Countdown #38

One-sentence summary: Quite a bit more action in this issue, a little bit of plot development, and (hurray) absolutely nothing about Amazons Attack.

Honestly, this was one of the best issues of Countdown yet. If I were to make a single complaint with it, I'd say that there wasn't a ton of plot to it, just scenes and action, but it still had more plot than the usual issue of Countdown. I really liked this issue; maybe it was just me, but the artwork even seemed to be a bit better.

First off, all the action with Zatanna and Mary Marvel was interesting and definitely was a cool way to show Zatanna how Mary's changed, as well as developing the Apokolips plot some (I had just been reading the Forever People, so seeing an Omega or Alpha bullet, whatever it was called, was cool). While it would be a disappointing end if that's all they did with the Question and Batwoman, the scene with them and Piper/Trickster was absolutely fantastic. The puppets, man, the puppets! The Karate Kid development was, at least for me, a bit surprising. Maybe I should've seen this coming, but I didn't.

Nothing really happened with Jimmy Olsen, despite the fact that he was on the cover of the issue. He got rejected from Titans, that was all. Woo. While I do like the cover, I think a better one probably would've been Trickster doing a puppet show for an irritated Question and Batwoman, but, hey, that's just my two cents.

No Amazons Attack plot! Woo! I hate that plot so much.

Also, however, no Ray Palmer plot. I guess this might be because The All-New Atom #14 had a fair amount of development on this storyline, so they figured people got their Atom fix last week, they can take a break on that. I accept this, particularly since they write Ryan Choi so poorly.

Good issue, all in all. They moved things along at a decent pace, that damnable "History of the Multiverse" section is finally over, and they had a good mix of action and comedy in it. For this, I'm pretty satisfied.