COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #16Story by Paul Dini
Story consultant Keith Giffen
Scripts by Tony Bedard
Art by Pete Woods and Tom Derenick
Surprisingly, Countdown to Final Crisis was everything I hoped it would be this week. Really. It was good. They spend no time, with the exception of maybe one page, on the other, crappier storylines and focus everything, as they should, on the Monarch vs. Monitors battle and it actually delivered for once.
Picking up right where last issue left off, Monarch's forces are systematically taking over Earth-51 and his super powered army is busy battling the Monitors.
Meanwhile, Monarch is busy giving the verbal beat down on Solomon, who's dejected after killing Bob and failing to save the Multiverse. He teleports back to the Monitor nexus and is then dressed down by the few Monitors not currently fighting on Earth-51. Even later, as the poor guy tries to cry it out, Superman Prime shows up most likely with the goal of finding his own Earth. I wonder if he'll be tricked into going to Earth-51?
On the Donna and Jason side of things, Donna gets a beat down from an evil Donna who is revealed to be under the sway of Queen Belthera, whom I thought was written out of the series. Seems she's under Monarch's banner and using her bug army to take out the populace. Jason is nearly killed by "Doc Ock" of the Extremists before this Earth's extra paranoid Batman saves him and brings him back to the Batcave. This cave has a Red Robin shrine in it and it is revealed Jason Todd died on this Earth 10 years ago. I assume this will lead to Jason becoming Red Robin like the Countdown teaser image showed.
Honestly, I think everything clicked in this issue. There were no wasted scenes and none of the dialogue felt stilted or groan inducing. There wasn't even any pointless deaths of random characters as far as I could tell, which is a first in a while I think. This issue won't get anyone who isn't buying this series to pick it up, but it's definitely a nice change of pace over the typical issues.
Verdict - Must Read. DC's doing a great job on this Earth-51 / Monarch vs Monitor war and this is the best Countdown has ever been in my opinion. Probably has something to do with no Amazons, Mary Marvel, Jimmy (okay, one naked bug girl page of his story was here), and no Karate Kid stories. It's funny how good a story can get when they stop focusing on pointless garbage.
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