It’s understandable all around– why the writers went with the emerging rhythm of the story instead of writing a point-a-to-point-b roadmap, and why some bad decisions then had to get made to get stuff to point b after all.

It’s amazing how even good mainstream universe stories under Didio are a result of his screw-ups.

Some of that could have been fun. (The Clark Kent, Reporter issue was a fun example of what could have been.) But the writers got into the Ralph/ Renee/ Buddy/ Question/ Steel/ Adam/ Booster plotlines, and built up (mostly-)entertaining stories out of them. Then it got to be six weeks or so until the end, Didio noticed that OYL hadn’t been set up yet, ordered up four one-shots that would tie up as many loose ends as possible (so many that even the mighty John Ostrander couldn’t write good stories out of them), and others started to get tied up in one crammed-in panel apiece, like the Diana’s glasses bit.

It’s understandable all around– why the writers went with the emerging rhythm of the story instead of writing a point-a-to-point-b roadmap, and why some bad decisions then had to get made to get stuff to point b after all.

The only parts that are *not* understandable is Didio thinking that the purely point-a-to-point-b Countdown was an artistic improvement over 52, and the failure of Countdown to actually *get* to point b at the end of the day anyway (viz. screwing up the status of the New Gods as of Final Crisis).

I also didn’t believe for a second that the world’s amassed Superheroes, even missing the Trinity, would have that much difficulty stopping Adam.

Have a good day.
John Cage

This never annoys me that much, because it’s much like U.S. doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons – theoretically, they’re only to be deployed in the face of other nukes (or WMDs). Sure, you COULD drop a bomb on every conflict and probably stop it, but that’s not the way things work.

I’d go a little bit higher than three stars, but not the full four. The wrap-up of the Black Adam plotline is like a lead weight on this series at the end, and him slaughtering an entire country is almost as bad. Johns really screwed that up something fierce – he wrote Black Adam into the best character of his JSA / Hawkman run, but pissed it away in this series. Everything else was really fun in this trade, though, and that image of the mutated Mr. Mind is still one of the scariest things I’ve seen in comics.

And WTF is with all the zombies in comics anyway? Only comics could hop on board a concept kept alive by movies with $10 budgets that are happy with making $20 at the box office.

I don’t quite buy Steel as the uber-tech guy Morrison built him into, either. I’m always going to like the smart– but not genius– engineer who built a suit of armor in his basement out of scraps and hit bad guys with a sledgehammer. But then, so many black heroes are “street level/hero of the people” kinda guys– that niche is pretty much filled. I guess that’s why he got the upgrade.

Morrison didn’t build him up into that, he was always that guy. In his very first appearance he seemed to be what you described, just some smart engineer who built a suit of armor out of scraps. But one or two issues after his first appearance when he faced White Bunny, it became clear there was more to him than met the eye. It was revealed that he was a very cutting edge brilliant weapons designer, and his prototypes were now being used as weapons called Toastmasters in gang wars. He was living in that basement on a low-key street level because he was hiding out because he didn’t want to be forced to use his uber-tech skills to be forced to create more dangerous weapons. In his first solo series this was elaborated on more and it was discovered he was a cutting edge weapons-tech at AmerTek Industries that had to fake his death to get away from being forced to design such cutting edge weapons for war.

Just to say, in the follow up series of Booster Gold, it’s revealed that Booster Gold is the father of Rip Hunter–so, a son going to his father not only for help but to help make his father a better hero makes sense. Obviously though, no way to know about this during 52.

For a passe fad, zombies have been going on for a damn long time in comics. Two years at least, right?

I picked up an issue of Outsiders just because Sue and Ralph showed up. I don’t know how their appearance was resolved.