DC=Teh Dumb
DC=Teh Dumb
Jul 02So the latest preview image of Countdown is up at Newsarama, and may I say I am…underwhelmed?
There’s lots of cool stuff going on at DC right now–well, maybe “lots” is too strong a word. The Sinestro Corps business over in the Green Lantern books is seriously cool. I like Morrison’s Batman and the Busiek/Johns/Donner triumverate on the Superman books. Checkmate’s neat.
But this Countdown business, and whatever they’re teasing to lead up to whatever is going to happen…MEH. Sometimes, BLEAH.
It seems like a weird thing to say, but I’d compare DC right now in the Age of Didio to Lost circa season 2 and much of season 3: Wandering, pandering, asking questions and providing almost no answers. Except when DC does provide answers, they are often stupid, and unrelated to anything we have seen come before or since.
Why is Mary Marvel gonna be evil now? Ditto the Martian Manhunter? WTF is the Mullet Superman doing here?
Perhaps most importantly: Why should I care?
I dropped Countdown after about six issues; there was nothing happening, and what was happening was just boring and often stupid. I couldn’t get into the “Mary Marvel’s evil now” storyline; ditto the Rogues story. And the Rogues story became exponentially more pointless after I realized that their apparent future activities would essentially be driven by the death of Bart Allen…in A COMIC OTHER THAN COUNTDOWN.
So when Didio said that Countdown would be the “spine” of the DCU for a year, what he really meant to say was that it would be the place where crap happened that has little to no direct relevance on the more important, and frankly, more interesting events occurring in other books. It’s like a show based on what Jack Bauer does when he’s not saving the world in 24 hours: Who cares?
See, they really did NOT understand what made 52 great, and so in replicating it, all they’ve managed to give us is the format: A weekly comic. 52 had two big things going for it: A standalone storytelling space, requiring no interaction with the rest of the DC line; and incredibly talented writers at the helm.
Countdown is all mixed up in the DCU, in ways that range from pointless to annoying, and it’s clearly Dan Didio’s baby. I know, I know–Paul Dini is “showrunning” the book, and he’s got other writers doing the scripting.
But does anyone actually believe that Paul Dini came up with this shit? He’s a writer who has demonstrated some level of talent in pretty much everything he’s done. He’s no Shakespeare but you know he can put together a good script/story/comic.
Countdown reads like a laundry list of Dan Didio’s strange, arcane story beats turned into about the best possible story it could be under the circumstances. I get the sense (and this is just speculation, but c’mon, it seems KINDA true) that Didio maybe didn’t care for the fact that 52 became the Geoff, Grant, Greg & Mark show, and so he set out to lay the hammer down with Countdown, and regain control of his books and universe.
And it’s weird–it seems as though there’s a larger plan at work, and parts of it seem interesting, and other parts seem well-executed. But lots of it seem dumb, and much of it is just brought off in a piss-poor manner. Where is the problem? Is it in the original ideas? The execution? The editorial level where the day-to-day decisions are made? Is Didio mixing his business up in the editors’ work so that things come out all muddy and lame?
The death of Bart Allen is a perfect example: A potentially strong book, with a potentially interesting character, pissed away to a poor writing team and horseshit art, then massacred unnecessarily just as it was getting good again–only to revert back to not only its original numbering and star, but the writer most closely associated with it.
I seriously do. Not. Get. It. It’s a vaguely fascinating mess, and I’m not paying for that shit anymore.*
*Having said that, it’s highly possible that something down the line will spark a twinge of…nostalgia? Nerdly need? Fulfillment? And I will dive right back into the dirty water. If so, SHAME ON ME.
