INFINITE CRISIS #2-4 + TIE-INS REVIEW!

[#2]

• Infinite Crisis #2 - "The Survivors" = Spotlight: Power Girl! We've been brewing on this Power Girl origin madness for so freaking long that I can't help but be satisfied at her getting the revelations she deserves. The History of the DCU segment by Ordway and Perez was wonderful, a much-needed streamline of Crisis continuity through the eyes of the Survivors! Buddy Baker joins the Space-League (after his power begin to go wack due to Spectre's war on magic I assume?). Superman decides to stop moping around and take action following the Ruin two-parter from Rucka's AoS. What does fake-Luthor want with the Marvels, and now Black Adam? Why is real-Luthor still having headaches? Did the New Earth cause the decay of Alex Luthor's Paradise Dimension and the decline of E2 Lois' health? Love that we get Donner crystal Kryptonian tech in the new Fort Superman. Booster returns from the future with a new and rebuilt Skeets after departing in tOP #6; why does he need Blue Beetle's scarab? Brother Eye gives us some huge confirmation and expo on how he came to be: Bruce created him after realizing he got mind-wiped, but once Max Lord took control, he implemented the OMAC project via 1.3 million sleeper agents. But what caused Batman to lose control over the satellite? Finally, the survivors reveal their plan to PG: to bring back Earth-2 in place of the current New Earth.
• JSA #81 - "My Heroes" = And Stargirl to bookend the JSA run! What a journey it has been, and only natural to end it all with a piece on the stars and stripes! Even though not much happens, we get sort of a conclusion to Courtney's daddy-issues arc that ties up her dynamic with Pat pretty full circle. A bit of expo and dev on Liberty Belle and Jesse with a cameo by Shade to top it off, presented beautifully by Dale Eaglesham's brilliant pencils.
• Wonder Woman #224 - "Marathon, Part II : "War In Paradise!" = Nothing comes without cost! The cunning of Brother Eye has secured one more victory against the heroes of Earth! Io's endeavor is revealed, her work has turned the purple ray of life into a violet beam of death. The mission is over. What will Brother Eye's final attack be? Are the Amazons & Paradise Island gone forever?

[#3]

• Infinite Crisis #3 - "Divine Intervention" = The gods have their own laws! Atlantis is decimated by the Spectre, as Athena and her pantheon of Goddesses remove Paradise Island from the Earth. Although I enjoyed Rucka's depiction of this sequence in WW #224, I appreciate that Johns thought this was important enough to be in the main title (and seeing it drawn by Jimenez was dope too). Is Aquaman killed in the destruction of Atlantis? Rehab'd Superman returns as Jaime finds the scarab, while we get one page referencing the space stuff to remind us of the "few seconds" foreshadowing. Sidestepping the Firestorm tie-ins was a good idea IMO and I hope we get the answers to the mystery of this elemental Firestorm in the coming issues or the RTW special. Wally check in is much needed (we've barely seen him since Rogue War). The E2 Supes and Batman sequences were great and I love the use of Dick as Bruce's north star to guide him back to sanity, an idea that is integral to Batman's rehabilitation in the midst of this OMAC and Red Hood stuff. The Luthor mystery is revealed; fake-Lex is E3 Alex Luthor who's theta brainwaves have been mucking up real-Lex's head. Though the power armor gets smashed, he escapes with a shard of the paradise dimension via neck shrapnel! Final dual revelation segments were wonderful, as we learn it was Superboy-Prime who destroyed the Watchtower and abducted J'onn to use in a cosmic tuning fork tower built from the corpse of the Anti-Monitor alongside other captured individuals such as Lady Quark, the Ray, and the freshly betrayed Black Adam.  But what is the purpose of this tower? IIRC the Monitor used these in the OG Crisis to merge the remaining Earths back into one; could Alex and Superboy be trying to do the opposite to restore E2?
• Day of Vengeance Special - "The Ninth Age Of Magic" = A sufficient wrap up to the Day of Vengeance death of magic plot line. Shadow-Pact and the magical heroes of the DCU hunt down seven deadly sins in Gotham City, Zatanna reconstructs the Rock of Eternity, and Nabu and Spectre have a final showdown. By killing Fate, Spectre ends the Ninth Age of Magic and begins the Tenth, alerting the Presence to his campaign and relocating himself to a new host. Nightshade gets nabbed by Felix Faust, presumably for the cosmic tuning fork we saw at the end of IC #3. Aquaman is confirmed to be alive (as I pondered in last issue's reflection), and Captain Marvel becomes the new "Wizard" within the Rock. As they send the helm of fate into space to find a new host, a bittersweet victory is all that remains for our heroes. Did they really win after all?
• Batman #648 - All They Do is Watch Us Kill, Part I : "Late Arrivals" = This isn't the end! It's a trick! Black Mask is so stupid for offing his lieutenants that it's kind of funny. At least we get a fantastic brawl illustrated by the brilliant Doug Mahnke. Seeing Sionis in combat was really cool since most stories don't tend to have the mob bosses get their own hands dirty. Choreography and use of set-pieces like Winick and Mahnke do is so great; I especially love it when Mask just breaks a chair over his head after Hood trolled him into cleaning house. Alfred's anecdotes continue to be fun additions, and I enjoyed how we get a frame of Batman over a deactivated OMAC. It really cements this story as a focal point of Infinite Crisis.
• Batman #649 - All They Do is Watch Us Kill, Part II : "Lazarus & Pagliacci" = The cover says Mahnke but it has pencils by Eric Battle! Art is obviously not as good, but Winick's story has such momentum that a switch like this is not going to slow it down. Jason and Joker's back and forth steals the issue and Winick does a phenomenal job of capturing the prime essence of each of them. Very cool and heartbreaking to have Batman witness the destruction of Bludhaven right as he's about to face off against Jason; really puts the emphasis on Infinite Crisis being an outright attack on the Trinity, actively pushing these characters to their breaking points. The trauma here segways nicely into the reborn-prime-ultimate Bat-Bruce that emerges in 52 and Morrison's run.
• Batman #650 - All They Do is Watch Us Kill, Part III : "It Only Hurts When I Laugh" = It ends just like it started: with a bomb, a bat, a clown, and a fallen son. The speeches by Bruce and Jason are more than enough to cement this issue in my top 5 Batman stories ever, though I do wish I lived in that alternate universe where it was illustrated by Mahnke. As for that last page with the multiversal Batmen, I'm sure that's a reflection of the fallout of Alex Luthor's machinations.

• Infinite Crisis #4 - "Homecoming" = Dump dump dump! Bludhaven gets blown up while the Titans get torn apart. Some continuity troubles with Batman finding Dick and claiming he was in New York when it happened even though he was in Gotham fighting the Red Hood when he saw Chemo's point of impact. The iconic fight between Prime and Conner and the Titans/Doom Patrol/JSA is great and made ever better by the Flashes intervening. I'm assuming Bart and the speedsters took Prime into the Speed Force, but Wally and Linda have departed for dimensions unknown. What does Jay mean when he says, "the Speed Force is gone?" Still don't care for the Firestorm stuff in space, but Jason has lost his co-pilot and might merge with this elemental? Also Air-Wave gets offed in one panel and Crispus Allen becomes our new Spectre! Now let's get into the reveals: Alex Luthor explains that he and Superboy-Prime escaped from the Paradise/Heaven Dimension while E2 Superman is distracted by Lois' failing health. They are the impetus behind all four of the Countdown minis: 
• Alex poses as the fake-lex, creating the Secret Society based on vengeance against the super-hero mind-wipes. They collect certain individuals to build a machine, a machine they believe will mind-wipe the entire super-hero community. Only Psycho-Pirate is in on the plan since he remembers the Crisis and the previous multiverse.
• Superboy-Prime finds the Heart of Darkness and Psycho-Pirate gives it to a mentally insane Jean Loring, who ends up convincing the host-less Spectre to wage war on magic.
• Alex wrests control of Brother Eye from Batman, giving it sentience as it falls into the hands of Max Lord, preying on the designs of the OMAC project.
• Superboy-Prime moves planets around space to shift the center of the universe away from Oa to where it was in the E2 universe. This creates the battleground for the Rann-Thanagar War.
• All of these endeavors worked in tandem to build Luthor's machine: a tower based on the Monitor's design of the cosmic tuning fork, but this time built from the remains of the Anti-Monitor's corpse. Using super-powered individuals who hailed from different universes before the crisis, this tower will do the opposite of its function during Crisis; it will divide the New Earth into a Multiverse so Alex Luthor can find the so called "Perfect Earth". The destruction of magic into its raw form will be the fuel, Brother Eye will be the programming, and the new center of the universe will be the playground for Alex to build the new Multiverse.
• Using the tower, Alex Luthor succeeds in bringing back Earth-2 as all the denizens of the former reality are returned.
• Teen Titans #32 - "Doom's Day" = Some nice extended sequences for the brawl against Prime from IC #4 along with an extra side-plot about Gar and the Doom Patrol. The John Byrne DP reboot seems to be undone in favor of embracing the OG Drake/Kupperberg/Morrison/Pollack runs which is an obvious plus. We get hinting in regards to Prime's place in altering continuity via his reality punches which will be explored soon.
• Wonder Woman #225 - "Nothing Finished, Only Abandoned" = THE MISSION NEVER ENDS! Gah damn Rucka is a freaking good writer. If I had to recommend one WW comic to anyone it would be this one. Athena's monologue was as brilliant as you can get with thesis/essay comics on certain characters. Interesting foreshadowing regarding the end of the Old Gods and the coming of the New Gods, I definitely did not expect any kind of hinting towards Final Crisis this early. I love how each of the Trinity has had their rehab issue so far: Diana in this, Superman in #647, and Batman being the last in his partial therapy sessions of #650 and IC #3. One more issue left to go in Rucka's run and I couldn't be more devastated!
• Rann/Thanagar War Special - "Hands of Fate" = And now Jenny! Why do we have to lose darling characters in mid books?! Giving it the benefit of the doubt since I enjoyed the framing around Alex Luthor's hands causing absolute chaos paired with the reveal that Superboy-Prime was actually the one who destabilized Thanagar's orbit back during the Adam Strange: Planet Heist series. The Kyle/Ion stuff is interesting, and it forced me to do a bit of research regarding pre-Johns GL stuff. From what I understand: Kyle became Ion a while ago from taking all the power of GLC, but then gave it up to restore the Guardians of the Universe. Before giving it up however, Kyle used some of the Ion power to restore Jade's star-heart ability, which is why when she is offed in this, he ends up reassuming that personality. Least favorite parts of this were witnessing Jade's corpse get disintegrated by Luthor's cosmic storm, and any panel with Blackfire in it was repulsive to the highest degree.
• Wonder Woman #226 - "Cover Date" = Loved it! If #225 was the finale, then this is the epilogue, a walk through the history of Diana and Clark up to this moment. The only gripe I have is the fact that the Challenge of Artemis storyline happens before Diana's death and return from Underworld Unleashed, whereas this issue has it backwards. I'm a huge continuity freak so what can I say. Really going to miss Rucka on this title, he's truly one of the few who understands Diana fundamentally to her core, and when I say few, I mean very very few. Thanking my past self for picking this and AoS as Countdown and Infinite Crisis adjacent pre-reading because it was so worth it. At the end of the day, I'm not sad because it's ending, I'm happy because it happened.
• Adventures of Superman #648 - "Look... Up In The Sky!" = I mentioned in my last review of A/S #647 that I could tell the difference between Rucka's prose and the fill-in couple's prose, but after this issue I'm pretty torn. This was a really well put together issue and a much-needed breather segment within the constant chaos of Infinite Crisis. I loved using an article by Lois as the framing device, as well as the mentions of the other heroes. I think that these kinds of issues can feel preachy sometimes, but all in all this was really honest in my opinion, and a wonderful way to cap off Rucka's run on Adventures of Superman.
• Teen Titans Annual #1 - "Love & War" = Last Night on Earth! Loved having Superboy focus in this, and the relationship stuff with Cassie is much needed after the events of the Insiders crossover. Lex in his Super Friends garb just reminds me of his appearances in the RCDC specials, but I'm excited to see more of him in this event and what Connor ends up doing with the shard. Very interesting to see the fallout of DOV affecting Raven's abilities and the fact that the Amazons + Greek Pantheon leaving is having similar effects on Wonder Girl as well. The Raven sequence of her empath power picking up residual feelings brings some good foreshadowing for #5, but I'm reading this before since it works better as buildup for #5 than reading after.