Well, COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS has finally completed. Originally, what I was going to do was give a recap of the various months of the story and speculate on where we're going from here. But, in the context of a Batman site, there wouldn't be much point.

Also, now that I've read the story in it's entirety, I can safely say that it was mediocre at best. A mess compared to its predecessor. If I recapped this story for primarily Batman fans, it would be boring, since Batman showed up a total of (about) five times through all 51-issues.

At the end of the story, Darkseid is killed by Orion, while Kyle Rayner, Ray Palmer, and Donna Troy all take it upon themselves to "monitor the Monitors." That was the big "payoff."

Overall, this story was a blunder on DC's part and would've been better served as a 12-issue monthly rather than a 51-issue weekly. It only sets up a few basic principles going into FINAL CRISIS, and ultimately doesn't have a huge impact on the state of our DC Universe. As for other universes in the DC Multiverse, a couple were destroyed entirely which may play into FINAL CRISIS at some point, but I would guess not very much.

Well, what can DC learn from this? With the next weekly, they need to limit the superfluous tie-ins, have better continuity control, and, basically, more interesting central characters. I also think that, with the exception of COUNTDOWN issues written by current TEEN TITANS scribe Sean McKeever, the writing team wasn't great. I'm not a big fan by any means of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (the guys that ALWAYS have to write together), and Adam Beechen is hit and miss with me. Paul Dini's issues that he wrote by himself seemed to be the most coherent continuity-wise, but overall, the story lost a lot of people well before the halfway mark. Myself, almost included, and BOF's esteemed founder included.

However, a saving grace is that DC has already seemed to learn the lessons in which I previously outlined for their next weekly series, TRINITY. Limiting superfluous tie-ins? Check. TRINITY is going to be a self-contained story with no tie-ins whatsoever. Better continuity control? Check. For the lead story in every issue of TRINITY, they have one writer and one artist: Kurt Busiek (who just recently finished his run on SUPERMAN, with James Robinson of “BATMAN: FACE THE FACE” taking his place) and Mark Bagley (leaving Marvel and ULTIMITE SPIDER-MAN behind after 115 consecutive issues).

More interesting central characters? UBER-check. The Man of Steel, Superman. The Amazonian princess, Wonder Woman. And yes, for all of us Batophiles, The Dark Knight, Batman.

It's safe to say that the DC Universe is in a very interesting place right now, with no thanks to COUNTDOWN. The Bat-books are awesome thanks to Final Crisis scribe Grant Morrison and Paul Dini. Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek put Superman in a great place with his adventures. Gail Simone is kicking ass on WONDER WOMAN. And, again, Geoff Johns continues to impress me month after month on GREEN LANTERN.

COUNTDOWN is not a representation of the quality that most DC books have, and I must make that abundantly clear. With FINAL CRISIS just over the horizon, we have a lot to look forward to. So, let's start doing that and just try to forget that the pointless weekly ticking clock ever happened