Taiblog

Giant Turtle Boys All Out Attack!

Hey there, unholy drink cloacas. T-minus 2 issues! We’re on the penultimate Countdown review! Can you even imagine~? The end’s not just in sight, it’s perceivable by multiple senses! Can you smell that ending? …Rather pungent, isn’t it?

Here’s the cover:

And what a cover it is! Like, makes up for last issue’s cover, that’s for sure. If we’re going out, we’re going out on Jimmy Olsen the Giant Turtle Boy fighting Darkseid in a kaiju battle. This is what superhero covers are all about, man! If this cover brought someone back for the finale of Countdown after they dropped it 20 or 40 issues ago, I wouldn’t even blame them! Who could resist this cover? Anyway, this is pretty much why I didn’t provide visual aid for Giant Turtle Boy Jimmy last issue: coz he’s on the cover of this one, with much lumpier scales than he actually appears in the comic proper.

So what’s been going on? Well, Mary Marvel turned evil for the second time in this series, this time of her own volition! Like, last time, she rejected the offer to be Darkseid’s lackey and arm candy while evil, but now she’s all in on working for the jerk. Speaking of Darkseid, he tries to kill Jimmy Olsen and take the New God souls sealed inside him, but here comes Superman to save the day. The fight with Supes buys Jimmy enough time to tap into his powers and unlock them, becoming the glorious Giant Turtle Boy as depicted on the cover~

Say, you know that trope where exposition is dumped on the viewers by a conveniently timed news broadcast? You don’t see that much with comics, and yet that’s how this issue opens: with an emergency news broadcast of the events going on in Metropolis. And what’s going on is aforementioned cover-advertised kaiju battle. And yeah, Darkseid is giant now too. Kyle Rayner even lampshades that he has no idea how or why Darkseid grew giant-sized, while Donna Troy retorts that she’s surprised he’s surprised by anything at this point. Basically, yeah! As far as I know, it’s not usually one of Darkseid’s powers, but it’s the cool thing we wanna do this issue, so here it is~

So while this big cool kaiju battle is going for several pages, Ray Palmer is still shrunk inside Jimmy’s giant turtle body. He’s still hunting that implanted New Gods device. And just when Darkseid’s getting the upper hand, Ray exits his body, soul cage in hand. Jimmy shrinks back to his normal human self, and Ray destroys the device, releasing all the captive New God soul energy, to Darkseid’s deepest ire. A gigantic boom tube opens, and who should come through but New Genesis’ champion, former Justice League member, and Darkseid’s own son: Orion.

So the rest of the issue is, instead of a kaiju battle with Giant Turtle Boy, Darkseid and Orion will be duking it out. Even Superman stops Kyle and the rest of the Justice League from interfering, with the line “This is between father and son, Kyle. This is between gods.” And I do mean the entire rest of the issue. Eventually, Orion succeeds at tearing out Darkseid’s molten heart, vaporising him and killing the evil god of Apokalips. And the issue ends with Orion walking away from Darkseid’s smoldering corpse, with Superman once more intoning that no one can help him now.

…Well, that was a short one, wasn’t it? Sorry, but fight scenes tend to be quick to cover unless you want to recap every single blow-by-blow play. And, like, there was probably more gravitas and stuff in the dialogue Orion and Darkseid exchanged. But eh, I don’t really care. There’s also technically a spoiler in the dialogue, but I’ll cover that another time~

Anyway, I’m sure Darkseid is totally dead now and we’ll neeeeeeeever see him again! Certainly not resurrected almost immediately in the event that this comic was leading up to and counting down to or anything, that would really cheapen this entire issue, wouldn’t it~?

One more to go. Next week, we finish this~

It’s Absurd! It’s So Plain! It’s Superman!

Hey there, your true self. T-minus three issues! It’s so close now! Let’s just get into it~!

Here’s the cover:

Crossfire! You’ll get caught up in the! But you probably won’t get caught up in this cover. Like, it’s even weirder in my trade collection, coz it doesn’t have the title or number or anything. It’s just the image, so it looks like one of those comics you have to read horizontally. Actually, now I’m not even sure if having the labelling fixes it or just makes it look more misaligned. Like, it’s probably supposed to be epic and cool, what with all the lasers and torn clothing flying around, but it just seems odd and askew. In short, another fitting metaphor for the whole event~

So, recap? Let’s see… Everyone got back from the alternate reality where the Great Disaster killed everything. Most folks (Firestorm; Harley, Holly, and Jason) went back home, while the Multiverse Crew and Forager took Jimmy Olsen to the JLA for protection. Mary Marvel went home too, only to find Darkseid occupying her couch. He spat some first-year philosophy debates at her, and she became evil again, taking back her dark magic and latex costume. Then she beat up our heroes and absconded with Jimmy Olsen, causing Forager to swear a vengeance quest to return him.

So Kyle Rayner, Donna Troy, and Forager are explaining the whole predicament to Roy Harper. I gotta say, I missed this version of Roy. It’s pre-Cry For Justice, so he still has his arm, and it’s not the New 52 either, so no trucker hat. it’s the for-real Roy Harper! Anyway, he’s incredulous they even found Ray Palmer, coz he’s been missing a few years now. Also, where did he go? As soon as Mary Marvel attacked, he disappeared, which you don’t even notice in the previous issue, but apparently they’re addressing it now. It’s very weird he’s not here now.

So while they’re trying to convince Roy to take action, Jimmy Olsen has been brought before Darkseid. He’s no longer in Mary’s apartment, but “outside Metropolis” according to the caption. Jimmy is defiant against ol’ Darkseid, and Darkseid is his usual calm condescending self. Mary tries to goad Darkseid into just gutting Jimmy then and there (in case you weren’t sure she’d gone full supervillain), and a voice behind them says he’s very disappointed in Mary. Hey, I didn’t know I was in this comic. But no, it’s someone else who flies in and decks Darkseid in the face.

Because this… looks like a job for Superman~

Yep, Superman is here to save the day. Roy called him in–him and no one else, coz he doesn’t want the rest of the Justice League in his way while he’s beating on Darkseid. Forager is the only one he brought along, thanking her for being able to track down Jimmy. Darkseid was merely “outside Metropolis”, I think you would’ve found him pretty quick, Supes. Anyway, while Superman and Darkseid are tussling, Mary Marvel appears to challenge Forager to the designated girl fight. Darkseid turned Jimmy’s powers off, so he can’t get in on either fight right now.

The fights continue for several pages, saving me a few paragraphs of recap. The Multiverse Crew (which at this point is just Kyle and Donna) turn up with Black Canary and Vixen to battle Mary when Forager taps out. Mary Marvel continue to play supervillain, vocalising that she’s cool with letting Jimmy get killed. And indeed, in an opportune moment, Darkseid fires his Omega Beams at Jimmy (that’s his eye lasers that can change direction in mid-air as Darkseid wills it, so they always strike their target). But this doesn’t kill Jimmy, it simply turns off the safety on his powers that Darkseid had installed. No, I don’t know when or how he did this either.

Having access to Jimmy’s New God powers now, Darkseid turns him into living Kryptonite, in order to do a really ironic death on the Man of Steel. Coz, like, what’s crueler than forcing him to die at the mere presence of his pal? But while Jimmy is forced to kneel over Superman’s body, we finally find where Ray Palmer has been. He’s inside Jimmy, and he’s attempting to somehow hack or disable the device Darkseid is using to control the cub reporter. Because apparently Jimmy storing all the souls of the New Gods inside himself was neither metaphysical or metaphorical.

While Superman suffers under Jimmy’s green glow, Darkseid diverts his attention to admire Mary Marvel like a big creep. He likes to watch, Darkseid does. And to be fair, this fight is worth a watch, because it’s another one of Countdown’s infamous moments. Mary having just beaten up Kyle, Donna swoops in to try and rescue him. But Mary spins around and uses Kyle’s unconscious body to swat Donna out of the air, then beat her repeatedly into the ground. It’s somehow stupid, absurd, disgusting, and hilarious all at once.

Ray continues trying to sabotage the device inside Jimmy, despite not knowing anything about Apokaliptian tech. He triggers something like antibodies or some other failsafe, a bunch of mechanical mites that swarm out and try to attack him. But he figures if he triggered a response like that, he must be succeeding at sabotage. And indeed, Jimmy Olsen reclaims his powers (and motor control), turning off his Kryptonite skin before Superman dies. And the comic ends with him turning on Darkseid… by turning into a huge, green, scale-skinned kaiju version of himself!

Okay, the issue might be over, but we’re not quite done, coz this deserves an explanation. In fact, I promised one a few issues back, when the time was right. This is that time! So, years and years ago, during the Silver Age, Superman was so popular that they even gave his supporting cast their own comic books to have their own adventures. And one of those was Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen. In those, Jimmy got into a lotta scrapes and had some wacky adventures. And a recurring theme was that Jimmy would often get transformed into something absurd, giving him superpowers for an issue.

And all his powers in this have been references to those Silver Age temporary powers! The elasticity from when he was Elastic Lad, the quills from him being a human porcupine… And this final form, when he was famously a Giant Turtle Boy. This is possibly the only halfway cool idea in Countdown, because it’s fun and silly and also a great homage to some classic deep lore of the DC Universe. Because it’s about turning the Daily Planet’s cub reporter into a giant turtle boy to fight the god of ultimate evil, and if more of Countdown was about this sort of concept, then maybe it wouldn’t have sucked so bad~

Yeah, I’ll concede, this issue might actually be good on the whole. You get to see Roy Harper before the comics kind of wrecked him for all time. There’s Superman heroically showing up to deck Darkseid. There’s finally a cool payoff of Jimmy turning into a Giant Turtle Boy, as outlined above. And one of Countdown’s best stupid moments, the Green Lantern Bludgeon. Finally, at least they churned out something halfway decent before the finish line. Can they carry that momentum for just two more issues~?

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Hey there, grimy souls. T-minus 4 issues! It’s April now! This series won’t outlast this month! The end is finally truly in sight~!

Here’s the cover:

Well, this cover’s kind of a cool effect, if you ignore those implications. However, if you examine it a bit closer, it doesn’t make sense. More specifically, the Mary Marvel costume doesn’t have the high collar in the white version. It only covers her neck in the evil latex version. So, what, does the magic change the outfit’s configuration before it changes its colour? Why would it do that? Magic is weird like that, I guess. Anyways, this totally ruins the cover and all that, truly a grievous error this series has sustained reasonably well up until now~

So, last couple issues, we spent time in an alternate reality, watching the oft-rumoured Great Disaster unfold. Una died, and also everyone else in that reality, as the Morticoccus virus turned everyone into a murder-furry. This was all to tease some setup for the Kamandi: Last Boy on Earth scenario, which I don’t think ever even came up again before the reboot set in, so it was all for nothing anyway! And either way, other than Una, none of the main cast was involved, and they all warped out without a word at the end of it, so who gives a shit.

So after warping out, the lot of them all reappear atop the Daily Planet building. Like, not even on the roof, on top of the big globe logo. Everyone wonders if they’re in the right place this time, and Jimmy Olsen insists he’s sure this is their Earth. Last time, Solomon sent them where he wanted them, but Jimmy knows where he wants to be. Everyone decides this is good enough for them instead of doing the bare minimum to, like, run a scan or call ahead to someone they know to double-check. Because that worked so well last time, too.

So, it’s over, right? That was the much-prophesied-about Great Disaster, so they don’t need to hang out anymore. In fact, Holly Robinson and Harley Quinn are ready to split back to Gotham, and Jason Todd is also ready to leave. In fact, he doesn’t wait, he tells everyone “Screw you guys, I’m going home” and rappels off the building himself. Kyle Rayner is nice enough to lift everyone else down. Firestorm also peels off, since he’s not a main character, but Jimmy holds everyone else back: he’s still got that Darkseid bait stored inside him, so it’s not over yet.

Kyle opts to take Jimmy to the Justice League for protection, and if this is their Earth, it won’t result in a big dust-up. Mary Marvel also opts to leave off, since she’s just gotten her powers back and wants to reconnect with her family. It’s understandable! She goes home to her apartment (which she still has, despite the lengthy coma she started the series in), depowers and changes into sweats, gets a soda from the fridge, heads into the living room… And she finds Darkseid himself sitting on her couch. If nothing else, this comic gave us that image~

Mary powers up, but Darkseid claims he’s not here for a fight–not that she’d win if he was. No, instead he’s just here to return something: the dark magic she left behind after the fight with Eclipso. She’s not interested, she’s reconnected with the gods and got her real powers back. But Darkseid points out her powers are diminished, the gods no longer trust her. Mary tries to retort that she doesn’t care, and she especially doesn’t want to be evil. But Darkseid has his rebuttal: when she had this power, did she feel evil?

Mary admits she felt strong, and Darkseid (the god of evil) replies that “evil” is merely a perception. And so Mary Marvel reaches out her hand to take the power offered to her, willingly becoming evil again. This is somehow both one of Countdown’s worst moment and also one of its only effects on Final Crisis, weirdly enough. And as Mary takes her power back, there’s a ripple in the air, and over on Themyscira, Hippolyta looks up. She’s read the magic in the air, and knows Mary did something stupid.

We get a brief cut over to Solomon on the Monitors’ secret base. He’s musing about his chess game with Darkseid, noting that while Darkseid did beat him, he feels it was one battle, and will go on to win the war when he makes his next move. The end of the Fourth World will be the end of Darkseid as well, that Solomon promises. To punctuate this, he declares this to be profound, while breathing on the window of his space station to write “To Earth” in the vapour. Ah yes, nothing more profound than the shit Mum would yell at me for doing when I was a kid.

Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice!, our Multiverse Crew, Jimmy Olsen, and Forager arrive. Ray Palmer’s a bit nervous, coz he hasn’t seen these people in a few years, having just shrank out of reality without telling anyone. While the others try to reassure him and focus on the Darkseid problem, suddenly a new problem appears. It’s Mary Marvel once again clad in her black latex minidress, shooting bolts of lightning and grinning with a smile the Joker would be envious/litigious of. All it took was a two minute conversation to push her off the deep end again.

Donna Troy is absolutely incredulous, much like the reader. “You faced down evil and beat it, Mary!” she says. And Mary replies, “Yeah, I did beat evil! Eclipso was the evil, but this is just power! I’m not evil, I’m driven!” Yeah, driven mad with power. And all she has to do to keep this power is trade Jimmy Olsen to Darkseid. Oh, is that all. You know, Mary, maybe when you’re trading people’s lives for power, maybe that’s when you get labelled as “evil”, hmm? A fight scene breaks out, which lasts for the rest of the issue. The issue ends with Mary flying off with Jimmy, and Forager vowing to move heaven and Earth to get him back.

This is a truly stupid issue. Like, it’s not egregiously terrible in its transgressions like anything with Superboy-Prime in it or even last issue. But, like… I really hate that this series turned Mary Marvel evil twice, and the second time all it took was some base-level philosophy concepts to throw her off. Like, fuck, man.

It’s the Great Disaster, Charlie Brown!

Hey there, cumulative panty counts. T-minus five issues! God, can you taste that ending? It’s so close. It’s bitter and unappetising, but we can taste it. So let’s get into it and pull that ending closer. You know, with our tongue or something.

Here’s the cover:

You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!
Well, with the expected reference out of the way, what else is there to say about this cover~? You got Karate Korpse in the water, the world has been burning as long as it’s been turning, and the ruins of Old New York. That’s everything we need to complete the scavenger hunt! I guess the way it’s layered in colours–blue, grey, yellow, and finally red–is kind of cool to look at, at least.

So, the recap! Well, Karate Kid died. The cover might have alerted you to this. This is because he’s diseased with Morticoccus, a 31st-century virus that scrambles the DNA of whatever it infects. And it can infect any lifeform on Earth! So everybody’s going animalistically crazy while the animals are getting a bit anthro. It’s like if The Island of Doctor Moreau and Cujo were the same story. And also superheroes are in it! This is all presented to us as the apocalypse log of Buddy Blank, one of the scientists at Cadmus who’s working with our heroes. Let’s see who survives!

So, last time, Buddy Blank left with Una to try and see how his family is doing in the apocalypse. (My guess: not well!) They escape through the streets of Metropolis, despite the lab they were in being in the Adirondacks, New York. The streets are thick with corpses. Dead people strewn all about. Literally dying in the streets. Soon enough, they come across a beastman in gym clothes. Una beats him up, and little bipedal rats come out to inspect the corpse. Buddy finds this all very bizarre, but honestly, not even my top five weirdest apocalypses.

Buddy notes that they never saw a single superhero on their trip, figuring they were all out there saving lives and stuff. And we see some scenes of Flash and Martian Manhunter rescuing people, Batman roundhouse-kicking some beastmen, and the Eiffel Tower on fire. Can the Eiffel Tower even burn? More disturbing, we see the Teen Titans. Cassie Sandsmark has turned into a beastman, Kid Devil is dead on the ground, and Robin and Blue Beetle are trying to wrangle her. Another scene, the Joker and Lex Luthor are beastmen. And so is Superman, turned into a lion man. God, it’s the Mega Man apocalypse all over again.

Buddy and Una finally make it to his daughter’s apartment, and they find his grandson inside. He’s unharmed, but once again, we have an artist who’s not very good at drawing children. Like, I’ve seen much worse examples in comics, but this is still noticable. The proportions are way off, he’s just an adult scaled down to teen size. He has a very adult-like chiseled jawline. Anyway, he was hiding in a kitchen cupboard because his mom became infected and attacked him. He doesn’t know how long ago at this point, he’s been hiding that long. She doesn’t seem to be around, though.

Hey, know who is around? Una notices it first, and Buddy suddenly remembers: the grandson (he’s never given a name, weirdly) had a dog. And then it comes leaping at them to attack. It’s fully muscularly anthropomorphic, it looks like fucking Scrappy Doo from the live-action movie. It’s also carrying a knife, with intent to stab. Una does a high kick to knock it out of the air, and this kills it in one shot. Geez, how weak was this dog? The comic wants to play this moment for horror, but it’s just such a ridiculous image that it’s impossible to take it seriously. Like, look at this shit.

No sooner is the dog dead than do hundreds (they say hundreds, but they only draw, like, twenty) of rats come out of nowhere and leap on Una, tearing her to pieces. Buddy and Grandson flee, only to find a feral Beast-Mom outside. She tries to tear out Buddy’s throat, but Una comes in at the last moment to fight her off, still covered in rats. As the two fight, Una passes Buddy her Legion flight ring, telling him how to use it. Una dies, torn apart by tiny rodents, in the stupidest death this comic has to offer–and that’s saying something.

Buddy flies off with his grandson, leaving everything behind. He finds an old doomsay bunker to hide out in. And of all places, it’s the freakin’ Command-D bunker that ties into Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth. Because of course it is. Buddy and Grandson lock themselves away and watch the remains of the world nuke themselves into glorious apocalypse. Buddy no longer cares, his grandson is safe. And he’s even got a satellite uplink with his old pal Brother Eye. Glad there’s no other talking besides Buddy’s journal entries, coz I could not take Brother Eye on top of everything else.

Brother Eye allows Buddy to contact the other characters, all our Multiverse Pals who are still safe and sound in the Adirondacks Cadmus lab. It lets them also see everything that’s playing out in the world, you know, the collapse of civilisation in nuclear hellfire and such. They watch it for a bit, then they… opt to do nothing. What could they do, at this point? Jimmy Olsen’s eyes glow, a Boom Tube opens up, and they’re gone. And the comic ends on Brother Eye orbiting the charred remains of whatever Earth this was, while Buddy hopes his grandson can forgive him for making him the last boy on Earth. Oh, shut the fuck up, comic.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. Like, how else should I feel over this? It’s a stupid alternate Earth, we’ve seen two others get massacred by Superboy-Prime’s hands at this point. We killed off both our Legion of Super-Heroes characters for this narrative. It’s just such a stupid, nothing plotline that came from this intense build-up. This was the Great Disaster that omens foretold of, that had the Monitors all shitting their collective pants? A DNA-mutating plague that wipes out humanity to make way for a potential Kamandi prologue? We cut away from Darkseid for Scrappy Doo? I still think the Superboy-Prime issues are worse because of how they disgust me. But this is easily one of the worst issues of Countdown aside from those.

We got four issues left. If you guys can just hold it through April, I’ll guide you to the wet fart of this comic’s finish line~

Uncontained Contagion

Hey there, cats who don’t come when they’re called. T-minus 6 issues! Yep, we’re going to continue doing this, coz what else is even there for the preamble at this point~?

Here’s the cover:

The great disaster is upon us? I know! We’ve been reading it for over 40 issues at this point! Other than that obvious joke, this is kind of a cool cover, I guess. I wonder, though, if it was a second draft, meant to cover an earlier concept. Coz, like, that’s Karate Kid’s arm, meant to show he’s all diseased with Morticoccus. I wonder if an earlier version showed his arms with gross, diseased lesions and the like, and the shadows and red filter were to cover it up. If so, I’d actually thank them, I don’t want to look at a cover depicting that~

The fun with the recaps now is that I actually have to check what happened last time, coz it’s not broken into six barely advancing plots anymore. Anyways, last time, our heroes discovered that their warp out from Apokalips didn’t take them home, but to yet another alternate Earth. One where everything’s the same, except none of our main cast exists. They all spend individual time figuring this out before all meeting up again. And this goes on for such a long time that Karate Kid succumbs to his disease and dies, the thing we were trying to prevent this entire series. His whole story was for nothing!

So weirdly, this issue and the next are entirely narrated by an unseen narrator. There’s pretty much no dialogue. Everything is told to us in the form of a journal entry, a post-apocalypse logbook, like it’s a survival horror game. (And given they just left Darkseid’s world, it’s a post-Apokalips logbook, too.) This is a really weird method to take, and it kind of complicates my job, since being a disembodied narrator summarising the events is already what I do, and we’re just adding a second layer of that. So just keep that in mind this whole time~

All righty, if you recall, the group had found its way down into Cadmus Labs. Even with telepath Dubbilex vouching for them, the group has difficulty trying to convince the scientists about their alternate-Earth backstory. Eventually Martian Manhunter shows up and confirms everything, like I said should happen last issue. Regardless of the origin, though, they do have a corpse of a young man on their hands, and despite Karate Kid being very dead, there’s something very alive still festering inside him…

Despite me saying this was a disembodied narrator, they introduce themselves partway through their journal entry. It’s this universe’s equivalent of Buddy Blank, the guy who invented the OMAC unit. Here, he’s just another random Cadmus scientist. Anyway, they’re having difficulty synthesising an antidote from Ray Palmer’s immunity like they said they could do, mostly because they don’t have a good grasp on Morticoccus. So they want to try a little literal grasp on it. Specifically, they want to open Karate Kid up and isolate the virus outside his body.

This is then interrupted by an entry of Buddy transcribing a news report he saw. It’s about a guy who had the cops called on him for a domestic disturbance, but once the police got in there, he attacked them like a wild, frothing animal. It took a police dog to put him down, but once it did, the dog turned on its handlers as well, and they had to shoot it. Just to set the tone for the rest of this story. Buddy also mentions that the corpse of the dog was sent to another Cadmus facility, and he heard it had human hands. Like, it grew those after it died?

So, as they open up Karate Kid’s corpse (much like ‘80s nostalgia does every few years), the Morticoccus virus grows to giant size as soon as it’s exposed to air. So they’re fighting this giant, meaty-looking germ, and it’s resisting everything they throw at it, including Kyle Rayner’s power ring. He eventually manages to trap it in a bubble, where it pops into dust and disappears. Ray tells Kyle to make sure he locks down every single virus particle, and they rush it off to a nearby sterile chamber. If you’ve seen any zombie outbreak film, I think you can see how this is going to go south already~

As you might guess, 20 seconds in a non-sterile hallway was all it took. Morticoccus is airborne and loose. The first outbreak is in Gotham (because it needed yet another reason to be a horrible place to live), so the group takes the opportunity to beat up Jason Todd and bring him back to base with them. He’s not happy to see them, and the feeling is mutual. After about five minutes meeting him, the rest of Cadmus also feels mutual. Anyways, what use was he gonna be in Gotham? Beat up the virus by hand? I think we already proved that didn’t work~

They do manage to synthesise a small amount of innoculations from Ray’s blood, using it to vaccinate some of the big heroes of the JLA so they can keep rescuing people. They have worked out what the virus does at this point, as Buddy illustrates. Remember the dog with human hands? That’s the virus. It jumps from host to host, scrambling their DNA together like a bee pollenating a flower. And it can target any living thing. I dunno if DNA works that way, but it is a superhero comic. Genetics are basically Silly Putty.

It’s also hilarious if you look at Buddy’s notes. It’s literally a stick figure drawing of a man, then an arrow leading to a stick figure dog, and a final arrow leading to a stickman with pointy ears and a tail. They soon have their own infectee right there in the lab, one of the doctors in the test animal division. She grows claws and savagely attacks the rest of her staff. She got a mix of her own test animals and became more animalistic–and vice versa, with one of the rats taking more human qualities. It’s a furry virus. This’d be amazing, if it wasn’t for the inhuman savagery and all.

Cadmus has a big meeting with the CDC, and what Una reveals really upsets them. In short, because both Morticoccus and Karate Kid are from a thousand years in the future, so they’re already ten centuries ahead in medical tech. The virus has evolved past anything they can throw at. There’s basically no way they’ll ever be able to cure it. The world is basically doomed to an anthropomorphic armageddon. The rest of the doctors decide to abandon Cadmus, and Buddy decides he ought to do the same, see if his daughter and grandson are still alive out there. You really ought to have been checking up on them before this, you ninny.

Una stops him before he goes. Karate Kid, the love of her life, is dead and she has nothing left. But he’s been allowing her to confide in him all this time at the lab (that’s how he’s privy to conversations with the big higher-ups and the multiverse pals). So she’s going to go with him. He’ll have a better chance out in the apocalypse with a 31st-century superhero looking out for him. And if not, she’ll turn him in for desertion. So he agrees. And the comic ends with Hal Jordan blasting off into space to look for a cure out in the wider universe–not realising he’s carrying the virus with him off-planet…

Well, there you go! This is actually what Countdown has been building up to all this time! The biggest threat in the universe: a virus that mixes people and animals together in a rabid frenzy. All that Darkseid and New Gods shit? Pfft, forget it. Old hat. What readers really want to see is superheroes surviving an arduous apocalyptic event. Like, The Walking Dead was already five years old as a comic when this came out. Marvel Zombies was a couple years old, too, if you want the same idea but with people in spandex and capes. What a weird direction to take this in~

Earth, But Not as We Know It

Hey there, prisoners of the lost universe. T-minus seven issues! If weeks were days, we’d be done in a week! Which would only be a day! So we’d be done today! That’s how that would work, yep. Anyways, all of that made more sense than Countdown.

Here’s the cover:

Well. This is a cover. Like, it’s not awful like last time. But I wouldn’t call it great either. Certainly not poster-worthy. Now, let’s analyse this a bit. Could Superman shatter a Green Lantern construct? Hmm, plausibly. I might believe he could do that. Could Wonder Woman shatter a construct? This might be a little harder, I don’t think she’s as OP-strong as Supes. Especially not with the Lasso of Truth. It might be unbreakable, but I don’t think it works that way. At the very least, it should be cracking the entire length of the loop. Now, could Batman have construct-dissolving capsules? That seems pretty far-fetched. (But maybe with enough prep time…)

So, what’ve we got to recap? Pied Piper’s out of the story, sacrificing himself to defeat Brother Eye. Darkseid has declared his game with Solomon over. Solomon, meanwhile, has passed on his people’s tradition to our group of main characters. Namely, standing around and debating “We should do something!” The group is teleported back to Earth, but are still bogged down in the debate of whether to kill Karate Kid to prevent the spread of the Morticoccus virus. And we’re still reading this damn comic~

Thankfully, we’re spared more debating. We just immediately cut to Harley Quinn and Holly Robinson boarding a bus to Gotham City. Harley asks why they’re ditching, and Holly explains (for the audience) that they’re taking Karate Kid to the JLA, and the situation outclasses them. Especially since they’ve lost their god powers suddenly. Harley laments the loss of her giant hammer, and Holly retorts that it made her look like a watermelon-smashing comedian. Harley sees no issue with this. So there you go! In between issues, they decide that maybe Karate Kid should live rather than be murdered in an alley.

So while they’re exiting the plot, the Multiverse Crew (sans Jason Todd), Mary Marvel, and Una are flying in with Karate Kid to the JLA headquarters. Ooh, I almost never get to say this: Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice…! The lot of them are discussing the other changes to the party. Holly and Harley ducking out, they get. But they didn’t figure Jimmy Olsen for a quitter. Taking his Hairy friends back to the Habitat is probably safer for him, though. And Mary Marvel voices her gladness that Jason didn’t stick around. Everybody agrees he was a creep. Hey, no argument here~

The gang enters the Hall and are quickly confronted by Superman. Except… Superman doesn’t recognise them. Even when Ray Palmer introduces himself, Supes says the only Ray he knows is Ray Terrill (AKA the Ray). Flash and Hal Jordan step out next, and immediately gets angry when Kyle Rayner addresses him by name. Who the hell is this who knows his secret identity? They’re even more shocked when Firestorm phases through the wall, announcing that something freaky-deaky is going on here. He teleports them out (which I don’t think is in his powerset), while Superman demands the rest of the League be called.

The group reappears in the Adirondacks, where Ray exposits that Firestorm doesn’t have teleport powers, he just shrank rapidly under Firestorm’s smokescreen and then hit randomise on the JLA teleporter. They didn’t have time to show us this, so Ray just spits it all out while they recover. Firestorm explains the reason for his manic entrance: he tried to go home, but his home simply wasn’t there. He doesn’t exist. The JLA didn’t recognise them either. But this should be their Earth. So were they all erased from reality somehow? Would that be the weirdest thing?

While they’re musing over this, Una breaks down. None of this shit matters, they’re supposed to be helping Karate Kid. Everyone stands around in silence awkwardly for a bit at this. Ray apologises, saying they’re doing their best, but they really need a facility with specialists to help Karate Kid. Kyle asks why he can’t just whip up whatever they need with his ring, which is a valid point, but Ray replies he doesn’t know what they need. None of them are doctors or molecular blood-ologists, but wherever they take him, it has to be state-of-the-art and defensible. Firestorm hits on it: Cadmus Labs. Should conveniently be near here, even! What luck!

They fly off, and on reaching the Cadmus site, they find Jimmy Olsen, Forager, and the Hairies all camping there already. Naturally, the Habitat wasn’t there, so somehow they reasoned that this was the next likely place for the group to go and set up to wait for them. What a coinkydink! And Kyle somehow shows up with Harley and Holly, despite also flying Karate Kid there. They mention they figured out this wasn’t their world when the Joker didn’t recognise Harley, and they could tell he wasn’t kidding. Harley is in tears over this. Sigh. Also, they still didn’t bring Jason with them, which is very funny~

So they sneak into the big Cadmus facility underground, and are almost immediately attacked by a group of flesh-coloured mutant homunculi. Same as breaking into any facility, I guess. They fight for a while until Jimmy remember his new powerset includes opening Boom Tubes, and he portals all the goons away. Boy, this issue is all about convenience, huh? No sooner are they gone than do they meet Dubbilex, a common feature of Cadmus stories. Thankfully, he’s calmer than anyone else encountering someone who knows his name but doesn’t recognise them in turn. His psychic powers, perhaps? if only they’d met Martian Manhunter at the Hall of Justice, then~

Indeed, Dubbilex uses his psychic powers to read Jimmy’s mind and find their familiarity. Ray says it’s a long story, and he has no doubt about this. Una starts to break down again, begging Dubbilex for help. He tells her to calm down, using his powers to extract the helpful info from her mind. And he’d love to help, truly he would. He could even extract a curative serum from inside Ray Palmer. But there’s a problem with being able to help Karate Kid. You see, Karate Kid is already beyond their help. He’s dead. And on that bombshell, the comic ends.

Well, this is a weird wrinkle, eh? Did you really think we’d be wrapping up so soon or so smoothly? Nah, here’s yet another parallel world, where none of the people the story is specifically about actually exist. How convenient! That’s really the running theme of this whole issue. About the only inconvenient thing is Karate Kid’s death, which is yet another life claimed by this story, and another main character you can strike off the list. Who will be next??

The Ol’ Debate and Switch

Hey there, pizza cartels. T-minus 8 issues! We’re getting there! We’re marching forward! Because it’s March now. Do… do you get it? Because it’s March. The month and also the forward movement. March. Do you get it?

Anyways, here’s the cover:

Ah, finally. The last few covers have been pretty good! So it’s nice to have another terrible one again. Solomon and Darkseid as giant screaming heads in the sky! Monarch raising his bulky ‘80s-action-figure fist while all the hero figures explode! The Atom leaping out of the way like he’s encountered those 50 bees from the Super Dictionary again! An inexplicable chessboard pattern in the sky! And to top it all off, the incredibly shitty title “War in Pieces!” Yeah, I think that was that book by Leo Told-Story~

Hmm, recap? All our heroes finally started grouping up, except for Jason Todd, who’s still out fighting OMACs. Everyone followed each other and ended up in Brother Eye’s central core, where they also rescued Firestorm and beat up Desaad. Brother Eye tried to surround them with an entire army of OMACs, but Pied Piper played his most powerful piece possible, destroying Brother Eye and disabling all the OMACs. Nobody else knows his sacrifice happened, not even the trade paperback readers, who didn’t get the lyrics included from the original printing.

So we open with said scaredy-pal, Ray Palmer. He’s in costume now, and I’m not sure why. Like, I know that one of Atom’s powers was that his costume only appeared when he shrunk, but, like, he was living on Earth-52 for some years where all the heroes were retired (and that Ray Palmer hadn’t even become the Atom yet), so it’s pretty convenient he was wearing it the random day the Multiverse Crew turned up and the world ended. Does it become intangible as well as invisible? How does it work? And you can’t say “unstable molecules”, that’s Marvel’s thing!

Anyways, Ray’s narrating his perspective on the whole thing up 'til now. Getting you nice and caught up in case you came in 40 issues late. And all it boils down to is he’s still thinking about Jean. You know, his ex-wife who went crazy trying to get back together with him and murdered their friend Sue Dibny. He went to another universe, hooked up with another Jean, and she died in front of him. He muses whether he’s ever meant to be happy. I mean, we’re not happy reading about it, so I suppose it stands to reason that he’s not happy living it~

Meanwhile, Solomon and Darkseid are still playing their silly chess game. It’s better than having their screaming faces in the sky, at least. In fact, Darkseid declares checkmate. After all, how could Solomon win against a god? He further declares the game was rigged from the start, since Solomon made a bad choice in picking his king: Monarch. And here it’s revealed that Solomon was the one who ruptured Captain Atom’s suit in Bludhaven that led him to becoming the Monarch. I dunno if this is a retcon or not. I do know it is stupid~

So Ray has managed to find his way onto Darkseid and Solomon’s chess board, just in time to hear their master plans. Solomon wants to wipe out all super-humans with the Morticoccus virus. Darkseid is counting on this, as it will clear the way for his Fifth World. This is the comic’s only actual foreshadowing to Final Crisis, the event that this is supposedly counting down to. Either way, wiping out all the superhumans or wiping out the whole universe. Both seem like bad options, so Ray resolves to at least warn everyone else while still fretting what the actual solution could be.

And in the midst of fretting, Firestorm reaches through reality into the microverse and scoops up Ray Palmer. Do his transmutation powers let him do this? Beats me! Anyway, Ray’s back with everyone else now. I do mean everyone else, even Jimmy Olsen and Forager have shown up with their Hairies reinforcements. And also motorcycles! If Jimmy had just left and gotten only a motorcycle, I would consider that an upgrade. And now that Ray’s here, he presents the problem. Let the debating begin!

So, with Karate Kid being infected with Morticoccus, they might have to kill him to save the world. Jason Todd, ever the sensitive individual, pops in and is like “Okay, cool, he’s half dead anyway.” Una, on the other hand, is not willing to sacrifice her comrade, even to save the world, and desires to get medical care for Karate Kid. But if they take him back to Earth, everyone on Earth dies from Morticoccus. You see the dilemma here. No good solutions, which does make this pretty effective for a story climax, I’ll at least admit.

So some folks are moseying to go back to Earth regardless, but Jimmy Olsen announces his intention to not only stay on Apokalips but to confront Darkseid himself. He wants to know why all this stuff (his powers) are happening to him. Donna Troy tries to call everyone out. “Killing Karate Kid… Confronting Darkseid… This place is corrupting you!” I dunno if these are particularly corrupted thoughts, Donna. Maybe you wanna chill a little. And believe it or not, this debate continues for several pages. It is now Donna and Jimmy who have taken up the mantra of “We should do something!” “Should we do something?”

Despite already declaring checkmate, Darkseid invites Solomon to make his final move. But Solomon has already left. I guess that’s fair, if a little douchey. Why stick around when you’ve already lost? Darkseid, in his infinite frustration, crushes Solomon’s own piece off the board. So where did Solomon go? Well, he went down to meet the group and also convince them not to confront Darkseid. His argument is simple: Darkseid isn’t the only one who knows what’s going on. Well, that’s a pretty good argument.

Not everyone’s ready to hear Solomon out. Jason Todd, who has been just kind of a prick this whole issue, points out that Solomon tried to kill them earlier. Well, he’s not trying to do so now, so maybe sit on it for a while, huh, Jason? Anyways, he explains to Jimmy that his powers are a way Darkseid was storing certain energies until he could claim them for his own. Why Jimmy? Because he’s Superman’s pal. What’s a safer place in the universe than someone Superman is invested in protecting? And who else but Darkseid could go and retrieve them when the time came?

So when Darkseid’s this close to his goal, maybe Jimmy throwing himself right into his hands is a bad move. Well, with that aside, the argument returns to whether to kill Karate Kid or take him back for treatment. Solomon snaps at them, chiding them for being indecisive humans. Even though the Monitors themselves have been the most inaction-guys since the beginning. Like, this isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, it’s the pot calling a slightly dusty Apple Store double-vantablack. And to be fair, he was one of the Monitors actually trying to accomplish things. But he’s still getting a failing grade on a math quiz everyone else is getting an incomplete for~

Anyways, his action thus is to teleport everybody home. Just all the people, though, so Jimmy Olsen doesn’t get to keep that motorcycle. Well, now they’re back home, and some of them are preparing to wander off from the group to start preparing stuff, such as warning more superheroes (like the Justice League) that Darkseid is planning something. Ray Palmer won’t let anyone leave yet, though. He won’t even let Una go for medical treament. It’s time to decide once and for all whether Karate Kid lives or dies. Oh goodie, more debating~

Don’t care for this issue much at all! The lameness of the cover sure pays off to how lame the issue is, which mostly consists of characters standing around and discussing what to do next. Like, it could be an interesting ethical debate, the needs of the many and all that. But it’s not~! Surprisingly, Solomon was the only one who had anything worthwhile to suggest: pick something and do it. Sometimes you gotta go with your gut instead of your heart or your brain. Goodness knows it would’ve helped this story~

Time to Pay the Piper

Hey there, vampire weekends. T-minus 9 issues! We’re in the single digits of issues left! Can you believe we’ll be done before summer~? Hell, given how it gets around here, it might even be done before it gets warm out…

Here’s the cover:

Hey, it’s our heroes! Notice how Jason Todd is not among them. This is because he’s not a hero and he sucks. But this is a pretty cool cover, I must admit. Pretty poster-esque, and I’ve always said the best covers are the ones you’d hang up as posters. The one thing I don’t like is how brightly green Kyle’s constructs are. Like, I get that they’re glowing and made of literal light, but it’s just too yellow here. Who are you, Kyle, the Chartreuse Lantern? It’s probably just the way this cover is coloured, inside the issue it’s much greener, like grass on the other side.

So you want a recap, huh? Well, last time, Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, and Ray Palmer decided to call it quits and find a way home. Holly Robinson, Harley Quinn, and Mary Marvel beat up Granny Goodness and the New God Killer finished the job. Jason Todd and Karate Kid were fighting OMACs, one of which was Una. Pied Piper got kidnapped by Desaad, who’s persuading him to unleash the Anti-Life Equation. Jimmy Olsen and Forager went looking for reinforcements. Oh yeah, and Brother Eye assimilated the whole planet. I’m sure that’ll be fine~

We start up in the earthquakey aftermath of Brother Eye’s ascention. Pied Piper shakily gets to his feet, and finds that Desaad was knocked out. Rather than leave him, he uses a mechanism in the old man’s hand to revive him. Desaad immediately flies into a fit begging Piper to start playing his flute. OMAC!Una enters, carrying Karate Kid’s body over her shoulder. Desaad starts ranting even more, declaring “This human is mine, all my plans!” OMAC!Una doesn’t care, and when Desaad won’t stop shouting, she blasts him. She then takes Piper hostage as well, finding him similarly un-assimilate-able.

And despite Brother Eye’s assimilation, Darkseid’s game with Solomon the Monitor continues. Solomon’s astonished that Darkseid would opt for the “total board wipe and also delete my save” strategy, but Darkseid has sights beyond even this game. That’s all you get, though, coz we then cut to Jason Todd raving in his narrative captions how he’s not planning to die–he’s done that once already. He’s gonna find a way off this rock himself, even though he split off from his friends who were also looking for a way home. Because, as the fact that he’s died once before can attest, Jason Todd is not very forward-thinking~

So while the Multiverse Crew and Holly’s group have teamed up, the rest of them explain their respective stories to each other. Kyle wonders why they’re even bothering to look for Jason, and Donna replies that at the very least, he’s probably stumbled across something interesting. And indeed he has, he’s following OMAC!Una lugging Karate Kid and Piper around. And then while the other groups look for him, Desaad recovers from his blasting and decides to follow the heroes he’s spotted. There’s more following going on in this issue than people who were still following this comic~!

OMAC!Una takes her captives to a particular chamber, where Brother Eye begins analysing Karate Kid. It discovers the Morticoccus virus within him and begins preparing to dissect him. Meanwhile, Jason enters, and OMAC!Una goes to deal with him. A fight breaks out while Piper whimpers in a corner. Jason goads OMAC!Una into smashing a particular container, releasing Firestorm–who is still groggy and unable to save Jason’s butt. This is then interrupted when the other six heroes also barge in and add to the fight. This only barely making it an even fight now, OMACs are pretty tough.

While the others get in a scrap, Ray Palmer sidles off and discovers Brother Eye attempting to dissect Karate Kid. He smashes Karate Kid free, only afterward discovering he’s a carrier for Morticoccus. Looks like you might get your chance to stop the Great Disaster after all, Ray! Ray notes to Brother Eye that the fight is this close to his core, and Brother Eye acknowledges this. It then boom-tubes the lot of them into a massive splash page full of OMACs away from its core. They were already struggling against one, so a thousand should be a piece of cake~

Somehow, Piper didn’t get warped out with the rest (possibly because he wasn’t engaged in the fighting?), and he just hopes Brother Eye somehow doesn’t notice him. However, someone else does: Desaad has caught up with the group. He’s got old man legs, it takes him a bit. But he has to, it was all his plan. Everything that happened to Piper and Trickster up ‘til now were his machinations. And on that (ahem) note, Piper agrees to play his flute. He plays a sonic note, and while Desaad suddenly realises what’s going on, moaning that he thought he broke Piper’s spirit, his head explodes. Piper dedicates that one to Trickster.

Well, it’s all down to this. With Desaad gone, Piper’s gotten his revenge. What’s even left? Might as well go out with a bang, right? And so Pied Piper sits down and begins to play his swan song. And on the notes of Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” (the lyrics of which are removed in the trade collection, completely ruining the sentiment of his moment), Piper plays. And Brother Eye explodes. All the OMACs, including Una, revert back to normal as the rest of the heroes sit amongst the wreckage of Apokalips and wonder what just happened. None of them will ever know who just saved all their lives and countless more.

Here’s to you, Piper. You deserved to be in a way better story than this. One that didn’t make you an accessory to a murder you would never have participated in, or constantly made homophobic “jokes” at your expense. Like, he’s not even on the cover of this issue.

The beginning of this issue is rather dumb and chaotic, as it hurriedly tries to get all the heroes together for the ending, but I won’t pretend like Piper’s musical outro wasn’t a grand finale. Shame there’s eight more issues of this left~

Gods’ Gifts to the World

Hey there, yoinky and/or sploinky. We’re in that final stretch! T-minus 10 issues until we finish Countdown! Then we can finally look at something else for several months~

Here’s the cover:

Hmm, yes. An evil old woman being attacked by younger women. This will surely sell covers. I dunno if I even have enough to snark about to fill up the paragraph! I will say that the cover contains a continuity error, as only Holly and Harley have armour. Mary, who was in disguise as a scullery maid, is dressed in just rags. Continuity errors are the least of Countdown’s problems, but they are one of its most numerous. …Is that all right? Is that enough for you? Can we move on now? Let’s move on~

Ah, the recap. Holly Robinson, Harley Quinn, and Mary Marvel are on Apokalips to fight the Female Furies. The Multiverse Crew is on Apokalips to look for a way home, though Jason Todd has split to fight whoever he finds. Karate Kid and Una are on Apokalips to fight Brother Eye’s OMACs. Pied Piper is on Apokalips for reasons he doesn’t know. And Jimmy Olsen and Forager are not on Apokalips yet, instead going to Cadmus to recruit some reinforcements. And we’re on issue 10 of Countdown to fight the last few shreds of this series’ dignity.

Fittingly, we do start with Harley, Holly, and Mary charging through the base on Apokalips, following Mary hearing “the voices of the gods”. Speaking of continuity errors, Mary is dressed in rags, but the huge guns that Harley and Holly picked up have turned into even more huge and impractical ‘90s sci-fi guns. And Holly’s has turned into a melee weapon. Anyway, they come to a huge locked door, which Harley uses her enormous gun to blast through. On the other side is… some sort of furnace? It’s big and fiery, but so is the rest of Apokalips.

Even in spite of not really understanding what they’re seeing, Mary does sort of understand that the gods are in there. So Mary does the only thing she can think of: she kneels before the big furnace and whispers “Shazam”. And next shot we get, the Multiverse Crew notice the big lightning bolt and wonder how and why Captain Marvel would be on Apokalips. But probably they should investigate. And indeed, we see Mary Marvel returned in all her glory. She’s back in her old white uniform, but with the big gold lightning bolt now coloured pitch black. Snazzy!

And before her stands the Greek pantheon, now freed from their imprisonment. They thank Mary Marvel, grateful for the eternal faith of mankind, even if Mary strayed from the light for a bit. Harley pipes up that they helped, to Holly’s mortification, but Thalia likes her daring. Diana also agrees, and the pair grant their skills to Harley and Holly, respectively. I should also note that Diana is the Roman counterpart to Artemis, so why she’s here among the Greek gods is anyone’s guess. Another continuity error for Countdown, I guess~

Elsewehere, in what we could call “the streets of Apokalips”, you may recall Una got turned into an OMAC. Not great! And while his strength has recovered, Karate Kid is unwilling to actually fight OMAC!Una. He’s trying the old “I know you’re in there somewhere” technique, but suddenly Jason Todd swoops in to help fight, chiding Karate Kid that “that sort of thing only works in the movies. Karate Kid further prevents him from bombing Una, and Jason abandons him as an idiot. He might be right to do so, since soon OMAC!Una overpowers him. Somehow unable to assimilate him, though, she flies off with him.

Holly, Harley, and Mary track down Granny Goodness, who runs in panic once she sees they’re newly god-empowered, leaving her Honor Guard to battle them. The girls make short work of the mooks, chasing after Granny, who’s rather quick for a heavyset elderly woman. Despite catching up to her, though, someone else has caught up to Granny first: the God Killer. Hey, remember that plotline? The one that started this whole damn series? We haven’t resolved that yet, huh? Anyway, he kills Granny Goodness while the trio watches in shock.

Well, the three of them wander off, having been saved the trouble of killing Granny themselves (which might not have sat great with Mary anyway). But also, Granny was going to be their ride home, so they’re a little stuck now. Basically they’ve been reduced to the whims of letting Harley take charge, which Holly reasons isn’t the worst thing, because Harley tends to stumble right into stuff. And lo and behold, Harley takes not but ten steps and the trio run into Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, and Ray Palmer. They recognise Mary, but the other two? Not so much~

Hmm, who haven’t we gotten to yet? Oh yeah, Pied Piper. He got grabbed by somebody last issue, and it turns out it was Desaad. Never done with the evil old people around here. Desaad is trying to goad Piper into playing his flute to channel the Anti-Life Equation, because he believes Piper can do that for some reason. Piper doesn’t want to ascend to godhood, though, terrified why he’s even here. But before Desaad can finish coaxing him, suddenly an earthquake happens! The two are separated as the planet shudders, and the comic ends with the reveal that Brother Eye has assimilated the entirety of Apokalips…

What is this, another half-decent issue? Other than a couple of continuity gaffes and some cases of mythtaken identity, not the worst issue! God, if more issues had been like this towards the beginning of the series, this event might’ve been more fondly remembered! Or, like, remembered at all~

First-Row Seats to the Apokalips

Hey there, vampire boyfriends. Well, here’s a lousy Valentine for you. Countdown will never love you. And frankly, it doesn’t deserve love in return, either~

Here’s the cover:

You know what I haven’t thought about until this cover? Where’s Pied Piper’s facial hair? Like, he and Trickster were on the run for at least days, if not longer. When has he had time or means to shave? Does he have a music spell that keeps him clean-shaven? …Can I get in on that? I would much prefer playing a short musical bit instead of having to use a razor. It’d go much quicker, and smoother by the look of Piper. Other than that, Piper does at least look a little unhealthy here. Frankly, he could stand to be more emaciated. Trickster’s gross rotting hand also looks a little small.

Okay, time for the recap. This one’ll be easy, because it doesn’t matter what everyone’s storyline was doing, the comic started saying “Okay, let’s wrap this up, people”, and clapping in that way coaches do to encourage you to hustle, you know how I mean? By which I mean, the Multiverse Crew, Jimmy Olsen and Forager, Mary Marvel, Holly Robinson and Harley Quinn, Pied Piper, and Karate Kid and Una all got teleported to Apokalips to finally start confronting Darkseid. Solomon the Monitor and Brother Eye may or may not also be there. And we’ll be there to mock the whole thing~

In fact, those are literally the first two characters we see. Solomon gets up from the game he’s playing with Darkseid to look out the window. He berates Darkseid–a feat few can say they’ve lived to do so–and declares that his time may be coming to an end. What’s going on out the window that’s got him so interested? Well, Brother Eye just teleported in and started disgorging OMACs. In response, a squad of Parademons equally starts disgorging to fight the OMACs. Surely this will be an epic and exciting battle.

And while Brother Eye is busy engaging the Parademons, Karate Kid and Una take the time to escape from inside him or their secret base or wherever they were. They don’t know where they are, but they can tell it’s not a great place to be. So they’re gonna stealth it up as best they can until they can get more information. Similarly, the Multiverse Crew are also trying to take stock of the situation and recuperate. Jason Todd, as usual, has a chip on his shoulder and is complaining at Ray Palmer to pull himself together and save the world or whatever.

Ray actually admits that, at the very least, he does need to pull himself together, but he has no idea why they’re on Apokalips. Kyle Rayner starts laying out the facts: the Source called them here for some reason, and Ray is supposed to stop the Great Disaster. But Ray tells him that Apokalips has nothing to do with the Great Disaster. So maybe there’s no reason to be here. Kyle and Donna Troy agree, and decide to try looking for a way home. They turn to tell Jason that they’re shipping out, only for Jason to have already stepped out and gone patrolling. Ditch him, I say! It’s for the best in the long run, trust me~

Yeah, he’s really swung off. He’s decided that he’s taking his life into his own hands from now on, Bob’s betrayal having been the inciting incident for him. So he’s literally swinging around Apokalips looking for something to get mixed up in. I dunno if he expects to find a lot of crime on Apokalips or a little. Like, what crimes are illegal there? And who would you report them to? Anyway, long story short, he notices the OMACs dinking about, and starts observing them for a bit. The fact that he’s not immediately leaping in to fight them is impressive for him.

So who is fighting in the streets? Karate Kid. Apparently teleporting is the best thing that’s happened to him, since he seems to be recovering from his illness. Healthiest he’s looked in several issues! But who’s looking unhealthy? Pied Piper. He hasn’t attracted any attention, and he doesn’t want it. He thinks that he’s been sent to hell (he has, he’s in “Countdown”) and is really musing whether to pull that ripcord and shock himself to death. Hey, you remember when there was a 24-hour self-destruct on those handcuffs? Yeah, I don’t think the story does either! Before he can, he gets grabbed from behind.

Meanwhile, Harley Quinn, Holly Robinson, and Mary Marvel are yet somewhere else on Apokalips, having followed Granny Goodness through her Boom Tube. Granny is not happy with this, sending her Female Furies (Lashina, Stompa, and Mad Harriet) after them. She’s also shouting a lot of things, from rescinding their own entry into the Furies to denying they’d ever be able to free the gods, if they’ve come to do so. They had no idea this was even a thing they could be doing until she said it, so now the idea is in their heads (or at least Holly’s). That’s some classic villain stupidity~

A fight scene ensues for the next few pages. The various Furies get taken out, with the most notable one being Mary defeating Mad Harriet simply by ducking at the right time, causing the other generic soldiers to shoot Harriet. Once they’re all beaten, Holly and Harley arm themselves, with Mary refusing because she doesn’t like guns. Not two pages ago, you let Harriet get shot down, but go off I guess. The three of them wonder where to go next, when Mary says she’s suddenly hearing the voice of the gods. That’s as good a lead as anything, I guess, so they follow her.

Surprisingly, Jimmy Olsen and Forager are not on Apokalips. Frankly, I was actually shocked to turn the page and not find the background being searing red. The green backgrounds are actually really refreshing. Anyway, Jimmy’s decided that if they’re going to Apokalips eventually, he wants some backup. So he’s here at the Cadmus Habitat to pick up these guys: the Hairies. I had to look these guys up, because I really don’t know that much about Jimmy Olsen lore, but basically they’re a bunch of genetically-enhanced guys who speak in hippie slang. Sure. Why not at this point~

Alas, our trip somewhere that’s green ends all too soon, and we’re back on Apokalips. Karate Kid is still busy fighting in the streets, having moved on from fighting random Apokalips goons to fighting OMACs. He and Una are unsure what else they can do, since Brother Eye is assimilating things so fast. They hope Darkseid has the power to repel Brother Eye, and though they know he won’t help them directly, Karate Kid thinks they have little choice. After all, they don’t want Brother Eye assimilating him and getting his hands(?) on the virus he’s carrying. Our comic ends with something that might make that difficult: Una getting assimilated into an OMAC next.

Not a bad issue, I’ll admit. Now that the series is wrapping up, things are at least happening. Well, sort of, I guess. We jumped the cast to where they need to be for the finale, but I think this is another one of those “set-up” issues. Hopefully the last one of these for a while!