Talk:Countdown to Final Crisis

What was archived

• more info - discussion regarding the initial titling of the article
• Tie-in Issues - discussion regarding tie-in issues to Countdown
• Links - discussion regarding a umber of some dodgy links
• "World Jumpers" section - discussion reagarding the OR issues surrounding defining who is DJ/WJ, etc.
• World-jumpers and death cheaters - different dicussion, same problems
• My organization edit - using the 52 format for this article, primarily for continuity and ease of use
• Removed Section - removed "World-jumpers and death cheaters" section as uncited and lilkely OR
• Struck by lightning because - cautioning against making OR leaps of faith not yet communicated via the comic
• Second Teaser Image - discussion over the contents of the second teaser image
• Red Robin - more on this, specific to Red Robin
• history - queries regarding the inclusion of the backstory at the end of the comic
• Detail - more discussion regarding the second teaser image
• Back-Up Stories - discussion regardin the format of the background stories
• That Superman - yet more discussion on the meaning of images left undefined by DC
• Name Change - note about the article's title changing (redirecting, etc) after issue #26, when the series changes name to "Countdown to Final Crisis"
• Banned User - commentary about a user
• Notes and references section - empty citations
• Opener - discussion regarding how the lead is a summary to be expanded upon within the article
• The Supermen, revisited - yet more discussion on the meaning of images left undefined by DC

The Return of Ra's Al Ghul?

On the Ra's al Ghul entry there some debate about this entry...

In the first teaser image released for the weekly series Countdown showed Batman wearing a long robed version of his batsuit, and carrying a long saber. - - In a DC Nation column, Dan DiDio stated: Batman, in symbolic garb, wields the sword which harkens the return of a deadly foe.[1] - - In a Newsarama interview, DiDio also said that the sword is from a famous cover of Batman. The cover in question is from Batman #244, by artist Neal Adams. It depicts the sword in Batman's chest with Ra's standing over him, and yellow bold letters state "THE DEMON LIVES AGAIN!"[2]
I recognise that this is not a forum - but I did think that this might of of some interest to those who are updating the 'behind the scenes' aspects of this entry. (unsigned post from User:81.106.192.55)

A rather nice piece of detective work, User81. I think you are probably right. As you might have noticed, a lot of conversation in this page has surrounded the usage and interpretation on the scant confirmation of suppositions of what DC is doing. Maybe you can find a quote from someone at DC (or a relaible, non forum- or blog-type) to confirm your suspicions? - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 19:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

On that note... [3] Starting with the solicit for Robin #168... - J Greb 19:51, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

He'l be back but i dont know how much of it will be in countdown.BIG Daddy M 16:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. There is no definite citation that states the way the characters are portrayed in the teaser images is how they will appear in Countdown itself. It is quite possible if Ra's Al Ghul is set to return that he may not return within the Countdown series itself, but rather return due to events set in motion in Countodwn. 192.76.82.90 12:54, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd say we shouldn't include any info on Ra's Al Ghul in this article until it becomes clear that he is a part of it. Bart Allen's death wasn't technically a part of Countdown, although it did have an effect on the series. Ccm043 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ccm043 (talk • contribs) 21:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Critical Reception and Sales

Has this article ever had a section for it? I think it should, especially to see how it stacks up against other major events. Notthegoatseguy 14:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Definitely. Countdown's poor/controversial reception should be discussed.~Zythe^{Talk to me!} 22:06, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

If verifiable sources exist, certainly. However, it should be noted that if sales pick up or if the general view of the final product goes up later. John Carter 22:23, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Karate Kid section and Monarch section seem to have accidentally become fused

I don't normally comment -- maybe someones already on top of this (and knows what material got accidentally cut in the process from the end of K.K. and start of M.). 67.109.118.2 21:29, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Someone forgot to close a reference tag.~Zythe^{Talk to me!} 22:06, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Challengers of the Beyond

It is noteworthy that this phrase has never appeared in the comic book stories. A reference for its first use would be useful; was it a Dan Didio editorial, some fannish website. or somewhere semi-official? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.165.188.30 (talk) 15:36, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I've mostly heard it in DC advertisements. But I don't recall seeing it in the comic itself. Their storyline is called Jason Todd and Donna Troy. Ccm043 02:19, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

In this week's edition of Countdown to Final Crisis (#20) the Jason Todd and Donna Troy chapter is labeled as "The Challengers". While it may not be word for word "Challengers of the Beyond", "The Challengers" may be a reasonable title for the section, as they are challenging many things, including themselves, the Monitors, the Monarch, Ray Plamer's wishes, etc. Hazardous Matt (talk) 14:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

That's acceptable. Ccm043 (talk) 02:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I updated the section to read "The Challengers: Donna Troy, Jason Todd and Kyle Rayner". I thought it would be important to list the party members as well, as DC had only recently referred to them collectively. Hazardous Matt (talk) 17:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Plot

I think that there's a more useful way to group these sections, but they'd have to be rewritten a bit. If they were more thematic and less specific we could group them as, say, four major plots instead of eight sub-plots. I suggest Apokolips and the Monitors are the major plots which would tie in most of the others, except maybe Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Trickster, and Piper. Having just the two major plots and two major subplots would make this article a lot more readable...especially as it's in development. --In Defense of the Artist 13:53, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that, since this clearly eclectic story is all over the road, we might have to wait to see what the writers were actually trying to accomplish. In retrospect, its easier to follow the major plot as seen as a whole, rather than the dancing monkeys of Jason and GL's clear dislike for each other, etc. I think that because the segue's are not very consistent, we should keep things focused on the characters for now, and afterward, we will know how to better structure it. We cannot allow our own perceptions of what the themes are to color the article. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 19:05, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed some overlapping between the chapters. If I recall, the storyline originally went by issue, which didn't serve that well for the individual plotlines. The current model worked for a while, but with the stories overlapping there's going to be quite a bit of redundancy. I feel there is a better format that could be used, but unfortunately I doubt we'll be able to discover it until the story is almost done. Hazardous Matt (talk) 17:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd say most of the plots are fairly isolated right now. We can create another category or combine categories if they begin to converge. Ccm043 (talk) 02:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Citation Error

There is an error riddled throughout the plot section: Cite error: Invalid tag; name cannot be a simple integer, use a descriptive title. 192.76.82.89 (talk) 21:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, it seemed to be on every page for a while. Must've been system-wide. 192.76.82.89 (talk) 21:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Critical Reaction

This article includes sales figues but no account as to how the series has been critically recieved. I think this would be a worthwhile addition if anybody has the time. BTW - is it any good? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.190.125 (talk) 14:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Nothing to write home about, but it's strangely compelling.~Zythe^{Talk to me!} 23:16, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

From what I've seen, the reception of this book comes and goes with each issue, seeing as its slowly piecing a story together. Once the story is done, then perhaps critical reception should be added. Hazardous Matt (talk) 16:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It's been a year, should we add that section yet?72.185.219.30 (talk) 08:52, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

From what I understand, Countdown was pretty much loathed for how pointless it became. It actually had no bearing on Final Crisis in any way, as it's writer decided to go ahead and ignore it based on how much bad publicity it received.

The comic itself? Not very good. It relies mainly on shock deaths of characters and pads out it's length with long searches for various macguffins that turn out to be entirely pointless by the end of it. Most of the plot points were not actually resolved in Countdown itself - many of them going on to OTHER books to finish the story, which was received with harsh critisism from comic fans who felt that the "meat" of the story wasn't actually IN the story. Many other plot points were explained in miniseries that turned out to, again, be entirely pointless.

The end result? Everyone felt ripped off and felt like their time was wasted.

Of course, this is just the general gist I received, so if anyone could look up some reviews of Countdown as a whole that came from some good sources, that'd be great. 174.116.54.187 (talk) 04:15, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Hrm. Well here's a few I found:

1) Atop the Fourth Wall's four-part review of it was extremely negative, declaring at the end of his third video "Countdown to Final Crisis blows! It reeks! It fails! It is heinous! It is mean-spirited, wretched, nonsensical, idiotic, irritating, slow, crappy, and altogether stupid. It is everything wrong with the comic book industry, and an embarrassment on the records of everyone who worked on it."

2) I admit I haven't read most of them, but the reviews by Jim Beard at Comics Bulletin seemed generally negative, though not as harsh at the above.

3) Comic Book Resources gave its final issue one out of five stars, saying it "failed absolutely."

4) IGN's reviews of the issues were generally negative. (at least looking at the numbers, I haven't really browed through the actual text of the reviews)

5) The reviews on amazon.com of the volumes average out to 3/5 for the first three volumes, and a 2.5/5 for the fourth.

6) The Weekly Crisis (blog) called it "a complete disaster."

7) Collected Editions (blog) was the most positive of these, saying "In the end, I liked Countdown to Final Crisis well enough" but also noted that "there's any number of instances where the book could have been better than it was."

There are probably more out there, but those are the ones that either I already knew about or were on the first page of a google search. Lord Seth (talk) 00:36, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Monitors section a mess

It starts with them sending a Forerunner... and then halfway into the giant paragraph narrating events, then again discusses them sending a Forerunner. I don't have the issues to clean this all up properly, but, wow. And why are there no less than eleven footnotes/citations at the end of one sentence? Overkill much? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.189.206.11 (talk) 04:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I only see it becoming more complicated as the stories begin to bleed together, such as Mary Marvel/Holly & Harley, the Monitors/The Challengers/Superman-Prime. Also, I think some of the less essential details can be removed from several parts of the story synopsis. Perhaps instead of isolating the story by groups of people it should return to one linear plotline, after some trimming, that is. Hazardous Matt (talk) 16:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it's still a bit soon to create a single plot line. I think there should be more plot development before we combine them all. Ccm043 (talk) 19:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it may be too soon, but I feel it is an inevitability. Plus there are some words here and there that can be removed, and some sentences that can be re-written for length to help trim up the sections. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hazardous Matt (talk • contribs) 16:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Sales Figures

I can't edit the "Sales Figures" section without deleting the Notes and External Links. Any suggestions? Ccm043 (talk) 19:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Darkseid / Monitors

I know I've mentioned story orginization before, but since we've done some merging of storylines already, would it be prudent to combine Darkseid with the Monitors information? It's confusing to have one section updated and not the other. Conversely, to update both sections with the same information would be redundant. Hazardous Matt (talk) 22:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that would be fine. 71.81.251.170 (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Yup, "Darkseid, Monarch and the Monitors" would encapsulate the Monarch/SMP/chess storylines very well.~Zythe^{Talk to me!} 12:16, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Promotions

I noticed the Mary Marvel "Seduction of the Innocent" listing now reads that Mary is flanked by Granny Goodness. I've never seen an ad with Eclipso, Mary and Granny. Can someone verify this?  Hazardous Matt  15:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Re-organization

So, after reading the entire story, I think we have a better way to organize this information. All the characters come together at the end, so we don't really need to separate sections in the long run. I think we can actually break down a lot of the early, stand-alone chapters into a few sentences (not that much happend on two pages per person, or so) and actually work the story in a linear sense. It may take some work, but if we sort the plotlines chronologically we can probably get the summary down to a decent, readable size and eliminate some erroneous detail. I'll try to work on this in my Sandbox over the weekend, if anyone's confused as to what I'm trying to suggest.  Hazardous Matt  13:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Main image?

Does anyone think the main image should be the cover for #1? It just seems more representative of the series, since it features the main characters, as opposed to #51 which shows the entire DCU. --DrBat (talk) 23:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Comics B-Class Assesment required

This article needs the B-Class checklist filled in to remain a B-Class article for the Comics WikiProject. If the checklist is not filled in by 7th August this article will be re-assessed as C-Class. The checklist should be filled out referencing the guidance given at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/B-Class criteria. For further details please contact the Comics WikiProject. Comics-awb (talk) 16:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. There are a couple of minor points that could do with sourcing but over all it looks solid. (Emperor (talk) 18:34, 31 August 2008 (UTC))

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