Countdown Review - Challengers From Beyond: The Search for Ray Palmer

The third part of my series of Countdown summaries and reviews features the Challengers From Beyond: The Search For Ray Palmer. Check out the introduction to find out what these reviews are all about and then make sure you catch up with the Darkseid: Unto Man Shall Come...A Great Disaster and Holly Robinson & The Amazons reviews. Once you're caught up, hit the jump for the Challengers review!

Challengers From Beyond: The Search for Ray Palmer

The Search for Ray Palmer has been the focal point of Countdown since day one when Jason Todd witnessed the death of Duela Dent at the hands of the rogue Monitor and the good Monitor saw the name 'Ray Palmer' appear on the Source Wall.

Barely surviving this encounter with the rogue Monitor, Jason later would go on to meet up with Donna Troy at the funeral the Titans held for Duela Dent, who was a one-time Titan.

During Amazons Attack, in another one of Countdown's 'coincidences', Jason Todd met up with Donna yet again, this time at the Lincoln Memorial, where the two ran into the evil Monitor's agent, Forerunner.

If not for the good Monitor, who was later named Bob, they would not have survived the encounter, as he called off Forerunner, who could not refuse a Monitor due to their genetic breeding, and teleported the duo away.

Later, while conferring with Bob at the funeral for Bart Allen, the Monitor goes on to inform us that the group must seek out the current Atom, Ryan Choi, in order to reach the Nanoverse, where he believes Ray Palmer is located. Another oddity in that the Monitor lacks the power to teleport them to the Nanoverse, begging the question how does he 'monitor' anything in that part of the universe?

Upon entering the Nanoverse, with the help of Atom, the team is quickly captured by the evil Queen Bethelra. During their adventures in the Nanoverse, they learn that several races that inhabit this part of the universe are fleeing into the unknown, fearing a 'great disaster', the first of many clues hinting that something is wrong in the Multiverse.

During their attempted escape from Bethelra, Kyle Rayner, fresh from the as yet unfinished Sinestro Corps War, joins the team after saving them from Bethelra. The Guardians apparently send Kyle on this mission to aid the group in their search for Ray Palmer, and not a moment too soon, as Atom is whisked away to finish his own adventures in his book, leaving the rest of the group to search for Ray Palmer throughout the Multiverse.

This Multiverse Earth jumping storyline gave Countdown the shot in the arm that it really needed and seems to have revitalized the entire book in my opinion. While their first adventure in the Wildstorm Universe of Earth-50 was far from spectacular, the next stop on their tour brought them into conflict with the Crime Syndicate, evil counterparts to the JLA, of Earth-3, which is later revealed to be the newly rechristened Crime Society. This adventure introduced us to the Jokester, father to Duela and moral counterpoint to the insane Joker of our Earth.

Continuing their Earth jumping search for Ray Palmer, the team gets a new member as the Jokester managed to tag along as the team landed on the 'perfect' Earth-15, where each member of the team apparently got everything they ever wanted on this Earth. Jason became Batman. Donna became Wonder Woman and so on. With Ray Palmer still missing, they leave this paradise and head to their next, and final destination in the Countdown book proper, Earth-8, home of the Marvel analogues, Lord Havok and the Extremists. However, Monarch showed up shortly afterwards and recruited the Crime Syndicate into his ever growing Multiverse-spanning army.

Their encounter with the Extremists ended poorly for the Challengers as the entire team gets captured unceremoniously off-panel. This is when all hell breaks loose as the evil Monitor finally gets a lock on the team and arrives on Earth-8 in an attempt to kill the Challengers. During the melee, Monarch shows up to intervene, but not before the evil Monitor manages to kill Jokester. In the ensuing confusion, Bob and Kyle Rayner manage to teleport the team away from the immediate danger, causing his evil Monitor breathern to leave, his prey lost for now.

However, before they can catch their breath, the Crime Society literally bangs down their door and engages the group in another chaotic melee. Monarch tries to recruit the Extremists, similar to how he recruited the Society, but they refuse, resulting in another battle royale.

In the resulting chaos, Jason Todd kills Barracuda, a member of the Extremists and then goes on to betray the team, shooting Donna with the Monitor's gun and then offering his services to Monarch, ending the team's adventures, which leads us into the newly named Countdown to Final Crisis #26.

Kirk Says: This storyline started out quite slowly, but finished incredibly strong, with the introduction of Forerunner the only real highlight early on. Despite this, the introduction of Kyle to the group and the beginning of the Multiverse spanning adventure finally delivered on the book's original premise and this is exactly what I had been hoping for with this book - fun introductions to the numerous 52 Earth's created at the end of 52.

Verdict - Excellent. It started off slow, but built to a roaring finish. After re-reading, the earlier Todd and Donna centric scenes read a lot better to me than when I first read the series back when it started. While few expect Todd's betrayal to last, it has left us with a nice ending to this first act and I expect this storyline to really heat up in the next half as the Challengers visit more and more new Earths.

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