Comics in December pt. 10

Countdown to Adventure #5 - Okay, first a misleading cover (not a good sign). Animal Man gets most of the focus in the lead this issue as he makes an attempt to cleanse the plague from San Diego. Some nice character moments in the story, but the ending was pretty telegraphed. So, that'll leave it up to a depowered Starfire to figure out how to fix things - most likely with Adam Strange's help - over the next few issues. The Forerunner back-up seemed very disjointed for some reason, and it only served the purpose to show how much of a tough character she's supposed to be. Yawn. I'm thinking the lead and back-up will collide by the end of issue 7 (just a hunch).

Countdown Arena #4 - this final issue of the mini-series spotlights the battle of the Supermen. While a good battle, it doesn't solve much. One ends up dead, one ends up fleeing so he can come back later (in Final Crisis) with an army, and one ends up in Monarch's army by default. Oh, and Monarch dukes it out with his 51 dopplegangers - the Captain Atoms of the multiverse. Amazing how quickly he takes them all out. This whole mini-series was sort of a fan-boy dream - pitting different versions of characters in battle to see who would be top dog. Kind of like those "x versus y" threads that end up on message boards. Something to consider for a few seconds but in the end pointless. Much like this mini-series. Ah well.


Teen Titans Go! #50 - the animated Titans team hits a milestone number, and starts out with an awesome jam-cover by Todd Nauck. Inside, the story is simple but it tells a lesson - one that Private Hive never seemed to get the first time around from Robin. Robin learns something too and puts in motion some plans that should give the writers of the book more concepts to work with in future issues. I like that. We get a glimpse of some "familiar" characters that'll be new to this Titans-verse as well - again hopefully folks who get touched upon in future issues.