Countdown Review - The Rogues: Villains Defiant

I'm sure you're tired of hearing about Countdown by now, but here's the last of my midway reviews for the individual storylines in honour of the name change to Countdown to Final Crisis. This one features the ever loveable Rogues - Trickster and Piper. This storyline, while usually entertaining, appeared to only be in Countdown as a way to tie into and increase sales on various other books, like the Green Arrow / Black Canary wedding or promoting the upcoming Salvation Run. To get caught up on this storyline and find out what I think, hit the jump for the full review!

The Rogues: Villains Defiant

Trickster and Piper’s adventure begins as a series of 4 to 5 page “tie-ins” in each issue that have little to nothing to do with Countdown, similar to the early Karate Kid / Lightning Saga “tie-ins” that wasted pages.

These tie-ins consisted of several meetings with the other Flash Rogues, such as Captain Cold, Mirror Master, Heatwave, etc, who are all being gathered together by Inertia to kill Bart Allen.

Unfortunately, the entire death of the Flash ended up being completely relegated Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13. If you were reading Countdown, you never get to see the death of the Flash and have to assume the Rogues are telling you the truth when they say they had nothing to do with Bart’s death.

However, this completely contradicts the events in the Flash book, seeing as the two were shown beating the powerless Flash to death with the other Rogues. To this day, DC claims Trickster and Piper had nothing to do with his death. Adding to the confusion of whether they did or did not help kill the Flash, DC showed in the Trickster and Piper villain origins that Trickster did indeed help kill Flash while Piper had nothing to do with it.

Post-death of the Flash and despite the confusion over their involvement in the murder, both Trickster and Piper go on the lamb to avoid the authorities and mass of super-heroes attempting to track down all the Rogues involved.

However, before they can get too far, they are tracked down by Deadshot and Multiplex, who easily capture them as they are leaving the funeral for the Flash. The two wake up to find themselves chained together with a shock chain, which shocks the two if they move too far away from each other.

Utilizing a trick tooth, Trickster creates a distraction which helps the duo escape. However, as soon as they exit the ‘room’ they were in, they quickly realize they were aboard an airplane and are now falling to their deaths. Thinking fast, Trickster manages to find his trick boots, which help him float on air, and uses them to help slow their fall enough that they survive the splash down in Gotham harbour.

From here, the two go on a merry romp through the DCU, constantly eluding heroes and the Suicide Squad’s attempts to capture them. Their first stop, seeing that they are in Gotham, was to see the Penguin in hopes he could help them lay low and free themselves of the shock chain.

Unbeknownst to them, Penguin is working with the Suicide Squad and has set the two up to be captured in his cellar. Somehow, the two manage to elude certain capture at the hands of the Suicide Squad as they flee Penguin’s club.

Leaving Penguin’s club, the two quickly run into Oracle’s agents, the new Question and Batwoman. After Trickster uses some hand puppets to explain how they weren’t involved in the murder of the Flash, the Question, in one of Countdown’s most ridiculous scenes, lets them go, deeming them too stupid to have killed Bart.

Their next stop seems to only exist to help sell the Green Arrow Wedding tie-ins, where the duo manage to run into both Poison Ivy and Deathstroke as they plan to crash Green Arrow’s wedding. The duo end up strung up for Batman to find, who passes them off to Wally West, who has returned as the new Flash.

In another contrived plot point, Wally simply believes the two after a few brief exchanges where they simply say they didn’t kill Bart. Flash decides to take them to Zatanna’s, where they go on to tie-in to Black Canary’s bachelorette party and, later, the actual wedding special.

Once they’ve ‘helped out’ the heroes at the wedding, the Rogues steal a car and take their unexpected tag along, Double Down, with them to a diner. As the group chat, the Rogues learn of the disappearing villains, which changes the focus of the Rogues’ story into a series of Salvation Run tie-ins / preludes.

No sooner then they learn of the villain disappearances does the Suicide Squad show up at the diner to apprehend the trio of villains. Trickster and Piper manage to escape using Trickster’s cloaking trick. After evading the Suicide Squad yet again, the duo decide to follow them and free the other villains that have been captured so that they will owe both Trickster and Piper and will hopefully help them in turn.

In the last issue, Countdown #27, the duo manages to infiltrate the complex holding the villains and run into a captured Two-Face. After freeing him from his guards, he relates to them that it is Checkmate that is rounding up all the villains and further elaborates on the premise of the upcoming Salvation Run series. For some odd reason, after freeing Two-Face, the duo leave the complex, not bothering to find any other villains or information and flee the facility in a stolen vehicle, which is the last we see of them as the title changes to Countdown to Final Crisis.

Kirk Says: The Rogues’ story has been fairly good. However, it has, after 26 issues, nothing to do with the overall Countdown story. I can see lines connecting every other story to the Monitors, Darkseid and the Multiverse, but no such connection exists with the Rogues. Every scene they are in, whether it is comical or not, seems like nothing more than a tie-in for other books.

I’m confused as to whether there is ever going to be a reason behind all these pages devoted to the Rogues’ story or if they will continue to merely be vehicles to tie into other books. They have a lot of funny scenes together, but also a lot of stupid ones, like the Question and Flash meetings. So, I’m torn between wanting to see more of these two and not wanting a bunch of filler tie-in advertisements being passed off as important stories.

Verdict – Average. If there was a clear point to all these scenes, other than to advertise other books, like Flash, Green Arrow / Black Canary Wedding and Salvation Run, I would give this storyline a higher grade. Hopefully, with the name change, this story will gain a clear focus and begin to show signs of being important to the overall story and not just a series of tie-ins.

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