DC Comics brought back weekly comics with 52 in 2006. The 52 issue series was a massive hit. Infinite Crisis had just ended, and the rest of the publisher’s line had jumped a year forward, so fans didn’t know what really happened in the aftermath of the event book. It was written by the greatest brain trust that you could imagine for a DC book: Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Geoff Johns with Keith Giffen helping write and doing art breakdowns for every issue. There was a lot of trepidation about the series — we thought it would be good, but were scared it wouldn’t — but those fears were unfounded. As it was wrapping up, another weekly book was announced, and fans expectations were very high for it — Countdown to Final Crisis, which would start out as just Countdown.
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Final Crisis has gone down as a difficult but perfect event, but its build-up series has been roundly maligned, since before it even ended. There are a lot of problems with Countdown to Final Crisis, and it’s been looked as as one of the worst parts of DC Comics in the 21st century. However, while it is definitely not great, it’s not as terrible as most people think it is, and it’s about time to rethink this maligned volume of DC history.
Countdown to Final Crisis Has Its Moments
Let’s start with the problems. DC was on fire in the ’00s, and Countdown had a lot going for it. However, the problem came from the top. Then-DC head honcho Dan DiDio didn’t like how much control over 52 the writers had and editorial didn’t, so this new weekly series was going to be more controlled. The book became an integral part of the line, taking events from the books of the time, and showing them through the lens of the book’s cast — Karate Kid, Triplicate Girl, Trickster, Pied Piper, Jimmy Olsen, Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, Red Hood, Mary Marvel, and Holly Robinson.
However, one of the problems with a book that was meant to build up Final Crisis is that writer Grant Morrison, the writer of the upcoming event, didn’t share what they were going to do in their story. Morrison is one of DC’s greatest creators, and they are very much anti-editorial. So, Countdown had no idea what it was setting up except that it dealt with the New Gods. On top of that, the book set up spin-off series, so even if you were reading it, to get the full story, you had to buy way more books. It was a mess.
However, if you remove the book from the context of being the build-up to Final Crisis, it’s not terrible. The book was “show run”, for lack of a better term, by Batman: The Animated Series mastermind Paul Dini, a man who understood the characters of DC. The book’s cast is very cool, and their trip across the multiverse, battling enemies like the Monarch, Superman-Prime, and Darkseid, can get pretty exciting. Karate Kid, Mary Marvel, and the buddy comedy of Trickster and the Pied Piper give readers some fun moments, and the rest of the cast gets to shine at different times.
The story takes a while to congeal into something coherent, but once it gets going, it’s a lot of fun. 52 did the same thing, albeit in a better way that made more sense once you got to the end, so that’s not as big a problem. It’s the kind of multiversal DC madness that we were just getting back at the time, and it was honestly kind of exciting to read before we knew what it was counting down to. It definitely could have better, but the same can be said for anything. There are a lot of cool moments (and covers from Andy and Adam Kubert), and it’s the sum of its parts in the best possible way.
It’s Not Perfect but It’s Not as Terrible as Fans Think
I’m not going to lie to you — Countdown to Final Crisis isn’t an amazing work that everyone was wrong about. I don’t think it should be looked at as an underrated classic. It’s one of the earliest cracks in the edifice of Dan DiDio, who at the time we thought was doing a pretty good job, and it dropped the ball in a lot of ways. As a Final Crisis superfan, I wish it was better because it’s one of those things that fans point at as a problem with that event. However, when you take away Morrison’s DC opus, it becomes something more enjoyable.
Countdown to Final Crisis, in a lot of ways, was the first time that readers got a chance to play in the new post-Infinite Crisis DC Multiverse. It used a lot of great classic characters, and went in directions that were fun if a little dumb at times. The characters save the book and keep it moving along at a good clip (getting a book with Karate Kid as a main character in 2007 was an undreamt of joy). It was wild and I think if more people gave it a chance as its own story, they’d get something better than they expected.
What do you think of Countdown to Final Crisis? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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