52, Countdown, and Trinity

*Originally published on 9/21/09



After DC's mega-event, Infinite Crisis, it was decided that all of the comics in the mainstream DC Universe would jump ahead one year. To fill in the gap, DC announced the release of 52, a weekly series that occurred in "real time" i.e. each issue showed us what happened in that week. It was a bold experiment to be sure.

DC got four of their best writers on it and it turned out to be a pretty big commercial success. What was unique about the comic was that the story was told through some of the more minor characters like Renee Montoya and Booster Gold. Even Captain Marvel villain, Black Adam had his own story arc. While the original aim of the comic was to fill in the year and explain the changes that occurred in all of the One Year Later stories, the story gradually moved away from that and did it's own thing.

The comic was a commercial success, but still managed to be a mixed bag. There are people who loved it and people who really hated it. I fell somewhere in between, though closer to the positive. There were parts that I really did like, the adventures in space was a cool idea and I really enjoyed Black Adam's story line. While there wasn't much that I actively hated, there were issues where it seemed like nothing actually happened.

I also wasn't crazy about the Question. He had a few awesome moments in the early issues, but after that he was too normal. Of course, my first glimpse into the character was Justice League Unlimited, which apparently took some liberties with the character. Even so, when I think of the Question, that's the version that first pops into my head.

I understand that the story evolved, but at the same time, it would've been nice to at least see nods to the changes that had occurred. We see Clark Kent early on focusing on his career as a reporter. we see Lex's machinations, and we see Bruce at one point in the caves of Nanda Parbat. I was curious to see Harvey acting as Gotham's resident vigilante as that was a key point in the follow up story, Face 2 Face. There's no mention of it up until the 51st issue. Considering a large chunk of the story took place in Gotham, I don't know how that never came up. For all of it's faults, I did enjoy the story quite a bit.

As 52 was a huge success, DC decided to follow it up with another year long weekly series, Countdown. Unlike 52, which was self contained, this story would take place alongside the current DC books and would act as the "spine" of DC's continuity. Like 52, the story would be told through the view of lesser known characters. New writers were brought on, which was understandable given the fact that writing 52 issues in a year was an exhausting ordeal.

This time, the formula didn't fare so well. While the story was supposed to be self contained, plot elements were introduced only to be followed up in a different comic. The story was also editorially driven from the get go. Evidently, Dan Didio, the chief editor at DC hated 52 and proudly proclaimed that this was "52 done right". Oh, the irony. This comic turned out to be a huge disaster. Fan reaction was extremely negative. The writing was poor, continuity was a mess, and the art was questionable at times. Comic critic, Linkara already ripped the series apart in a 4 part series of videos and did a much better job than I could.

DC tried to save face, renaming the comic to Countdown to Final Crisis and dropping the whole "spine" thing and focusing on the story itself. It was too little too late and the series was a failure. Grant Morrison, the writer of Final Crisis (the event that this was all building up to in the first place) said that he pretty much ignored the series and did his own thing. So, essentially, it was a waste of time, effort, and money.

You would think that this would mark the end of the year long weekly experiment, but you would be wrong. DC, figuring that the third time was the charm, announced yet another 52 issue series called Trinity, this was going to be a comic that focused on the big three and it was said that it would showcase how important the characters were to the overall DC Universe. It had potential, I was going to give it a shot, but I was under the suspicion that the year long weekly series train had run its course.

As it turns out, this series was made of awesome. At first I was unsure of the dual story mode they were using, but it grew on me. I was also a bit surprised that for a book that focuses on the big three, the big three are absent for half of it. The more I thought about it though, the more it made sense. What better way to show how important these characters are than to show us a world where they never existed?

If I had to recommend one, it would be Trinity. This, not Countdown, was 52 done right. 52 was good overall, but this was great. The collection is available in three convenient trades in case you didn't want to hunt down over 50 issues of comics.

Another weekly series was announced, Wednesday Comics. This wasn't a year long deal, only 12 issues would be released and it would be a throwback to the old strips you would read in newspapers. I only picked up the first two issues, I haven't been able to make it out to the store since so I can't comment on that just yet. It was good for the most part though it takes some getting used to.

As far as I know, that marks the end of the weekly comics saga for DC. I haven't come across any announcements of a new weekly series. I do believe the curtain has dropped.