COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #17Story by Paul Dini
Story consultant Keith Giffen
Scripts by Tony Bedard
Art by Pete Woods and Tom Derenick
I'm not sure, but this might have been the best issue of Countdown (to Final Crisis) to date. It still had those annoying quirks randomly littered about the issue, but there seemed to be way more good than bad in this issue.
The main crux of this issue was dealing with Bob, the formerly good, but now evil Monitor. Bob basically goes on a killing spree, wiping out the Earth-51 heroes as the Challengers try their best to get Ray Palmer to safety. Bob even has time to make a "Flash has to die every Crisis" joke as he kills this world's Barry Allen. The ease in which he wipes out the Earth-51 heroes left me wondering why he didn't one-shot kill Donna or Jason. I'm gonna go with the "it's magic" excuse though and quietly move along.
After wiping out a handful of heroes, Bob's a little tired and lets Kyle spirit Ray Palmer away while he laments his bad luck. Giving him no time to be emo, the rest of the Monitors stop by for a chit-chat. It's revealed here that Solomon, or the Monitor formerly known as the bad Monitor, has it out verbally with Bob and we find out the two of them have been conspiring since the start to stop Ray and prevent the Great Disaster. On top of that, they hoped to combine all the Monitors into a giant mecha Monitor. Okay, I made that last part up, but they want to reform into a single Monitor like in the pre-pre-Crisis DCU. This results in Solomon killing Bob in an attempt to gain his power in some Highlander-like Monitor power stealing thing. It goes badly as the Monitors are now too unique to recombine into a single Monitor.
Before the other Monitors can gasp and yawn over this turn of events, Monarch shows up with his whole freaking army and establishes a beachhead on Earth-51 as he declares war on the Monitors now that they were outside their protective Monitor bubble home. It was one of the better scenes in Countdown and makes me wish the entire series had been done similarly.
Oh ya, there was a bunch of Mary Marvel crap this time around as well. She fights Eclipso. Both lose their powers somehow. Just when you think her story can't get any worse, she ends up joining the Amazons at the end. They should use magic to retcon this whole storyline away.
Verdict - Must Read. Despite having some Mary Marvel stuff, I think the evil Bob / Monitor / Monarch stuff easily outweighs the bad and is actually entertaining if you don't pick it apart too much.
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