kirby dots per square inch in this comic than, perhaps, in any comic actually illustrated by Kirby himself. (BTW: Someone needs to hook a fanboy or two up some kind of blood pressure/heart rate monitor and then show them slides of images with and without Kirby dots--I'm pretty sure it will bear out my theory that Kirby dots are actually physiological stimulants.)


So, CWCID: great looking issue.

The totally mindnumblingly not-at-all-surprising bad news is that, like every single issue of this misbegotten travesty of a series, good writers once again produce risible work. For instance: Superman's response to the showdown between Darkseid and Orion in the middle of Metropolis:

Green Lantern: Superman, I don't care what Orion says--we've gotta do something here!

Superman: This is between a father and his son, Kyle. [portentously] This is between Gods.

Whaaa??? Huuuhhhh?????? One of the "Gods" is Darkseid! At least the Flash was running around saving people on page 1, not standing on a roof eating popcorn with the impossibly lame "Challengers of the Unknown." Normally, I don't care much about this kind of hiccup in my suspension of disbelief, but it's so egregious here that it seems as if Paul Dini and Sean McKeever (good writers both) have just said, fuck it. Let's put this baby to bed. And you know what? I can't say that I blame them. Does anyone really care anymore--if, indeed, anyone ever did? Don't we all, much like poor Brooke White on Tuesday night, just want this damn song to be over and done with so that we can get on to something new and pretend it never happened in the first place?

Double Articulation Digest #5

I caught the first two episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles last week. Newsarama's Tom McLean found various things to complain about, but this is exactly the kind of TV SF I love. It perfectly captured the aesthetic of the films, and the cast is so good that I'm happy to go along with whatever character tweaking they've done bringing the franchise to TV. Summer Glau is much better here than she was in Firefly, as much as I loved that one too. My wife walked in as I was watching the last ten minutes of the premiere and caught the giant grin plastered all over my face. "What are you watching, Jim?" Time machine in a bank vault. Heehee!

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Countdown to Final Crisis #15 was almost readable. The sections with Pete Woods art managed to inject a little grandeur into what is otherwise a conceptually and visually flaccid war between Monarch and the Monitors. (Surprising no one, I enjoyed the Donna Troy splash page.) Less enjoyable was the climax of her fisticuffs with Wonder Girl of Earth Whatever. Sorry, but..."I'm Donna Troy, Bitch" is not something our girl would say--in any reality! The Brother Eye stuff was kind of exciting, though. A mixed bag.

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"Meet the Beetles" was a cute title for Booster Gold #6, and the issue was (as always) an enjoyable romp through DC history. Having Dan Jurgens illustrate this title is a feel-good editorial decision on many levels. It's always nice to see a creator back on one of their own characters, but even better is the genius of having Jurgens work on a time-travel book. I literally feel transported back to the eighties and early nineties every month--in a good way!

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Birds of Prey #114 was fun, though I've been rereading Gail Simone's run from the beginning, and was struck by how different the current book is from Simone's take on it. Sean McKeever seems to be positioning this book as more of a superhero title than the mystery/detective/kung fu/action thriller-thingy that was Simone's Black Canary epic--and that's okay with me, though I miss the tight focus on a core team of Birds. I'm a little worried about the foregrounding of Misfit, given that she's kind of a Danny Chase character, right down to the red hair and freckles. Nevertheless, McKeever is great at writing teens, so it's all working well at the moment. Loved the Zinda/Killer Shark encounter, Bonus: the next issue blurb actaully made me laugh out loud; that doesn't happen often. Nicola Scott rocks the artwork, as usual.

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My comic store missed my copy of Wonder Woman #16 this week, so I have that to look forward to next time.

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Erik Larsen has a wonderful last word on the whole One More Day debacle at CBR. I didn't read the comics, but derived a shameful amount of pleasure from the hissing and booing they elicited.