Countdown #37 Review

COUNTDOWN #37
Story by Paul Dini
Script by Adam Beechan
Art by David Lopez

I am beginning to hate reviewing Countdown. I typically buy more Marvel then DC and it leaves me with little DC to review each week. As Countdown comes out weekly, it seems like all I do is bash DC whenever I review one of their books. For those that love DC, please hold out for my Flash review below before writing me off as a Marvel fanboy.

After two weeks of relatively average issues, Countdown is back down in the gutter this week. To start, the art is atrocious. I consider myself an average amateur artist. I will not make money off anything I draw and have no intentions of doing so, but I can honestly say that I could have pencilled a million times better issue of this book in half as much time as the no-name penciller this week. I do not know if DC has just given up on the book and cannot be bothered putting any talent on it or what, but as an avid comic reader, I cannot believe this book made it to print with art this bad. Do not let the cover art fool you as it is no where near representative of the contents of the issue.

Storywise, it appears DC has decided they will add a main plot line to the myriad of stories and are beating it over our head that a great disaster or crisis is coming. I believe every single plot line states this with maybe the exception of Jimmy Olsen this week. It just seemed out of left field and thrown in to make people believe something actually might happen in this book and that the storylines are, in fact, linked. If it had been spread out over several weeks, it would not come off so poorly, but to have every major plot line allude to this crisis at the same time is hamfisted at best.

While the last two issues seemed to at least move stories forward, this issue has none of that nonsense. We are back to the non-story, two page per storyline formula for this week. The only thing that happens is the ending with Jimmy and Clark Kent and his apparent knowledge that he is, in fact, Superman. It is more of a shock ending to get people to come back next week then an actual plot point that was built up to by the writers.

My biggest complaint is the apparent need to recap the previous events of the last few issues by the Rogues. This is a weekly comic with minimal space for actual story progression and they feel the need to have Trickster and Piper beat us over the head with walls of speech bubble text to bring us up to speed on something we read not one week ago? They barely do this in monthlies anymore and they feel the need to do this to fill pages in a weekly?

Save yourself the money and just "Byrne" this at the store if you have any interest in it still. Maybe when this renames to Countdown to Final Crisis they will make a concerted effort to offer us a weekly, quality comic like 52 as opposed to slapping half finished pencils and regurgitated plot points from multiple DC books together and calling it a book.

Verdict - Avoid It

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