Who Was Who Is Who #35

So for want of anything better to write about on a Monday, I'm going to go through all my copies of Who's Who and see if I can predict who will make it over to the new DCU by the end of 2012, who might make it and who hasn't got a Pig-Iron's chance.

PHANTOM GIRL - one of the perennial Legion members, even I'm aware that Phantom Girl is likely to be included in most versions of the team and a quick check on the internet reveals that she is alive and well in the latest Legion of Super-Heroes series.

PHANTOM LADY - at the time of writing (start of April) none of the versions of the Phantom Lady appear to have survived into the post-Flashpoint world. The last page of The Ray series, though, hinted at a possible return for Uncle Sam and, by extension, the Freedom Fighters so maybe they'll be back at some point. For that reason, Phantom Lady goes in the possible column.

So, Farewell Then . . .

This is a rhetorical question, but does anyone else think Countdown To Final Crisis ended with more of a whimper than a bang?

After all that hype, all that universe hopping, the key series leading into the forthcoming Final Crisis limped to an end. Pied Piper - last seen being blown to hell in issue #9 - somehow survived and landed in Gotham City; Jason Todd who appears to have foregone the Red Hood identity is also in Gotham, as surly and nasty as he was when he started out; Mary Marvel is still wearing black and has become a petulant bad girl; Buddy Blank has become an OMAC more recognisable to older readers (and readers of older comics) and the boy who would be Kamandi on another Earth here turns out to have been named Tommy all along in a nod to the post-Crisis On Infinite Earths retcon; and the Challengers From Beyond . . .

After moping around Ray Palmer's house they address the Monitors and tell them to watch their behinds because they are monitoring the Monitors.

I can't help wondering if this whole idea of Kyle Rayner, the Atom, Donna Troy and Forager (I notice Jimmy Olsen didn't make the cut) keeping tabs on the Monitors is just going to get swept under the carpet. Rayner's a Green Lantern so will have duties elsewhere; the Atom's already due to appear in The Atom series alongside Ryan Choi, the latest Atom; Donna Troy's back in with The Titans; which leaves Forager . . . one new character (with little characterisation) is going to monitor all of the Monitors? In which series is this likely to happen?

No, I think it's more likely that a few months down the line, after Final Crisis, we'll never hear about this whole monitoring the Monitors lark again.

Which won't be a bad thing to my mind.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #11

"Well, cut my calories and call me skinny!" as Animal Man said back in Crisis On Infinite Earths #11. To my surprise, as well as Animal Man's, Countdown To Final Crisis gets its second Cocktail and in consecutive weeks to boot.

Teen Titans #53 was just too much - everything was crammed in with not enough room to breathe; while the series is normally excellent, Blue Beetle #21 was simply okay, possibly due to the fill-in writer; Garth Ennis's Dan Dare #1, while promising much, was simply a scene setter; amongst the other titles I picked up, the only other near contender was Uncle Sam And The Freedom Fighters #3 but, as you can see, it was Countdown that I went for.

At the risk of repeating much of what I said last week, Countdown's come in for some flak over the last six months but it appears to be shaking that off and moving the stories along, though some fare better than others - there's been no sight of Holly Robinson and the Amazons for some time now.

Mary Marvel and Eclipso managed to survive the attack by Lord Havok's ships in last issue and, it appears, Mary has finally realised Eclipso's no good for her.

Stuck on Apokolips, Jimmy Olsen's fortunes seem to swing from bad to good and right back to worse; rescued by Mr Miracle, the New God then forces Jimmy to play at one of those trust exercises that were so big in 1990's training seminars. Usually, one person gets another to fall backwards, trusting that the first will catch them, thus teaching them to be more trusting of others.

Mr Miracle's version, as shown on the right, is a lot more extreme risking the Fire Pits of Apokolips instead of the risk of falling flat on your backside. As one of the early Countdown posters said, Jimmy Olsen must die. The chances of it being at the hands of Mr Miracle, however, are fairly remote.

After the torture and beating he endured in last week's issue, Mr Mxyzptlk returns to the Fifth Dimension where he's met and consoled by his wife. Beaten to within an inch of his life, he decides to seal the entire dimension off from the Third and proclaims that he can never go back.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that at some point, Mr Mxyzptlk will actually get back to the Third Dimension. Saying something will never happen in comics is a bit . . . well, silly really. It wouldn't surprise me if a few years down the line, the wholesale slaughter of The Death Of The New Gods not withstanding, we'll see the return of a hale and hearty Big Barda, Metron, Lightray and all the others that are currently being picked off.

But I digress.

The big reason Countdown got the Cocktail this week was the apparent culmination of Trickster and Pied Piper's story. While it's been a little hit and miss and some of Trickster's jibes about Piper's sexuality have seemed more bigoted than the sort of thing long-time friends can get away with, the shocking end to their story came as a hell of a surprise. Whether this, too, is something that can be undone - like Mxyzptlk's statement of not returning will be at some point - only time will tell. Either way, it's a hell of a cliff hanger and, once again, next week's issue can't come soon enough.