Countdown to Disappointment

I was a big fan of DC's original Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries. Not only was it a massive superhero team-up (and there's nothing I like better than team-ups), but it also had lasting ramifications for the DC universe, as it introduced some key new characters and killed some classics. Plus, lord knows it was a necessity. DC had mucked up their own continuity and characters so bad that their books were getting hard to follow. They had a dozen versions of stars like Batman and Superman, a scattering of alternate Earths with goofy names like Earth One, Earth Prime, and Earth X, and a ton of heroes that were leftovers from DC's purchases of other comic companies, who had no place among the modern age heroes. They could have probably gone on as they were, as long as they avoided "alternate dimension" or time travel stories, but those are staples of the genre.

So DC had their Crisis and combined most of the alternate Earths, establishing a new history for their heroes. It worked, for the most part. One universe, one set of heroes. Everything was neat and clean, and, as an added bonus, many of the modern heroes now had ties to their Golden Age namesakes, adding depth to their stories. Ever since that event, of course, DC has looked for their next big crossover. We had Legends, Millennium, Invasion, Zero Hour, Our Worlds at War, etc. All of them featured a major threat to our universe defeated by a massive gathering of Earth's heroes. Some of them contained hero deaths or new origins, but none of them had the impact or import of Crisis.

Apparently, those failures didn't shake DC's resolve. They're about to enter the massive team-up arena again with Infinite Crisis. What the threat will be in this upcoming series has yet to be revealed. Will the series feature a major, global event? Sure. Will old heroes die and new heroes be created? Of course. Will it reference back to the original Crisis event? Probably. Will it mean anything in the long run? Doubtful, at best.

DC has recently added to the hype of this upcoming event by offering the one-shot Countdown to Infinite Crisis, which, in turn, is about to spawn four related miniseries, one or more of which will directly feed into the major "Crisis" event.

Countdown to Infinite Crisis is an interesting book. (Warning: Here's where the spoilers start. Don't continue reading if you haven't read Countdown, but intend to.)

Countdown is pretty much a Blue Beetle solo story. Apparently, Beetle has noticed some strange thefts happening at several companies owned by his alter ego, Ted Kord. Among the thefts was a massive supply of kryptonite. In trying to solve the crimes, Beetle asks for help from many of his super-powered friends, but gets none. Only former teammate Booster Gold stays behind to help him investigate (which ends with Booster being put in a coma).

Beetle's investigations lead him from the thefts to the discovery of a much larger plot. Apparently, the same person behind the thefts is also building a huge database of hero information, including alter egos and weaknesses. Beetle follows the trail to this mystery villain's mountain headquarters in a remote area of Asia, where he discovers the villain to be none other than...Maxwell Lord.

Yes, the goofy, smirking billionaire cyborg/telepath who once led the comedic version of the Justice League is now a mega-villain. Even better, he's using the former government spy group, Checkmate, as his soldiers. When Beetle finally encounters Max, it doesn't end well. After Max's super robot, OMAC, knocks Beetle around a little, Maxwell Lord puts a bullet in Blue Beetle's head. And that's where the story ends.

I had a few problems with Countdown. For one, Maxwell Lord as the hero-hating bad guy makes no sense and seems to go against several years' worth of JLA continuity. I could accept him as a villain (maybe), but this evil genius stuff defies the repeated idiocy he has shown since his introduction. And I'm not buying his line about intentionally staffing the JLA with bumbling doofuses when he was in charge, in order to keep them weaker. He's about to enact his plan and the JLA is currently full of all-stars. If his idea was to keep them weak and distracted, he pulled out as leader of the group a little too soon. Also, Max has powers of his own, which makes him an odd choice to be the voice of anti-superhero humanity.

My second reason for disliking this book is that I always liked Beetle, and I think he's being treated badly. When I heard Dan Didio, the big man at DC, confess in a Wizard interview that he thought Blue Beetle would be their hot character of 2005, I thought they had a cool comeback planned for one of my favorite characters. Obviously, he was talking about a new Blue Beetle (who will most likely be created in the "Day of Vengeance" mini, since that features the wizard SHAZAM, with whom Ted Kord left the blue scarab stone). I feel like Beetle was killed just to add impact to the opening of this epic. I'm not averse to characters dying, but this death will be forgotten in weeks. The same effect could have been achieved by having him held prisoner by Max. Then, he could've been freed when the climax comes, and he could've still handed his mantle off to the next-gen Beetle voluntarily.

So where does the story go from here, now that the conspiracy against Earth's heroes has been revealed (at least to the audience)? First, it jumps into four different miniseries:

• Day of Vengeance - I'm not a big magic fan, so I may not buy this. Supposedly, it involves a conflict between the DC magicians and the Hal Jordan-less Spectre.
  
• The Omac Project - They've billed this as "Batman's greatest weapon gone wrong", but this sounds like a ripoff of the "Acts of War" storyline from JLA. In that story, a group of villains beat the JLA with countermeasures designed by Batman to be used in case one of the heroes went bad. The only difference I can see is that the OMAC series will be about a robot who can embody all of the countermeasures at once. (Sort of like Nimrod or the Super Adaptoid in Marvel).
  
• The Rann/Thanagar War - Already read it, back when Marvel called it "the Kree/Skrull War."
  
• Villains United - This is the one I'm most excited about. If done well, it could be great. I do sort of question some of the villains they've teased for inclusion in "The Society" (who the heck is Psycho Man?), but a villain team-up is just as good as a hero team-up in my opinion.

After the miniseries, one or more of those books will lead into the premiere of Infinite Crisis. I'm very curious as to what that book will be about. With DC's big push to have a MAJOR crossover each and every year, as well as with the "global magnitude" stories they've been doing in JSA and JLA for quite some time, it will be difficult to come up with a big event that's original while being breathtaking in its grandeur.

And beginning by revealing Maxwell Lord as a major villain was a less-than-stellar start.