God I was in a ranting mood this afternoon. That’ll teach me to post while in work.

I was a bit harsh on Lord Havok in my last post I feel. Its not a bad book. It captures the 90s feel (presumably the decade these characters were from?) really well. The art’s nice and the story, with its Civil War spin is interesting. Its just not characters I particularly know or am invested in. Its not something I’ll pick up again (unless spoilers indicate some good Kyle/Donna scenes - but I think that’s unlikely since they’re not the stars of the book), but its not a bad book. Just one starring characters that I’m not too interested in. Hope it does well for the creative team though, they’ve obviously put a lot of good work in.

I also enjoyed Countdown this week. Going from the buzz online, I’m one of the few people left actively following this book.

Granted, some of the storylines I’m not fussed about, but the Challengers story I find interesting, and I’m intrigued to see the payoff for the Mary Marvel storyline. This issue was basically a big recap issue (presumably to help launch its rebranding as Countdown to Final Crisis). Things seem to be kicking off now, with the Monitors declaring war. Should be interesting to see what this means for the Challengers, surely their first targets?

Also worth mentioning that this issue seems to have put the kibosh on the fairly bad Kyle/Donna/Jason love triangle. Thank God. The only issue it worked in was Ron Marz’s Wildstorm one-shot.

I was all set to skip Lord Havok and the Extremists. I don’t like getting sucked in by tie-ins to big events. Infinite Crisis cost me a fortune, and I was determined to be pickier with all the Countdown tie-ins. I’m quite enjoying the Search for Ray Palmer, so I’m buying that (whenever they next release an issue - and here’s hoping it won’t solely feature a character who’s bumped off the following week), but I saw this and thought “That looks missable”.

So, I was all set to skip it, until I noticed the complete solicit, which said that Kyle, Jason and Donna would be guest starring. Now Jason hasn’t been interesting since the Annual which made his whole resurrection a laughing stock, and Countdown seems to just be continuing to de-fang a previously-interesting character, but I’m a sucker for anything with Kyle and Donna in it, so I resigned myself to picking this up.

God what a waste of money.

The Civil War parody was quite interesting, but felt a bit too obvious to me, and I thought it’d be more interesting as a Marvel What If?

Kyle and co only turned up on the last page, and the rest of this was just characters I didn’t care about. Kyle & Donna or not, I’m skipping this one next month. I daresay it’ll be some other people’s cup of tea though, but I can’t see why I’d stretch my budget to include this.

Fortunately Countdown to Adventure #3 was also out this week. As I’ve said previously I’m really enjoying this series and the characters. I’m not sure about the way they’re taking the Animal Man/Starfire relationship, but nonetheless its a great read, with some good art. The Forerunner backups are quite interesting as well, giving us a look at some of the other Earths in the Multiverse. Although to an extent I wish they weren’t. We’ve been seeing an awful lot of the other 52 Earths lately, and a part of me wishes they’d limit themselves more and just explore a few of the Earths, leaving the others unknown for other writers to play with over the coming years.

Saying that, I really enjoyed the Earth in this issue. The purely magic-based setup was really interesting. I hope we can see more of this one.

However, the issue of the week for me was easily JSA #10. The use of the Kingdom Come Superman in this is really interesting, and is also allowing Geoff Johns to continue the thread of Kal-L’s fate and (increasingly probable) resurrection. Seeing Power Girl’s reactions to this new Superman was a nice piece of character work, as well as seeing things from Superman’s perspective as well, coming from the middle of the Kingdom Come storyline (going from his dialogue), we are perhaps going to see the seeds of what led to Superman’s change of heart in that story and led to him working towards a better world. Geoff Johns has been doing really good stuff over in JSA. A title that doesn’t always seem to get the recognition of the bigger name titles, but none-the-less, more people should be buying.