Writers: Paul Dini & Sean McKeever
Pencils: Tom Derenick

Holly Robinson makes her first appearance in Countdown this week in Metropolis to make a fresh start. Consider this, Kyle Rayner was created as an all new Green Lantern, and nowhere in his origin was it ever discussed that he was from another version of earth. That info was later ret-conned in the recent Infinite Crisis affair, which begs the question, who else is on a world they truly don’t belong to? Holly Robinson could be a prime candidate, maybe characters like Jason Rusch (the new Firestorm) are really from another universe? The possibilities seem huge as this story moves forward.

Ok, five issues in and I have my first issue with the story. How did Black Adam get his powers back? More importantly, why is his magic word Shazam? Didn’t Captain Marvel change it? There looks to be an upcoming series to explain all that but this seems pretty suspect so far. It was cool however, that Mary Marvel got Teth Adam’s powers, especially since technically Black Adam is supposed to be stronger than his counterpart Marvel. That might make Mary one of the new heavy hitters on the block when this thing is all over. DC has always been the best at reinventing their characters, and it looks (at least initially) that that tradition continues.

The rogues make another appearance in ‘Countdown’ with a little more plot development. Tom Derenick’s rendition of the Piper is a lot better than his look in the first ‘Countdown’ issue but I’m still not thrilled about either of these characters. That’s not to say that their part in this isn’t intriguing but I kind of wish they would get on with it. The part of the rogues in all this seems to be the biggest mystery the books got going, and it looks like Paul Dini is still unwilling to let the cat out of the bag quite yet.

Lastly, the Monitors are still congregating over the fate of the multi-verse. The fallout from this meeting will most likely be the dominating factor as to where this series goes from here. With so much going on issue for issue, I like the idea that Dini is taking full advantage of the format. Also, be on the lookout for the ‘Amazon Attacks’ tie-in as that arc looks to also have far reaching consequences for the DCU. Hopefully, next week’s ‘Countdown’ will feature more of that story. Until next week…

Dante will be camped in front his local shop next week for no apparent reason.