Apr 23, 2008 > Countdown To Final Crisis > #1

Countdown To Final Crisis #1

Review by FACE:

Story by Paul Dini
Story consulting by Keith Giffen
Script by Paul Dini
Art by Scott Kolins
Covers by Adam Kubert

Size: 32 Pages

Price: $2.99

This review contains spoilers, click here to read

I love the displeasure so many fanboys receive from the covetous behavior known as "collecting". It's real simple: if you don't like something, don't buy it. Is it so important for you to be able to brag about your entire run of Countdown if you didn't even enjoy it? Does anyone ever swoon the way you do over your longbox collection? I doubt it.

So let me be the first to say something positive about Countdown issue #1: atleast it's over.

Countdown #1 was everything I've begun to expect from a final issue in every event I've read recently. It was sappy and lame. Final issues/ epilogues are like that. They're the conclusion to a story. You might say, "in summation, the Challengers became restless and decided to exert their authority upon the monitors. Piper's still alive, and still gay. Mary Marvel's still a bitch. Jason Todd's still a dick. Holly and Harley really don't need their own series.. and then Kyle Rayner went off to OA where he opened a sports bar for members of the Corps. The end."

You might have missed the big event that happened here because you were too busy looking for something else: Orion killed Darkseid and the Fifth Age has come about.

You're right, it doesn't make sense. Has anything made sense since Infinite Crisis?

Countdown was just the path to Final Crisis, an experimental mega-series with the inclusion of tie-ins. DD himself, admits it was something of a losing battle within this week's DC Nation. It doesn't mean it was a complete failure. I like the idea of a weekly series. The story stays fresh in my mind. I don't have to dig up last month's issue to remember key plot points and I don't have to wait a month for the next leg of the story.

When you write something this big you're going to inevitably wind up with a lot of crap. Like when a Stephen King book gets made into a movie - the script-writer strives to eliminate the crap and so you wind up with a lot of missing elements. The same can be said for Harry Potter books.

I digress.

I hate to think this would deter the weekly issue format (with tie-ins) because of its failures. I would like to see this work. Good luck with that DC.

Story: 2 - Average Art: 3 - Good

282

pulls

Avg Rating: 2.3

Users who pulled this comic:

CP Eric soulgiver adrianhosseini ford teddysetgo jasonkinnison Aristoi01 friday13fan TheKevBot

Users who reviewed this comic:

MastaP FACE PhantomPhrenemy Labor

Comments

This book, combined with the Death of the New Gods should be retitle, how to make someone feel like an asshole for buying an entire series of books only to have NOTHING happen and feel like an entire year of waiting led to nothing. Seriously? This book was a god damned cock tease of nothingness. Remember when they told us to look to the skies? Well he was right, look to the skies cause they are more interesting than the WEAKLY shit DC is putting out. The thing that pisses me off the most is that I got 7 issues into Death of the New Gods only to have the ending ruined in countdown 2 last week, and now I'm in the dillema of deciding to buy the last of an 8 part series in hopes of some big twist that we need to know, but no, no no no no no no.... I hate you today DC, 0 better be realllllllllly freaken good...

Posted by Fractal514 on 04/23/08 at 11:33 PM

as displeased as I was with the final few issues, I don't feel my money was wasted, but I do feel a bit taken. of course I'm a completionist, I love having the full run of the books I enjoy and this book was the top of my stack for a year, just like 52 was. I'm not bitter, I got a cram course in the DCU this past year and I enjoyed it a great deal. It just should have felt like something...you know, like happened, or something.

Is that too much to ask?

I'm still hooked, I'm still buying multiple copies of Final Crisis because I can't wait to see those Flash kids die in the end! Then I can buy the Flash again!

Posted by PhantomPhrenemy on 04/25/08 at 03:16 AM

@Phrenemy - I respect that because atleast you can say something positive about it. But it wouldn't make you any less of a person if you didn't have 52 issues of a sub-par series sitting around your house gathering dust now.

I think that we sometimes expect too much from a series, as if Superman's going to die everytime there's an event and it's just not gonna happen. For DC it's all about the sales. They'll say whatever they want just to get you to go out and buy it. There was a time when Ford spoke highly of the Pinto too, and then they found out it was a fiery death trap anytime it was barely tapped in the rear-end. Now you never see Pintos anymore.

Posted by FACE on 04/25/08 at 10:03 AM