What Price Paradise?
Here’s the lowdown…
- Monarch and his multi-versal army has attacked the peaceful world of Earth-51.
- The retired JLA of Earth-51 has been almost defeated.
- Kyle Rayner has saved Ray Palmer, who is still believed to be the linchpin to saving the multi-verse from the Great Disaster.
- The Monitors bring Bob in and it is found out that the Monitors are too much individualized to re-combine… if it would have ever been possible in the first place.
- They leave Bob to go back and help in the battle against Monarch, Superman-Prime shows up and threatens Bob to help him.
- Jason Todd is targeted by some of Monarch’s henchmen and is saved by the Batman of Earth-51.
- Batman saves him only to interrogate him, because he does not believe Jason Todd could live.
- Queen Belthera returns to throw her armies into the mix to see what see can conquer.
- The Forager, while coming out of her shower (bugs shower?) that Jimmy Olsen’s power in being a soul catcher.
- The origin of Sinestro
Last week with issue #17, I was having my own crisis because I thought, “Wow, they saved all the great issues of Countdown for the end” and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Well after this week, it is possible that the joy and excitement that was Countdown #17 was simply a fluke. There are just things here that are so way off… Monarch’s army is not made up of the individuals we saw in Arena (so was Arena just a trivial side note that they ignored or did the writers have a brain cramp?)… Batman doesn’t do guns, but the Batman from Earth-51 (the Mr. Roger’s world) does?… Are the Monitors really that messed up as characters? I truly hope that Final Crisis as a series has more thought put into it than Countdown has.
Issue Grade: C-
