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06 12 2007

Countdown Arena #1

Posted by Alan in Comics

Countdown Arena #1So, the latest entry to the Countdown stable was released this week.

Countdown Arena continues the plot that’s been slowly building for a while (since Ion?), of Monarch building an army to take on the Monitors.

Countdown Arena is a weekly event whereby Monarch has captured various versions of the DC heroes from across the multiverse, and is forcing them to fight to the death so that’ll he’ll have only the best for his army.

Its an interesting book this. The premise is a bit contrived, with the heroes fighting each other to the death, so its a case of “switch your brain off and enjoy”. On that level it definitely works. We’re also presented with the idea that the Supermen are refusing to comply and are going to be masterminding a breakout, so that will probably more interesting to follow than the bouts themselves.

However, I’m left waiting for the twist. For a couple of reasons:

1. The current Monarch is actually Captain Atom. Monarch, as presented here, will happily wipe out millions of people, purely to further his goals of building an army to fight the monitors. It seems to be wildly out of character for him, so I really hope there’s a twist coming.

2. This ties into my feelings of the death of Earth-15 a couple of weeks ago. The new multiverse is partly built up by incorporating various Elseworld’s titles. Yet in this comic, we see the main characters from those Elseworld’s stories killed off. So the question becomes, is there a point in having a Gotham By Gaslight Earth, if there’s no Gotham By Gaslight Batman?

I wonder if there’s a twist coming here, but as it stands, I really think Final Crisis will remove the current multiverse. Whether it replaces it with a new one, or we end up with a single universe again, I don’t know, but it seems to me that the “52″ multiverse has already had most of its worlds revealed, 1 of which is destroyed, and we’re now losing title characters from the others. My guess is that the “52″ multiverse has been a bit of a stopgap, with Final Crisis revealing what the makeup of the DCU will actually be for the forseeable future.

If so, that’s a pity, because I quite like the current multiverse, but DC seem to be deconstructing it at the moment.

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7 Responses to “Countdown Arena #1”
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  1. David says:
    December 8, 2007 at 20:42

    I feel it would be a mistake to remove the Multiverse, I mean they’ve been dangling the return of it in front of our noses for years, and they’ve finally brought it back. It feels a bit of a shame to destroy it so soon. I think they should’ve left it, to keep mystery in the Multiverse and allow future writers to experiment with alternate worlds.

    But I agree with you, Final Crisis will probably remove the Multiverse from DC.

    Damn.

  2. David says:
    December 9, 2007 at 17:05

    Incidentally, and more offtopicness from me,

    Tis a good day to be a Linux user, with Linspire’s newest contribution to the Linux community.

    CNR
    Click ‘n’ Run.

    This handly little client has been a part of the Linspire distro for some time. (But I’ve never used it, since aside from CNR it doesn’t have anything else to really offer.)

    CNR is now available for all the major distributions, and allow the quick (and so easy) installation of almost every software, and window manager, you can think of. Try it http://www.cnr.com/ You won’t be disappointed.

  3. Alan says:
    December 9, 2007 at 18:06

    That sounds interesting. I think I may have used something similar recently (with SuSE maybe), but its a great idea. I must get it installed on my Ubuntu setup and give it a try.

    Regarding the multiverse, I think at this point I’ll be a bit dissappointed if they get rid of it in Final Crisis. I do think the “52″ multiverse will bite the dust, however I’m wondering if it’ll lead to the restoration of the original DC multiverse (or similar). There’s the lingering mystery about Earth-2 which I think is going to be a big plot point for Final Crisis.

    While the collapsing of the DCU to a single universe made a lot of sense at the time, I do think that the current DC is playing with the multiverse stuff too often to get rid of it altogether. However, one caveat is that I’d hate to lose having the JSA and JLA on the same Earth. Too many good stories have come from it.

  4. David says:
    December 10, 2007 at 0:05

    Hm.

    What I find interesting, and seems to work with your idea, is the latest issue of JSA. In which Jay and Wally use the cosmic treadmill to try and travel to an alternate world, and land where ‘Earth-2 would have been’, but found nothingness. This leads me to believe that the… space, those universes inhabited still very much exists, its just everything in them, stars, planets, matter of any kind is gone. Because of the antimatter wave. Antimatter destroys matter, but not the existence itself. Those universes, or vibrational planes, are empty, but they were never actually destroyed in the original crisis. Though I don’t know how the later crisis’s fit into that, I would like to see the original multiverse back.

  5. Alan says:
    December 11, 2007 at 17:38

    Very true. There’s obviously still a gap left by the old multiverse, and there were strong hints that there was something different about the resurrected Earth-2 in Infinite Crisis, with it seeming unpopulated and false, versus the rest of the Earths Alex Luthor recreated.

    Both E-2 Superman and E-2 Wonder Woman hinted they were being pulled somewhere else, so is it possible that the original Earth-2 actually survived the original Crisis and is somewhere else, waiting to return? I must admit, I’d love it if the original Earth-2 actually turned out to be as pivotal to the old multiverse as New Earth is to the 52 multiverse.

  6. David says:
    December 11, 2007 at 21:05

    Well, Earth-2 was the focus in comics for a good few decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the ‘nexus’ of that original universe.

    Did you ever pick up the Justice League comic on Free Comic Book day?

    It had an interesting storyline.

    It was set around Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman choosing the members of the next JLA, and it was more or less a clip show. It would go back and forward in time.

    ‘Yesterday’ and show a clip from the past (crisis, the original founding (precrisis version interestingly), red tornado sacrificing himself, the death of Superman)

    But more interesting were the ‘Tommorrow’ clips.

    Got the issue in front of me now, and I’ll list the ‘Tommorrow’ points of interest.

    1) The marriage of Hal Jordan. The hair under the veil of his bride appears light, I’m guessing blond, and therefore that it’s Cowgirl.

    2) This is a single page. Lex Luthor in a torn, white bussiness suit, he is blooded up. He his holding Superman up by the neck (that hand has the Kryptonite ring on it), punching Batman in the face with his other hand, a few teeth being visibly knocked out, and Wonder Woman is behind him, pulling her golden lasso, which is tied around his neck. Luthor is shouting ‘He. Was. My. SON!’ ‘SON’ is in big orange letters with an exploding speech bubble.

    3) The gist of this one, is Clark back home in the farm house, in his room in some kind of attic. His mother is telling Bruce Wayne and Diana about his Father. Clark’s father has apparently died, and she’s telling them how he was strong at the funeral. Bruce and Diana go to his room and Clark asks Bruce how he got over the same thing.

    4) Superman and Bruce talking to Diana and trying to perswade her to change her mind. She apparently seems to be giving up her Wonder Woman role (and more) to be with someone (his name isn’t mentioned). Batman says, during the conversation, ‘To be with him, you’re giving up immortality.’

    5) The most interesting of all. It seems to be a modern version of the original discovery of Earth-2. (i can scan the page in question if you’d like).
    Bruce, Diana, and Clark are talking about how it’s possible to find it, over a group picture of the original justice society and the justice league.

    Good quote from Bruce ‘Clark, We’ve seen alternate universes, pocket prison realities, and a full-on multiverse. Why should we be suddenly surprised to find… …that there’s a second Earth out there?’

    5) Diana and Superman talking about the death of Batman. Sounds very much like the Dark Knight Returns timeline.
    Diana: ‘Is it true what the Government said? That he went down–’
    Clark: ‘It’s a lie. He went underground. For years.’

    Hope this is of interest.

  7. Alan says:
    December 12, 2007 at 16:58

    Its been a good while since I read the issue, but I do remember reading some of those panels (specifically the “other” Earth ones).

    I did find it amazing that DC were still pretending the new multiverse would be a surprise after that issue :-)

    It’ll be interesting to see if the Earth being discussed is the current Earth-2 (which hasn’t really been used yet - perhaps pointing to its significance?) or another Earth.

    Personally, with both Kryptonians missing on the current Earth-2, I wonder if it’ll be revealed to be linked to the original multiverse, and the original Earth-2. It does seem interesting that while the other Earths are happily doing their own thing, Earth-2 has this noticeable link to events in Infinite Crisis/New Earth.

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