SDCC'07: DC's Countdown Panel

Or should we call it "Let's bail the water out of the ship before it sinks" panel.

Dan Didio announced something quite revelatory with this quote:

“If 52 is the Academy Award-winning movie, then Countdown is the big summer blockbuster.”

So, in other words, if 52 was a well written piece of art, Countdown is some quickly thrown together piece of crap put together for a quick buck. The honesty is quite refreshing actually.

Is there any wonder why people are giving up on the series, as seen here, here, here and here, to name a few.

I get my books on a monthly basis so I have only read about a month of the book. But all of the above have a point. The story goes nowhere. Most of the stuff that actually moves the main plot along happens in other books. We have very little idea what is going to happen.

My opinion on this? Dini is writing this like a TV series. In TV, you can have one big event in the first episode and slowly build suspense from there, eventually leading to the big finale.

Problem is, comics are different than TV series. First off, fans have to pay for comics. And in a weekly, they want some payoff for their investment each and every week. They aren't going to shell out $3 a week on faith in the hopes that eventually something will happen.

Also, if killing off Duela Dent was supposed to be the explosive opening to the series, it failed miserable. She was a seldom used and virtually unknown character. Her death had no "wow" factor, but rather an "eh" factor.

But the Countdown panel did very little to address the issues raised by the series' deserters. Basically, the only series info we got was that title will be changed to "Countdown to Final Crisis" with #26.

They did mention that there is an All-Star Squadron project in the works, which piques my interest.

But I guess sales are still good enough that DC doesn't feel the need to circle the wagons yet. But by the time they do, it might be too late.