Source: bengarry.wordpress.com
6. Countdown
The book is so boring and muddled that you forget it as you read it. Like some sort of printed version of the neutralizer from Men in Black, Countdown was DC’s attempt to follow up on 52, the well-liked and pretty great weekly series. Countdown brought in a new team of (usually pretty great) writers, but seemed to be forcibly editorial in terms of its driving forces.
The series is a mess. Like the kind of disaster that would warrant a FEMA evacuation.
Countdown’s numerous plotlines barely tie together; interviews from the beginning of the series do not match the eventual product; and Grant Morrison, whose series Final Crisis Countdown was supposed to lead into, not only ignored the events of the series, but felt actively hindered by them. It is the fear of the worst a weekly series could be: directionless, plodding, rerouted to tie into forgettable event comics, and altogether unwieldy.
Like a trip taken with a malfunctioning GPS, Countdown doesn’t wind up where it was supposed to and took too many unnecessary detours even for that destination. If you haven’t, check out the oral history of Countdown, linked HERE. Paints a good picture of a four-color trainwreck.
