The Doomino Effect for the week of Sep 4, 2007
Well, it’s another dud of a week here at the Doomino Effect, because again I’ve only got two books to review. I only picked up three this week, and Captain America: The Chosen was our Book of Doom.
Normally, Doom DeLuise provides a weekly Countdown recap, but that didn’t happen again this week, so I’ll start with that. Countdown #34 was another example of what has become a familiar mix of stupid, dumb and crap.
We start out with Trixter and Piper, the duo who has failed to become the lovable, hapless villains we’re supposed to admire and think are cute and funny. Fate is against them, see, because they didn’t actually help kill Flash, but the world wants to punish them as if they did! Except for that little fact that DeLuise pointed out a few weeks ago:
They did help kill Flash.
If you need evidence, here’s a panel from Flash #13 moments before he finally kicks the bucket:
And was there like a complete page missing when we jump to the Donna Troy and Jason Todd story? Because at the end of one page, Belthera the Bug Lady is cuddling up to her possessed Monitor, and then turn the page, and Jason and Donna are mid-battle fighting bugs. Jason says “Thanks Donna,” apparently for freeing them and totally changing the scenario off-panel so that he didn’t have to see what she did.
Who else thinks it’s really stupid that a tiny bug lady can control A MONITOR?
And I think it’s also worth pointing out that John Henry Irons was willing to kill Jimmy Olsen in order to save the building. That’s not what good guys do!
Speaking of what differentiates good guys and bad guys (I accidentally typed “bat guys”), that leads me to Outsiders #50, in which Batman begins his plan of re-branding the Outsiders as villains. Now that apparently 52 had the same after-effects as Civil War, the Outsiders are like a cross between the New Avengers and the US Military, launching pre-emptive strikes against Those Who Wish To Do Us Harm. One would think that such an action by Batman would fall right in the pattern of paranoia and secrecy that led to Infinite Crisis. Apparently Tony Bedard doesn’t think so.
Anyway, the setup of all of this was stupid, but the end result is that Catwoman is on the Outsiders and the team is somewhat returning to its origins. The suckiness of Outsiders #50 bothers me more as an ending to what was otherwise a pretty decent series than it does as a launching point for a new one. I’ll probably pick up BATO and quickly forget about how much this issue stunk…except I just looked and realized that Tony Bedard is writing the new series too.
And I don’t have anymore comics to review, so here – I made this for you.
Nice pictorial evidence. I’ll get around to writing a review as soon as I have more than eight hours between shifts at work. Which will be tonight!
talk about an Amazon Attack. Hi-oh!