Countdown To Final Crisis #2

the pain is almost over!!!

I broke up with this bitch way back at 26 and haven't looked back since.

The last month has been super.  I am really looking forward to the wrap up.

I thought last week was really good, I too am looking forward to the end.

Glorious cover by Kubert!  Jimmy looks badass taking on friggin DARKSEID!

Kick his ass, Monster Girl!

It better be absolute mayhem in this issue.

Anyone remember when Piper and Trickster were somehow of importance to the story? Me neither.

this isssue is seriously in the top 5 pulled books?  I'm shocked and amazed

This title has been so frustrating.  It really started to look good in the teens, but the follow through has been substandard, or average at best.

Take this week with Jimmy, for example...spoilers...So Jimmy has been struggling with his newfound powers for fifty issues, and he finally gets to a point where it looks like he is comfortable with them and willing to make a great sacrifice by going up against Darkseid toe-to-toe...and what happens?  The Atom rips out an Apocalyptian doodad from his brain rendering him useless and the fight veers over to Orion who has not been seen at all up to this point.

What was the point of putting Jimmy through his trials if someone else was going to fight his battles for him.  Seriously, I want to like this title being the good little DC fanboy that I am, but they are making it very hard.

Orion's alive?!

I am sorry conor but I have to disagree that this book has been super the last month. I think that this book was horrible and now it is average, but since it made such a big jump we think it is great but the jump was not to great just an average book that most people would drop if it was an ongoing, but since there is a end in sight we are all hanging on to see how it ends.

Ok, so I haven't been reading it...but you're telling me that JIMMY OLSEN was going to take on Darkseid? Jimmy Olsen? Yuck.

I stand by the inclusion of Orion here. It wasn't Jimmy's calling to battle Darkseid toe-to-toe. Orion's been waiting for that his whole life. So why shouldn't he have the oppurtunity to fulfill his destiny? This was another great issue as long as Darkseid stays dead, otherwise it was pointless.

The fact that Orion was there was not really the problem.  The problem was that there was no character development for Jimmy Olsen.  Countdown was partly a build up to this moment and they took it away from jimmy. What was the point of giving Jimmy this story arc if nothing happens with it. Also, you just know that darkseid is coming back.  Is it not darkseid's eyes I see in the preview for Final Crisis on page 12 of Countdown 2?

Is next week the last issue or is there a #0?

There's a 'DC Universe: Zero' scheduled for the release on the 30th. From the DC website:

Written by Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns; Art by George Pérez, Tony Daniel, J.G. Jones, Aaron Lopresti, Ivan Reis, Philip Tan and Carlos Pacheco; Cover by various

This is it! The greatest DC characters! Your favorite writers and artists! Everything leading to Final Crisis and beyond starts here for just 50¢! Take a journey through the past and present of the DCU, and witness the emergence of the greatest evil in the universe — and the stunning return of a force for good! You dare not miss DC Universe: Zero!

DC Universe  |  32pg.  |  Color  |  $0.50 US

On Sale April 30, 2008

@tdog - We'll have to agree to disagree, then.  The last five issues have been great.

This is a really great issue, to bad it took so long for the book to get to this point.  This is my first event that i'm getting every tie-in.  I think it's gonig to be my last.  PS. Superman Prime issues were good too   

conor - I agree to desagree, have a great time at NYCC, I Love all the stuff that you guys are putting out everyday, keep up the good work.

As a stand alone story his was one of my favorite issues from the series.  The art was fair at points but overall had great energy and really moved the story well.  The fight was great and I was genuinely surprised by the outcome.  I understand the comments above about the baffling decision to discard the Olson story and suddenly insert Orion, and I agree that this type of bait-and-switch and casual disposal of long running threads within the stories has really caused me to feel negatively about the series overall, but that didn't keep me from tearing through this issue and enjoying it.

This issue felt odd purely for the fact that Orion seemed to come out of no where.  Since I did not read Death of The New Gods, I was a little confuzzled on how Orion just seemed to show up.

In Death of the New Gods, Orion was probably the highest profile character to "die" off-panel - we just see his helmet floating in space and are left to assume that he was killed. So I wasn't suprised to see him alive, but the overall flow of Countdown has really been poor with a lot of strange plot breaks that discard weeks or months of ongoing story development. It feels like really poor plotting from the outset resulting in pages of story that ultimately never pay off. I'm happy to see the last few issues pick up as we close in on the end of the Countdown, but overall I'm just happy to move on to the next thing at this point. 52 was a much better series.