The Countdown Countdown

No Weeks Left...

Well kids, the time has finally arrived. DC's second weekly series, Countdown has reached the halfway point. I'd been frustrated with this book's lack of any kind of coherent story or forward momentum for quite some time. One month ago I decided that I'd give Countdown until issue #26, the exact midpoint of the series, to pick the story up and convince me to keep reading. To use one of my favorite colloquialisms, Countdown needed to shit or get off the pot.

Issue #26 has "The Turning Point" emblazoned right on the front cover. The end of issue #27 had slightly piqued my curiosity. Surely, I thought, this would be the issue where things took off as Countdown headed for the home stretch. I could not have been more wrong. This was a recap issue. A recap issue!!! Nothing has happened in this book for the last few months. There's nothing to recap! Jimmy Olsen still has powers and we still don't know how he got them. Mary Marvel is still a bitch and we still don't know why. People are still looking for Ray Palmer and we still don't know why. If you've been reading the book at all, you know these things. You don't need a recap issue to to tell you what's going on with everyone! The worst part is, it didn't even recap the things that have happened outside of Countdown that have influenced the book's story. It just told you what's been happening in the book. If you were scratching your head about something before reading issue #26's recap you still will be afterward. And to make matters even worse, a new mystery gets introduced (the black suited Superman) on top of all the other mysteries in Countdown that haven't been explored in the least.

And the last thing, the final nail in the coffin: Jason Todd's betrayal wasn't real. The one thing to come along in this book and make me think that it might be worth sticking around to see how it turns out was a sham. A ruse. A trick. A bit of tomfoolery on the part of Bob the Monitor. Turns out Jason Todd only pretended to shoot Donna Troy in the face and only pretended to join up with Monarch so the "Challengers" could get away. So they could run off to another universe and continue their search for Ray Palmer. The same search that's been fruitless and boring for weeks on end. Huzzah.

So, that's it. I'm done. I'm out. Goodbye. Farewell. Amen. The story may eventually pick up at some point in the second half but I won't be around to see it. There have just been too many weeks of the same crap, killing time, and leaving out important elements of the story. I'm definitely not buying every book DC puts out, I'm not going to go do research on the internet every week to find out what's going on, and I can't just accept it.

DC will no longer get my $2.99 a week for this book.