Countdown is no worse than 52

18Jul07

So the word amongst the internet elite is that Countdown is terrible and a huge failure and you can’t possibly understand it without reading hundreds of other books in the DCU line. The person who was blogging about it every week has even stopped saying he’s dropped it because there is obviously no story involved.

All of which is bullshit meanderings of people who don’t know how to read, or read things so literally that they can’t handle things in a non-linear fashion. If “Hero A” dies in this book this week, how can this not be dealt with by the next week in every other book in the line.

DC never promised that the events of thier books were going to be linear. They had said to the best of their abilities, books would be happening hopefully within the same month as each other.

So, the big Countdown blogger has quit. Dropped the book because he feels you need to read every other book in the line to follow what’s going on in Countdown, and vise versa.

Again, I call bullshit. And i call lazy reading.

As I recall, 52, despite who the creators were, took about 10 to 15 issues to get going as well. Countdown is starting to do that now.

The biggest difference actually seems to be the creators of 52 had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted in that missing year as there was no other editiorial input really to be made. They had an open canvas to do whatever they wanted, with really very little backlash (See Shadowpact for one of the very little inconsistencies that quite honestly people seemed to forget as quickly as it was made.)

So what I plan to do now, not weekly, but bi-weekly or perhaps even monthly (because that’s pretty much how I read 52, and how I plan to continue to read Conutdown) is do the commentary for the series that so many people have found it difficult to do for this story that is so confusing and can’t be read without reading 20 other books. (an arguement that was also used for Infinite Crisis that, as much as people wanted to argue, was debunked by just as many people who weren’t confused and that was all theyw ere reading as those who were confused.)

*Incidently, the only people who seemed confused with Infinite Crisis where those who a)were reading (and complaining about) every book put out by DC at the time  and b)can’t deal with any type of story telling on anything but a linear level.

I believe I will jump in tonight go back over the first month of Countdown and explain why you don’t have to read anything but the book to understand what’s going on.

Filed under: 52, Countdown, DC, comics   |  Leave a Comment