1) The solicitations said "breakdowns by Keith Giffen". Only *AFTER* the release of the *second* issue was it revealed that Giffen wasn't working on the early issues. DiDio then said that Giffen would be on by either the fourth or sixth issue, and now Giffen says "I don’t show up in the book until 10 or so issues down the line." which means the solicitations for June and July as well as May are probably incorrect. This is an important point - the cover of Previews advertising May's issues (see http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/Countdown/maypreviews.jpg ) clearly says in big letters "art by KEITH GIFFEN and the world's finest artists". Giffen was a major selling point of the series. Now, it's entirely understandable that Giffen couldn't do those early issues - the man appears to be working on every single comic put out by DC, Marvel and Boom! at the moment - but that's something that should have been made extremely clear before the first issue shipped.

2) The covers for issues 1 & 3 feature characters who don't appear in the comic in question at all.

3) We were told that any referencing of other comics would be done in such a way that it would make sense without reading them. This has so far consisted of a big chunk of fight scene from another comic dumped in without context.

So if you bought the comic based on who you'd been told the creative team was, because a character you liked was on the cover, or because you were told it'd be a story you could follow without buying a ton of tie-in comics, you've been sold something substantially different to what you thought you were buying.

So I mean for the "should" part to be implied. But if that's unclear, then yeah, it totally is "should"

Well, of course some issues are going to be better than others - no-one's arguing otherwise. But *do* 'today's long stories' need as many issues as they take? Let's look at Countdown, since it's the subject under discussion.

Issue 1 has 22 pages. It has one actual event - the murder of Duela Dent by a Monitor, in front of Jason Todd, after she has herself kidnapped and murdered someone. That story could be told in five pages. The other four pieces of information (not really events as nothing actually happens) - Darkseid is plotting something, Mary Marvel is alone without her powers, the Rogues are plotting something and Ray Palmer is important - could have been done Levitz ABC style, taking between a panel and a page each.

The story, such as it is, could be told in half the space without losing anything essential to the plot. I think, in fact, it could be done without losing any character development or atmosphere, but that's more debatable.

Either way though, Dini has shown with his excellent Detective run that he can tell a story concisely, and this level of padding is obviously a deliberate choice, not something imposed on him or his co-writers by 'today's longer stories'. It's not that 'today's longer stories require' anything - no-one is forcing Mr Dini to write a long story in a serialised form, and if he chooses to do so, he should either tell the story in a way that suits the medium or accept the criticism when he doesn't, not claim that those who dislike his artistic choices don't understand them.

You should have been talking about this when Image started all them long years ago.

The horse is out of the barn. Today's long stories require chapters, some of which may be better than others.

And the first 3 chapters of Countdown really aren't bad.

...but Brian, it really should read as "SHOULD BE judged individually." Because, as should be clear from all the comments here and the way the current Marvel and DC books are structured and the whole direct-market setup for the last twenty years, serialized comics clearly are NOT judged individually.

And you can make a really good case that the whole system is set up so that nothing is ever judged individually on its own merits AT ALL. Publishers measure sales by what is ORDERED WHOLESALE three months in advance, on a non-returnable basis. The whole thing's based on guesswork and gambling on fans' OCD need to keep up. How many of us have hung in there with a book because we are waiting for it to get good again? Because we didn't want to break up a run? Because of habit? Because it takes two months for something to fall off your pull list after you notify a retailer?

If Marvel and DC comics really were judged on an individual basis and sold based on actual popularity, with the majority of a book's sales depending on impulse buys, the whole system would collapse.

All that being said, of course I agree in principle. But it's just not so. Your idea that Paul Dini is being insulting is leaving out all the other books that have been just AS insulting, and fans' willingness to keep BEING insulted. There's no particular reason to single him out except that he happened to be tactless enough to say it out loud.

"But then you just spoke to “there is no exposition in Countdown,” so I am not sure of what your stance is on the other points."

Sorry, that was me making a joke--suggesting you were wrong about your claim that 'Countdown' has been lousy so far, then clarifying that the only thing you were wrong about was just how bad it was. It is my sense of humor, and I would not wish it on anyone else.

Well it did….Until about 20 years later when it was embraced by the hippy baby-boomers.

Which was due to the paperback editions being released, so once it was in the right format, that people wanted to read, it became a success.
Perhaps like Countdown will be when it is collected.

And if Tolkien had released chapter one on its own, and sold it for £1.50...

Well his publisher did against his wishes. No idea what the price was, but you only got a third of the story.

...and it had been promoted as something substantially different from what it was...

It was promoted as the sequel to the Hobbit, a book that was vastly different in tone and audience to the trilogy. So you could say that's correct.

...and if he defended it by saying “Just wait til the bit in Minas Tirith, it’ll all be worth it then”...

Don't know if he ever spoke about it when it was released.

...then I suspect that The Lord Of The Rings would have had far fewer readers than it did…

Well it did....Until about 20 years later when it was embraced by the hippy baby-boomers.

Though, again, this has nothing to do with whatever point I was trying to make.

And Lord of the Rings was released as serialized fiction....Only not in the context of my point.

Paul must have snuck a comment in while I was replying a different comment, because I didn't see the Lord of the Rings comment until I looked back to see who Andrew was quoting.

In any event, yeah, Lord of the Rings wasn't serialized fiction, and if it WAS, with chapter one being released on its own? You'd get basically the situation Andrew describes above (I can't speak to the "promoted as something substantially different from what it was" point, though, as I don't really recall how Countdown was promoted, to be honest).

And if Tolkien had released chapter one on its own, and sold it for £1.50, and it had been promoted as something substantially different from what it was, and if he defended it by saying "Just wait til the bit in Minas Tirith, it'll all be worth it then", then I suspect that The Lord Of The Rings would have had far fewer readers than it did...

I think Lost is a perfect example of this point, except that I would say that I DO expect every episode of Lost (and, again, any installment of serialized fiction, really) to be, on its own, a good episode.

Absolutely. Why in the hell would I waste my time on an hour of television if it isn't good? If it's important to another episode a month from now, they'll cover it in the recap.

Take the episode where Hurley fixes up the van. It comes into play later on, but you could stop watching Lost after that episode and still think the episode was good on its own.

What happened in the issue of Daredevil?

It was a whole issue that read like the end of a Colombo episode, meant to explain to the reader why Matt Murdock is not considered to be Daredevil anymore, and why he is not in jail and why he is a lawyer again.

So it was just a collection of epilogues.

It very well might read well as the epilogue to the trade collection, but as an individual issue, it was a stinker.

What happened in the issue of Daredevil?

OOPS! Forgot to add, I think you’re reading a lot into that statement he made. I didn’t read it the same way.

Fair enough.

But that's what I was saying before about how this is not something specialized to Countdown, but just something that I was figured I'd write down after reading that interview (I've expressed this stance a number of times in the past - most recently, I THINK, for an issue of Daredevil).

So if you want to say Dini is not "guilty" of thinking that a larger good story makes bad individual installments excusable, then sure. I'm certainly not tied to believing so for my position.

Again, let me reiterate that I do not think that every comic should have to be a "stand alone" work. It should just be enjoyable on its own, and if it isn't, then it should be just said, "Yeah, this issue wasn't good," and the excuse for it being a bad individual issue can't be "but it helps the larger story!"

Just like, say, if the next issue of Countdown is good, I'd say, "This issue of Countdown is good." It won't be hampered by the fact that the previous issue was NOT. The overall story may, but not the individual issue.

That’s exactly what he says when he explains that the early issues are slow because they are prologues to the later issues.

Heck, he even says “the actual story starts with issue #50″

He actually says that!! “The actual story starts with issue #50.” That’s what really got me going, “Wha?!”

You can’t just throw away issues when working in a serialized format

And yet it happens all the time. The actual story of Lord of the Rings starts with Chapter Two. The first is a Prologue who's only purpose is to introduce the characters and nothing of consequence happens. You don't need to read it to understand the rest of the story.

Yes I know you're talking serialized fiction. Yet I think your concept of what serialized fiction is, isn't actually what all serialized fiction actually is. Countdown is serialized, but is chapters of a whole. The same way a lot of fiction can be. serialized or otherwise.

However, serialized fiction does not work that way (at least not according to the Cronin Theory of Comics, that is, natch).

And yet one of the most popular types of serialized fiction, daytime soap opera's don't work that way. And it doesn't seem to affect their popularity.

Heck, it's a medium where you can't even catch up on the back-issues.