By Dante' Maddox

With the wild ending that came along with issue 13 of Countdown to Final Crisis, issue 12 becomes the perfect jumping on point for curious readers. Two of the more major players to come out of this series have apparently died sooner than expected.

While its true there were no bodies produced as evidence, but they kind of annihilated an entire galaxy so that would be understandable. Even with that, there is no guarantee that The Monarch or Superman Prime are either really dead, what can be said is that the stage is set in a way that I didn’t expect.

It was revealed that Darkseid in fact did know more about the ongoing crisis that was originally expected, and his own dealings with the Monitors reveal a much deeper issue at hand. Looking back to earlier issue’s a lot of issues become clearer, yet the motives are still anyone’s guess. It seems obvious now that Darkseid himself is responsible for Jimmy Olsen’s transformation, but the why is still unclear. What really clouds all this is the idea that we know that he’s not responsible for the death of the New Gods, making Darkseid’s involvement in Countdown possibly benevolent. If that’s the case then things are really bad for the DCU, and how they’ll see this through to the end is very exciting.

Issue 12 get’s caught up with the Pied Piper, who is lost in the desert, delirious and waiting for death, his story represents another plot line that seems to be dangling by itself out in left field, but this entire series has been about taking a bunch of seemingly unrelated occurrences and explaining how they are all interrelated. Considering that they’ve delivered on other aspects of the story, its safe to say that all loose ends should be tied by issue 1.

The biggest reveal thus far in the story has a lot to do with the discovery that Darkseid has been in contact with at least one Monitor since the beginning. There is a bigger picture than Countdown is painting for us right now, which makes sense considering that this is in fact a countdown in the proper terms. Final Crisis is rumored to be epic in its scale, and based on the climate in Countdown, those aren’t just empty words.

Writer: Paul Dini
Pencils: Carlos Magno
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: $2.99

CraveOnline Rating: 7 out of 10