52 #1-13 Annotations

 

[VOL I - Summer]

52 #1 - "Golden Lads & Lasses Must..."

• Why is Ralph trying to off himself?
• What message was inscribed on Sue's tombstone? = #2
• Why does Vic Sage want to seek out Renee Montoya?
• Who kidnapped Sivana and why?
• Why is Skeets malfunctioning? Why did he get the events wrong? = could it be because of the new earth's new continuity?
• Where are the space heroes? = #5
• The Themyscira House becomes the Kahndaqi Embassy
• POV INTRO: Renee Montoya, Booster Gold, John Henry Irons, Black Adam, Ralph Dibny

52 #2 - "Looking Back At Tomorrow"

• Why are mad scientists being kidnapped?
• IQ, Doctor Death, Doctor Tyme, Doctor Cyclops, Mad Doctor, Sivana
• Why is the kryptonian symbol for resurrection on the tomb of Sue Dibny? = #4
• What is the secret within the building on Kane street? = #4
• POV INTRO: William Magnus

52 #3 - "New World Order"

• Is the corpse the GCPD and Maggie Sawyer find the body of Alex Luthor from E3, repurposed as Luthor's scapegoat?
• Intergang takes advantage of the fallout from the Crisis to make a move.
• Booster goes to locate Rip Hunter to fix Skeets.
• Mister Mind has cocooned...
• Black Adam makes a statement that he will not tolerate murderers and supervillainy, by ripping terra-man in half

52 #4 - "Dances With Monsters"

• Surveillance team on a satellite orbiting Earth searching for signals regarding the space team that went missing Halo, of the Outsiders, is on this team.
• What is happening to John Henry Irons? Why is he feeling sick? Who poisoned him? He appears to be literally becoming a man of steel, and having a Bulleteer-esque transformation like we saw in Seven Soldiers. = #8
• Why did Cassie and this weird Kryptonian cult trick ralph and steal his wedding ring?
• Who is this monster man that Vic and Renee fight?
• What were the weapons he was trafficking?
• The zeta beam brings back the missing heroes: Alan Scott is bleeding from his eye, Kendra is huge, Mal Duncan Herald has shrapnel coming out of his chest, bumblebee is unconscious and bleeding, and two unidentified individuals are fused together.
• What happened? = #5

52 #5 - "Stars In Their Courses"

• What chaos will unfold from Luthor's announcement of the synthesized metagene, where everybody can be a hero?
• So is John Henry not suffering from the ailment he had last issue? We see half his face covered in steel at the end of his sequence in #4, and when he puts on his mask we see the non steel side...
• Ali-Ka-Zoom! Is he sitting with Zee or Ystina?
• So everybody got messed up when the Zeta Beam caught Adam along with the whole super-space-squad, and this all happened at the same time that Alex Luthor's tower gets destroyed and destabilized the petri-dish at the center of the universe. Mal had opened up a portal to attract the stray beam, but like a prism of light it refracted and warped all of the heroes.
• Supergirl is still AWOL = apparently she gets teleported to the 31st Century and is hanging with the Legion.
• Steel got his hand bit off by the General during the JLA arc WWIII IIRC.
• Steel has talked to Pieter about his condition.
• What is the mystery behind Red Tornado's last words: It's coming... 52... 52...
• What did Red Tornado see?
• What planet are they on?
• Where did they get the ship?
• So Adam is missing two eyes, Alan is also missing two eyes, but he has an unknown eye.
• Who is on the planet with Buddy Kori and Adam?

52 #6 - "China Syndrome"

• Great Ten: August General In Iron, Immortal Man in Darkness, Socialist Red Guardsman, Thundermind, Ghost Fox Killer, Celestial Archer, Shaolin Robot, Mother of Champions, Accomplished Perfect Physician, Seven Deadly Brothers
• Super-Young Team of Japan!
• So this Coalition/Freedom of Power Treaty was formed by Black Adam as a way for countries to maintain their own borders and prevent American metas from interfering within their territories.
• So Lex is giving powers out to anybody?
• Who is watching T.O. Morrow? Are they the same people who kidnapped the scientists?
• HERE COMES THE CHALK BOARD!
• World War 3? *
• Dead by Lead?
• Further Time is different?
• The four horsemen will end her rain?
• He won't smell it?
• Find the last El?
• Time Masters -> Time servants?
• The Reach?
• The Tornado is in Pieces?
• The Scarab is Eternal?
• It hurts to breathe?
• Who is Super-Nova?
  
• Where is the Curry heir?
• I'm not kryptonite?
• 2000 years from now?
• What happened to the son of superman?
• Who is diana prince?
• Don't ask the Question, it lies?
• Immortal Savage?
• Khimaera lives again?
• The old gods are dead, the new gods want what's left?
• I'm supposed to be dead?
• Someone is monitoring us. They see us, they see me?
• Te vs (Au + Pb)?
• Secret Five?
• Where is the batman, who is the batwoman?
• The lazarus pit rises?
• Why is it all booster's fault? or is it skeets...

52 #7 - "Going Down"

• What is this fruit Kori and Buddy have been eating? I'm getting serious Island of the Lotus Eaters vibes... = #9
• Kate Kane, Kane Family: Renee and Kate secret romantic history...
• Cult of Conner...
• Booster exposed!
• Starfire discovers a giant spear, the spear of Devilance the Pursuer!
• Some have suggested that this planet-Eden is Adon from the Kirby Forever People mini series.

52 #8 - "Thief"

• Ralph meets with Ollie in Star City to crackdown on a Cult of Conner sect, only to find it abandoned. The cult is obsessed with the idea of resurrection.
• John Henry still dealing with the metagene everyman Luthor stuff. Realizes that he was probably infected by Luthor at the morgue.
• How did the samples at dr. Avasti's lab blow up?
• Natasha is recruited by Luthor and has a huge falling out with John.
• Buddy and Adam find Star, but are kidnapped by Devilance.
• New hero pops up in metropolis and is stealing Booster's thunder.
• Clark vows to find out who it is.

52 #9 - "Dream of America"

• John gets his ass handed to him on a platter by Natasha, now with superpowers.
• So Luthor has put together a new super-team. One of them is named Herakles.
• Buddy, Adam, and Star escape from Devilance.
• Devilance was hired to hunt them down because of what they saw when Alex Luthor's petri dish went boom. He says they saw beyond the veil and the walls of heaven, and only gods can have that knowledge. But who hired Devilance?
• The whole planet was a trap for the heroes!
• Question meets with Renee and tells her that the monster guy and the guns, its all a part of Intergang's invasion of Gotham City.
• Batwoman first appearance!

52 #10 - "Stop The Press"

• Why doesn't the living lightning come down when Black Adam says Shazam?
• Last we heard, Billy was the new Wizard.
• Freedom of Power treaty has expanded, Russia, China... I even see Sonar and Copperhead and what appears to be a new Ibis the Invincible.
• Adrianna Tomaz, the Egyptian girl who Intergang brought to Adam. Her family was slaughtered and her brother sold into slavery.
• The freedom of power treaty gives authorization for lethal action against meta-villains, and also seems to be a way to combat the massive amount of American metas.
• Loved the Clark Supernova sequence with Perry.
• So Clark has his powers gone for the time being.
• I enjoyed the Lois 'Post-Crisis-Trauma' stuff.
• Dick, Bruce, and Tim are still traveling the world.
• Booster is going broke as Skeets does not have a hold on accurate info on the 21st century.
• Addressing again that something is causing 21st century history to diverge from the 25th century records.
• Magnus meets with Morrow about the remains of Sivana's lab, and how he found a cocoon of mister mind. But how long ago did he escape? We saw his cocoon in #3...

52 #11 - "Batwoman Begins!"

• Great issue!
• Burglary at Ralphs storage unit. They steal Sue's clothes and dress them up on a straw mannequin along with the wedding ring they took from Ralph. Horrifying
• Renee and Vic meet with Kate who tells them who rented out the property on 520 Kane St.
• They are able to trace it back to a banking firm that is the spearhead of Intergang.
• Two members: Whisper A'Daire and Kyle Abbot.
• These intergang members can shapeshift into animalistic creatures. Whisper has low level psychic mind control.
• Mentions of Kahndaq, possible human trafficking.
• Batwoman! 

52 #12 - "Mighty"

• Renee meets with Maggie, who claims that she and Vic's incident last issue with Ferrick-Ridge has set the MCPD back.
• Renee and Vic resolve to follow their only lead, they are going to Kahndaq!
• Teth-Adam offers to give Adrianna powers of the Marvel Family, the powers of the ancient hero Isis!
• Billy is the new Wizard, but he's had some difficulties adjusting, hence the scene where Teth couldn't call down the lightning.
• Adrianna becomes Isis, but tells Adam that they must find her brother.
• Ralph tracks down Cassie, who reveals that she and the Cult are planning on a test-resurrection on Sue before they try to bring back Conner. Ralph agrees!

52 #13 - "Haystack"

• Jesus Christ! The horror!
• The ritual had to be fake... right?
• Was it Sue's soul that possessed the hay mannequin, or something else...
• Who was watching Ralph in that last page?
• Wholesome intermezzo with Black Adam and Isis searching for her brother, and a mention of Black Reign.

SCHIZOPHRENIC ANNOTATIONS ON SEVEN SOLDIERS: STRIKE SEVEN SOLDIERS! [PART FOUR]

Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer #2 - "Who Killed Seven Soldiers?"

• The star of this one is agent helligan!
• Alix was the seventh soldier who was supposed to be part of Greg Saunders' group back in #0
• I, Spyder killed his brother! And he did die in battle against the sheeda, so most likely resurrected by Gloriana
• The Iron Hand from #100-102! His nephew was Blue Boy, and he gave the cosmic trumpet to summon Nebula Man (that's how Solomano summoned him back in #100 to fight the Seven Soldiers!)
• He hated Greg Saunders because he thought he was racist towards mexicans, but didn't realize he was just aggressive with a Werewolf, because he himself was a werewolf!
• Thats why Greg used silver bullets in the #0
• The ghost of Vigilante shot a bullet into the soul of Iron Hand, so he dies. 
• The Black Baron and Big Caesar are both old villains from the Vigilante's rogues gallery. It's likely Goss was one too.
• Helligan succumbs to the bite from Gloriana on the way to her sisters wedding, revealing that her sister's husband is a freaking werewolf, the same guy that Greg was aggressive with in the flashback!
• She also apologizes to her brother for mixing fish oil into his milkshake
• Alix gets acquainted with her new roommate, who turns out to have super strength
• Neh-Buh-Loh is searching for the Seven Treasures of Camelot. The Lost Citadel in the Himalayas is Gorias, where Zatanna sent Misty in Zatanna #4. The winged horses are the descendents of Pega-Zeus, of whom the Shining Knight's mount, Vanguard, is one.
• If I'm not mistaken, The Vigilante's back-up man in PANEL 2, the fellow with the whip who has confiscated Ramon's iron hand, is Rodney Gaynor a.k.a. The 'Golden Age' Whip mentioned by his granddaughter Shelly Gaynor in Seven Soldiers 0.
  
• Agent Helligan's "Big Picture" approach to investigation pays off unexpected dividends in the end. By investigating the murder of the Seven Soldiers, she turns up just the evidence she needs to solve her other problem: how to break up her sister's wedding.
  

Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein #2 - "Red Zombies"

• Frankenstein has tracked Melmoth to Mars, where Team Red mines for gold in ancient martian mausoleums.
• He reveals that Gloriana dumped him at the first fall of camelot. He survived with magic, but then replaced his blood with the waters of the cauldron of rebirth.
• He plans to use mankind as slaves instead of his wife's plans of harvesting and then coming back in the future.
• He will finance the war with the martian gold.
• The distress signal Frankenstein received was probably from the Deviants gang, which is how Franky got there, through the erdel gate.
• Melmoth reveals that Franky comes from him, he gave drops of his blood to Victor Frankenstein in 1816. He's a grundy!
• The red zombie tomb guardians awaken, and Franky is free!
• He lets the martian horses eat benito silencio and Melmoth, while leading the child slaves to the erdel gate, contemplating the revelation of melmoth and the coming of his wife, gloriana.
• “Fear” and “Terror” in the captions refer Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars which loom overhead. There’s a later reference to Grand Guignol, a Paris theater which became a byword for gory spectacle.
• The grafittied NASA landing craft pictured in the second panel is one of two sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking Missions. The Viking I & II landers were the first man-made vehicles to land safely on the surface of another planet. I would suggest that we are looking at Viking I, which touched down on the western slope of Chryse Planitia, a.k.a. "The Plains of Gold." That sounds like an appropriate location for Melmoth's secret gold mines.
• Melmoth sires children upon the women of Roanoke, whose descendants all become Grundies when they die because they still have the Water in their blood.

Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle #3 - "Radio Bedlam"

• Gods of evil puts forth a new competitor to tear down Shilo in the form of Bedlam!
• ZZ is still brainwashed on the flat, Lashina has her talons in him.
• Shilo's girl Jonelle appears, but she is turned into a plastic person by Granny Goodness.
• Shilo is surrounded by the gods of evil in human form, and they steal mother box, leaving darkseid to infect him with the anti-life equation.
• Shilo is messed up, but Metron reminds him there's a life equation too, and he resists.
• He returns, but is unable to escape the omega sanction.
• Dark Side's goons beat, mutilate, burn, and castrate shilo, leaving him a crippled invalid.
• Mother Box is tortured by DeSaad.
• The New Gods find Shilo and prepare to help him escape the life trap.
• The sheeda storm approaches New York as it passes over Florida. 

Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer #3 - "21st Century Schizoid Supermen"

• Hilarious!
• Suli Stellamaris was in a billboard in Shining Knight #2... her and her son are a play on Lori Lemaris and the Aquaman origin
• I, Spyder is hunting Bulleteer because she was the seventh soldier in Vigilante's team (and other reasons)
• Big Thunder
• Mind Grabber Man from Zatanna #1... uses gay label to help him stand out
• Susan Park, the original bullet girl, and bullet dog
• Dumb bunny of the inferior five
• Man at panel claims Millions is immortal due to Kid scarface getting the cauldron of rebirth in slaughter swamp (and millions apparently runs the US banking system?)
• Lil hollywood!
• Mention of it being unlucky to go into battle with only six
• Alix learns about Sally Sonic, the eternal superteen that Lance messaged, from Thumbelina
• Mind grabber man is not actually gay
• He had an adventure with the JLA back in the 70's (#70)
• Spyder tries to kill Bulleteer but misses, which he believes he might have done intentionally to resist the sheeda control. He is then confronted by the ghost of Greg Saunders, who prepares to erase the sheeda programming
• Alix's roommate is revealed as Sally Sonic, and they fight.
• Lucian wishes he had ascended to the big leagues of the JLA Watchtower instead of peaking at “Special Guest” status at nerd conventions. Is this Grant Morrison expressing regret that he never made it in Hollywood or as a “serious writer”?
• Lil Hollywood looks quite young compared to her teammates. Later on in the issue, Lucian says that "She can make herself look a lot younger than she is." If so, then all the Newsboys have some form of immortality: Vincenzo's cauldron, Baby Brains' eternal baby form, Ali-Ka-Zoom's phantom existence.
• In the final panels of this issue, Sally Sonic hits Alix repeatedly with a refrigerator. "Women in Refrigerators" is a phrase coined to describe a phenomenon afflicting certain female supporting characters in comic books. "Women in Refrigerators Syndrome" occurs when a female supporting character is maimed, killed, or depowered as a plot device within a comic book story starring a male lead. The death or injury of a woman is often used to provide motivation for the male lead, and female characters seem to endure an unfair share of peril as a result.

Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein #3 - "The Water"*

• Franky gets recruited by clandestine organization known as SHADE, led by Father Time
• His wife, The Bride, is also a part of SHADE. She has multiple arms after an encounter with Red Swami who grafted multiple arms to make her a reincarnated assassin goddess before she was incapacitated and turned by SHADE
• A superweapon has escaped, known as The Water, a chemo like being who has infected the water supply of Salvation Valley, and turned everything against its nature.
• US military sent in a super-pilot to subdue/release the water, Zbigniew X, who has gone insane after communicating with the water.
• Franky and Bride defeat the two, and Father Time tries recruiting Franky for another mission against a time monster in tibet.
• Planetary crisis is occurring at the same time, while hurricane gloria moves up past pennsylvania, on a preprogrammed path...
• Morrison melds that idea with the crackpot ideas of Japanese pseudoscientist Masaru Emoto, whose books like “The Message from Water” claimed that water molecules have a memory which can be manipulated psychically.
• Zbigniew Brzezinski was an advisor to US president LBJ, who Father Time mentions as the founder of SHADE.

Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle #4 "The Life Trap" // "Forever Flavored Man"

• Shilo is put through the life trap, the omega sanction! A gauntlet of synthetic lives meant to degrade and torture the inflicted.
• We see Shilo's backstory, how the death of his brother aaron created this need to escape.
• We see a future where shilo grows old and dezard torments him at his deathbed.
• We see Shilo's time as the warden of the meta-prison The Slab, where he converses with prisoner prepped for execution at the hands of Boss Dark Side: Aurakles the Oracle. Aurakles mentions running away across the multiverse from something (his gift of inter-dimensional sight? his responsibility to the cosmos?) and how he was the one trapped beneath New York. He asks if the Spear found its mark. He is in prison because he apparently killed a bunch of superheroes and civilians...
• Shilo gives his life to free aurakles, to which aurakles claims he is the lord thy destroyer who will set him free to save everybody.
• Asks Shilo if he is one of 666 monsters of chaos.
• Dezard discovers that the mother box's soul escaped into Shilo.
• Shilo communes with Omega, the embodiment of the Sanction/Life Trap and convinces it to escape with him.
• So the final reveal is that everything in this mini happened within the black hole's event horizon: a cosmic tug o war of Shilo being tested by the new gods and the dark gods. The Omega Sanction, the interactions with Dezard, Metron, Black Racer, Dark Side, and the homeless gods were all a game trying to break Shilo. He prevailed and is now chosen of genesis to free the gods after their fall from heaven against darkseid. He has overcome his trauma from the death of his brother and is worthy to be god of freedom.
• Based on his own description of himself, The Omega Sanction seems to be a personification of the Hindu/Buddhist concept of Samsara, in which the soul lives, dies, and is reborn into the temporal, phenomenal world in an unending cycle due to ignorance of the true nature of existence, which is timeless and selfless. Therefore, Shilo's attempts to escape the Life Trap are equated with the struggle to achieve liberation from samsara in the realization of Nirvana.
  

Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer #4 - "Bad Girls"

• Sally Sonic fights against Bulleteer. The impetus behind this seems to be that Sally sees the version of herself she wished she could be in Alix, and is taking out her repressed rage on her and letting out all the self-hate.
• We see Sally's backstory, how she was a teen hero but was immortal and didn't age, so everyone she knew died. Since she vowed not to break the law, she was helpless as child services took her into an abusive home, so she escaped. She fell into the hands of a sleazy manipulator super-pimp who used her for sex-photos. Little did she know that he did all of it to avenge his brother who died in prison due to Sally's father, a judge, locking them up.
• Alix beats Sally, but is then confronted by the ghost of Greg Saunders (possibly animated by the magic of the time tailors) who tells Alix that she herself is the spear that was never thrown, a descendant of the first super hero.
• She rejects her destiny, and takes Sally to the hospital.
• On page two, the two crooks in stripey shirts in PANEL 2 may be Dennis (a.k.a. Vita-Man) and his brother Chris, based on what we learn later in this issue.
  

Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein #4 - "Frankenstein in Fairyland"

• Neh-Buh-Loh states that he has lived for 3 billion years. He could have grown to replace the whole universe, but a flaw within keeps him small.
• The flaw prevented him from killing misty kilgore (rhiannon), melmoth's daughter.
• SHADE is the only organization available to deal with the sheeda invasion due to the fallout of infinite crisis.
• He defeats Neh-Buh-Loh, discovering that he is the mature form of Qwewq and Nebula Man, a cosmo-sapien, and the flaw within him was put there by the Ultra-marine corps when they invaded back in JLA Classified.
• Frankenstein sneaks onto Castle Revolving and follows Gloriana to summer's end, where she explains that the Sheeda are the remnants of humanity at the end of time, harvesting the past to feed the future, and leaving just enough for a new crop to grow. Frankenstein pulls an ozymandias and blows up the fleet, while commandeering castle revolving to the present!
• The message from the future is frankenstein himself!
• After Neh-Buh-Loh's attack in this issue, the pegazeus' shuttle Misty Kilgore to safety and meet up with Zatanna at the end of Zatanna #4.
• Currently in Manhattan, the Guardian and Baby Brain are taking the fight to the Sheeda in the streets outside the newspaper's headquarters, Guardian Heights. Klarion is racing towards the surface world in a stolen subterranean drill. Mister Miracle has just arrived back from his transcendent experience inside a black hole with a new purpose in life. Bulleteer has quit the superhero life and is driving Sally Sonic to the hospital. Hurricane Gloria is bearing down on the city. The Bride is diving out of the sky to join the action.
• Neh-Buh-Loh describes the Flaw as something that causes him to feel Compassion. It moved him to spare the life of Misty "Errrhiahchnnon" Kilgore. Frankenstein describes the Flaw as the presence of Death. The awareness of his own mortality makes Neh-Buh-Loh capable of feeling compassion for others.
• Justice League of America #100 revealed that there is a tombstone high in the Himalayas dedicated to "An Unknown Soldier of Victory." In Justice League of America #102, the JLA and JSA eventually discover that The Crimson Avenger's partner, Wing, is the Unknown Soldier buried at the gravesite.
• Are these Glass Giants a futuristic version of the same technology that produced The Water, whom Frankenstein fought in Issue #3, and Chemo? Could the giant green creatures seen attacking Avalon alongside the Sheeda in Shining Knight 1 have been Glass Giants?
  

Seven Soldiers of Victory #1 - "The Miser's Coat"

• One of the time tailors has Zor, the renegade, in the gold cabin within slaughter swamp. The townsfolk of gotham are coming to lynch cyrus gold for killing children.
• The new gods came and evolved a neanderthal to become the first superhero, Aurakles. He gets seven treasures: the sword, the cauldron, the merlin-sprite, the hammer, the fatherbox, the pegazeus, and the spear.
• The epithet "Silver Arm" was used to describe Nuada in Irish mythology.
• Aurakles brings order to this savage earth. Neanderthal super scientists send a time machine into the future, but it is found by melmoth, who turns it into castle revolving and harrows the caveman empire.
• Arthur uses the merlin to find the sword and the pegazeus, and he leads an invasion to summer's end to retrieve the cauldron. Only seven return.
• The time tailor reveals that he killed the real cyrus gold by drowning him in the swamp, and he shaved zor's face to make him look like cyrus. The coat he is weaving is for him instead.
• Shelly Gaynor: "Every day is mythology when you use your x-ray vision to really, really look."
• Misty believes the only way to stop the sheeda is to take her step-mom's place
• Zatanna uses the sprite to activate the universe and unite the soldiers through mystery string to save the world
• Klarion takes the dice and commandeers castle revolving from frankenstein, becoming the new leader of the sheeda!
• Rolling two dice, he can get the seven (victory) that was impossible with one die alone. In fact, he can position the dice so that they add up to seven no matter which way you look at them. Together, the dice are the Fatherbox, the Darkseid-version of the Motherbox, one of the Seven Treasures of Aurakles. Klarion travels to the year One Billion to become king of the Sheeda in Gloriana’s absence.
• guardian reunites with carla!
• Shilo takes the place of Aurakles and is killed by Dark Side, with the death of freedom begins the dark aeon
• Spyder resists the sheeda programming and betrays gloriana; Alix runs her over. Sally dies in the accident.
• The time tailor (the ferryman) sews Zor up as Cyrus gold and leaves him to the mercy of the mob. A black flower grows for him.
• Millions, the dogfather, is the victor of the baldi/silencio war and claims the spoils!
• Shilo escapes death and rises from the grave!
• The Time Tailor finishes Cyrus Gold’s patchwork suit and describes it as “the work of many hands” which will not “ever fit properly.” This describes the way comic book continuity can never be perfect, considering how many different creators are involved.
• Alix Harrower's car careens off a pile of rubble, launching it into the air. The rubble was left there by Klarion's subterranean drill. If Klarion hadn't parked the drill just where he did, Alix's car wouldn't have crashed into Gloriana.
• Subtitles: "Bedlam on Broadway!" , "Never Be Nice To Your Nemesis!" , "Master at the game" , "The Last Headline"

SCHIZOPHRENIC ANNOTATIONS ON SEVEN SOLDIERS: GRAND DESIGN [PART THREE]

Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #4 - "The Last Stand of Don Vincenzo"

• Is caliburn destroyed? But Gloriana had caliburn at the end of last issue. Did Ystin get another sword that looks like caliburn or did they give him caliburn to fight against Galahad?
• Ystin is a girl!
• Melmoth is Gloriana's husband...
• East coast = silencio, west coast = vincenzo
• the four tops = an american doo-wop quartet
• Vengeance for Mo Colley
• Special bullets
• She kills galahad
• Vanguard lies knocked out
• Seasons turn, the crop is ripe, her scythe must fall once more
• The Merlin's seeing stones = Gwydion of the zatanna series?
• Galahad is who knights Ystina, the shining knight for her bright heart
• save seven, none returned...

Seven Soldiers: Zatanna #3 - "Three Days of The Dead"

• The bus from shining knight #2, and the old man with the top hat inside it!
• The Tempter
• References to Identity Crisis
• So he's a ghost? And he's revealed as Ali-Ka-Zoom
• Cops disappeared entering the cabinet. A big deep hole where they dropped a poor foolish boy, because he did something the rest of us decided was wrong.
• Seven kids, one dog (richest dog in the world)
• final adventure in slaughter swamp outside gotham, they met the faerie queen and the terrible time tailor...
• Mystery string holding everything together, the ties of narrative that bind!
• Nowhere street...
• magic cauldron of rebirth and plenty, wound up in the hands of kid scarface = vincenzo.
• Scarface forgot his friends...
• Misty connection to the sheeda; amnesia?
• Sheeda kneel and sheeda bugs fly in circle: are they scared of her die or simply her
• Ali and the don were friends
• Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp from #0
• Misty sees the cloud corpse of Strato
• zee can't call the jla bc of the mind-wipes
• Misty is princess of the sheeda?
• more snow white mythology; nebula is the evil queen's huntsman, misty is her adopted daughter
• neh-buh-loh couldn't kill her, he used the brain of a future telepath as a decoy while the empire and queen withered without the cauldron (either stolen by arthur or thrown out by ystina)
• misty lost her memory while she spun a cobweb dress inside castle revolving
• her mom is gloriana, queen of summer's end
• neh-buh-loh lets them go
• Zatanna gets her powers back!
• Misty’s life expands our tour of European folk tales to include Sleeping Beauty, who pricked her finger on the needle of such a spinning wheel.
• If Neh-Buh-Loh is the huntsman and is a figure from Celtic mythology, then we can identify him at least thematically with Cernunnos, the Celtic hunter-God who appeared in Justice League of America #49
• The Tempter was a Satan-figure that Superman and Hawkman faced in World’s Finest #209
• Morrison continues his play with notions of revamping and erasing characters and concepts, with the dialogue getting more explicit than ever: Zatanna tells him “You’re an outdated concept, an obsolete thought form,” and Misty’s means of destroying him is not to cast a spell of death, but for the character to “!nettogrof eB” As The Tempter remarks later in the issue, “I can’t die. It’s obvious there’s been an error…” and he's quite correct - corporate superhero properties don’t die, they just fade from applicability.

Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian #4 - "Sex Secrets of the Newsboy Army!"

• Baby Brain = Ed Stargard!
• Millions is the dog Ali mentioned. Inherited a fortune from crazy rich eccentric.
• The Captain
• Kid Scarface = Don Vincenzo
• Chop Suzi
• Lena & lars
• Newsboy Army: junkyard hq & printing press
• Uncle Mo Colley, boxer who beat Wildcat, possessed by a sheeda spine rider!
• El Mar = Larry Marcus
• Nowhere Street
• Lil Hollywood
• The same Sheeda spine rider in Cassandra craft's shop
• Once again, a team of six into the brink
• black flowers... slaughter swamp, infested with faeries, infested with sheeda
• time-sewing machine
• bald man, like the seven unknown men, he brought the sheeda to kill heroes? 
• gloriana and the mirror files: seven will come by roads useen, unknown, and end the queen of terror's reign with a spear that was never thrown.
• gold cabin is like miracle mesa, unhinged from time
• bald man takes ali's hat. The Terrible Time Tailor, weaves the newsboys into grimdark futures
• Vincenzo = guilt ridden, undead, mass-murderer
• lil hollywood = faded alchoholic
• ali = homeless schizophrenic
• ed = reclusive freak
• chop suzi = dead at 14
• millions = dead at 14
• captain = child molester/murderer. Implication that he raped and killed suzi, and the newsboys kills him and throw him into ali's cabinet.
• Sheeda target teams of seven, but they don't know about the present team , because the soldiers don't know about each other.
• Lars is dead
• call out to the newsboys, we're taking this to the streets!

Seven Soldiers: Klarion #4 - "Burn, Witchboy! Burn!"

• So Melmoth is the one who introduced the sheeda bloodline to the puritans. The sin was that they thought he was the devil.
• Melmoth wants to use the witch-women as breeding cattle to continue his own sheeda society.
• The submissionary survived after his horigal form was run over by the President Clinton!
• Klarion gets the rod and learns the secret the submissionaries guarded: a map of the world above
• Melmoth explains that Croatoan is an AI in the form of two dice = the dice that Misty has and the one Klarion has.
• Melmoth created the submissionaries = robots, judah, shadrach, 
• Klarion and Teekl merge to form the Horigal!
• Melmoth can't die because his blood is cauldron of rebirth water!
• Klarion sends Leviathan to help the witch-women as they seal the wicket gate, taking the sapper drill back to the surface to fight against the sheeda.

Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle #1 - "New Godz"

• Shilo Norman, mister miracle
• tries to escape a black hole, has communion with metron of the new gods
• has a vision of a war in heaven: and Darkseid won
• the void in shilo's soul is to be filled, but he must be strong to bear it, the mother box is his best friend
• free the bright ones or be slaves to the dark... look for me where the roads cross
• shilo escapes
• ZZ... holding a strange colorful ball
• Shilo's identity crisis
• therapist : Dr Dezard
• outburst: he realized that the dark side had come to seduce him in human form
• Zz takes him to meet versions of the female furies
• new gods using the earth as a battle ground for their war in heaven, metaphor for the war within shilo's soul?
• Shilo gambles with death because he can't face life...
• Death the black racer in human form, a man in a wheelchair
• a bet between him and metron on shilo's immortal soul, in a drive-by derby

Seven Soldiers: Zatanna #4 - "Zor!"*

• Misty is going to Tibet? City of Gorias in the himilayas, a valley
• Zatanna is to find the seven unknown men while vanguard and misty go to gorias
• misty notices black flowers: reminding us that one day black flowers will cover the entire earth, seas will turn to fog and the sun will become red
• we see a spinning wheel loom in the cabin instead of the time-sewing machine: could this be the same one misty had to spin in castle revolving?
• Zor! evil incarnate, he was the one who pulled up to Cassandra's store and left the hat
• i brought the wrath of god to its white and nobby knees: he fought the spectre in the golden age
• gwydion merlin is one of the seven treasures, livng language born in the workshops of gods, he serves the new architect of the universe
• Zor and Zatanna have an awesome meta fight across dimensions.
• Zatanna beats zor, and the seven unknown men reveal themselves as time tailors.
• zatanna bursts through the panel, the machinery is morrison's typewriter, but what are the little dudes? Hyper monkeys? Machine Elves?
• the eyes and hands gwydion refers to are the eyes and hands of the comic readers
• She's in the whitespace, and gets the drop on zor
• doctor thirteen points at us
• The renegade was zor, the eighth, the terrible tailor who introduced the sheeda into the timeline as a plague. He's the one who cursed the newsboys of nowhere street.
• The Libri zatarae are revealed to be zatanna herself, giovanni's greatest spell to the world.
• seven unknown men start dissecting zor after they peel him off of spacetime
• misty returns to zatanna with an army of pegazeus
• Zor is quite the obscurity, having battled The Spectre in two 1940 issues of More Fun Comics (#55 and 57).

Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer #1 - "Ballistic: How the Bulleteer Began"

• Lance and Alix Harrower
• Lance wants to be immortal, and fears his beautiful wife losing her beauty, so he develops smart-skin to make them superheroes.
• Lance uses it on himself and spreads it to Alix, though it begins to suffocate them, the doctors are able to save her by penetrating the skin where her wedding band covered. Lance is not as fortunate, he did not wear his wedding band.
• ALix discovers Lance's obsession with super-hero porn and his contact with a woman named sally sonic, who he planned to run away with.
• She uses the costume designed by Lance for her, and becomes the Bulleteer.

Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein #1 - "Uglyhead"

• Frankenstein and Melmoth battle in 1870 on a train that goes off the rails and crashes.
• Frankenstein is buried beneath the earth in the rubble.
• I think the caption box of 1955 was supposed to be in a different panel, since Frankenstein doesn't actually wake up until 2005.
• We meet Uglyhead, a hilarious and horrifying representation for fanboys, a vessel to kickstart the sheeda invasion of this town.
• Kim and her boyfriend are the only ones who "escape" the spine rider larvae, but her boyfriend sacrifices his life to buy her some time.
• She uses some logomancy in her thoughts which is weird.
• Frankenstein returns and burns the sheeda hatchlings, vowing to end their invasion of this time period.

Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle #2 - "Drive By Derby"

• Shilo is tested by Metron and Black Racer as drive by black sedans try to turn him into roadkill.
• He escapes and meets up with Metron, in the form of a homeless man, and discovers the rest of the fallen new gods as a coven of homeless.
• Boss Dark Side scares them off, and the New Gods tell Shilo to leave, his motherbox endangering them.
• Doctor Dezard is revealed as DeSaad, trying to chip away at Shilo's self worth in order to get a hold on the Motherbox, and he is employed by Boss Dark Side.
• With latter revelations about the nature of the reality in which the majority of the series takes place, it seems likely that the New Gods - and their Apokaliptic enemies - have been trapped in a 'realistic' universe, not unlike Qwewq by Sheeda.
• Shilo's comments about the homeless bums he encountered seem to parallel Ed Stargard's comments about Subway Pirates at the end of Manhattan Guardian #2: "We're telling stories about human dignity, Jake. Stories of how human beings make culture and meaning for ourselves, even down there in the garbage." Don Vincenzo also detected the element of Mythology in the human story of which he had become a part, back in Shining Knight 4: "This is it, isn't it? This is #&@$% Mythology calling."
• Whether the bums really are disguised Gods or whether Shilo is projecting symbols of his own internal struggle onto his experiences, it doesn't really matter. In the world of the Seven Soldiers, meaning is something you make for yourself. Ed Stargard knew it: "Human beings make culture and meaning for ourselves." Klarion knew it: "We can easily make our own Gods out of hopes and dreams and the stories of unsung heroes." The Bulleteer realized it: "There must be a reason for all this, right?" "Even if there isn't, I know you can make one." Shilo's starting to realize it, too.

SCHIZOPHRENIC ANNOTATIONS ON SEVEN SOLDIERS: MYSTERY STRING [PART TWO]

Seven Soldiers: Zatanna #1 - "Talking Backwards"

• Super-hero therapy group in San Fransisco!
• So Zatanna's lost her powers after a seance into the Sphere of Gods went wrong. She had been in search of her father's lost books of magic, the Librae Zatarae, but a spell gone wrong from days prior (to summon her 'perfect man') ended up unleashing a herald of the apocalypse known as Gwydion. He kills everybody in the ritual.
• They got together because they were having bad dreams about the Sheeda.
• Gimmix's encounter with demons is revealed to be sexual. She goes from this therapy session to her eventual death in #0.
• Members of the Therapy Session: lil hollywood or (Sally Sonic?), Etta Candy, Mind Grabber Man...
• Misty Kilgore: she has backwards powers too?
• Members of the Seance: Timothy Ravenwind, Ibis the Invincible, his wife Taia, Terry Thirteen.
• Inter-reality of Ra...
• King Ra-Man!
• The Realm of Never-Be-Found!
• Red God of Ys: will eventually consume reality. Ys is home to the Warlocks!
• Omni-Nomicon...
• MGM's two dimensional plate holographic theory? Invisibles intersecting Vesica Pisces?
• Number 13 is used a lot: 13 months of Arachne, the sorcerer's calendar, the 13 on the cab...

Seven Soldiers: Klarion #1 - "From This World to That Which is to Come"

• Limbo Town!
• Klarion Bleak and Teekl!
• The denizens resurrect their dead to use as slaves. An alter-version of Grundy! They are branded by the Submissionary and the Hex. A metaphor for comic book characters and concepts being resurrected as zombie ideas way past their time, toiling around in the garden of stories.
• Beulah Bleak, his sister.
• The Book of Shadows...
• Their dad left to go to "High Market" = the secret underground subways of NYC...
• Submissionary Judah!
• Croatoan, a witch-god of these people...
• Some sort of conflict between the Sumbissionaries and the witch-man parliament...
• They know of the Sheeda, it's a bad omen and their sins have been found out, but what sins? = see Klarion #3-4
• The lizard/dragon on his shoulder is a Draaga.
• What taint condemned the witch-people to limbo town? = see Klarion #3-4
• Blue Rafters = the sky?
• Sabbat...
• Sumbissionary Shadrach: Shadrach was one of the three thrown into the fire by nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian emperor.
• Sheeda Storm...
• Ezekiel, step-dad.
• All the witch-people have familiars.
• The book of shadows is blank, and stained with SM's blood? He's just making stuff up?
• The witch-women know secrets the men will never learn...
• Were the witch-men going to seal the gate or trade with the higher world?
• Why did the Submissionaries want to kill the witch-men, is it because of the parliament, or because they would attract more Sheeda by trading with the higher world?
• The Submissionaries combine to birth Horigal, and kill the witch men going to trade.
• The primary purpose of the Submissionaries is to prevent progress and advancement, keeping Limbo Town stagnant at it's current level of development. Perhaps by stagnating at a Medieval level of development, the Witch-Men hope to be spared the Harrowing. However, Judah's decision to close the Wicket Gate is motivated more by self-interest than by religious dogma. If the prophecies actually come true and the Witch-Men inherit Blue Rafters, then the Submissionaries are out of a job. By cutting off all communication with the world outside, Judah and his fellow Submissionaries hope to ensure that life will continue in Limbo Town as it always has, even after the Harrowing comes to pass and there is no longer any need to hide. [needs citation]
• Septic mire... slaughter swamp?

Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #2 - "Mood 7 Mind Destroyer"

• Spoils of Unwhen: Arthur and his legions invaded Castle Revolving and faced 7 trials, one of them being Guilt. Only seven returned back to Camelot. This is what the seven men were referring to in #0.
• Guilt can kill with words!
• After the destruction of Camelot, a new fortress was built as King Mordredd ruled a zombie empire for 500 years. = see shining knight #3
• Ystin spent 10,000 years in the castle revolving!
• Stella Stellamaris = See bulleteer #3
• Vanguard comes from a race of Pegasus (Pegazeus)!
• Don Vicenzo, the undying. He survived three bullet holes to the heart., immortal?
• Crazyface!
• Strato the air golem, could he be connected to the golem we saw in Guardian #1?
• The mansion of Vincenzo is invaded by Sheeda led by Neh-Buh-Loh!
• Morrigu = Gloriana?
• Ystin gets his groove back and saves an old man, possible magician...
• Mention of raising dead ancestors like in Klarion #1!
• A bus comes and picks up the stranger... = see Zatanna #3

Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian #2 - "Homeless Superior"

• A battle between the two pirates, a race to the secret treasure beneath manhattan!
• The president Clinton runs over a beast on the tracks... this will be explained in Klarion #2
• Puritan kiddie snatchers and talking rats...
• Foundation stone, the Heart of New York, six sided...
• Ancient Architects...
• There's a god, in burning shackles, he lifts his star maned head...
• A strange chamber beneath dead man's junction, radioactive pool of ooze and a pedestal with chains hanging from above, on it lies the foundation stone, a six-sided dice.
• The sequence with being metacommentary on Grant vs Alan?
• Little pulley cart on the tracks, Jake mentions the laws underground, and leaves his helmet as a trade = see Klarion #2
• Larry dies from his wounds.
• No beard survives and drives a death-train, but he's soon to die from radiation poisoning. Cool idea hearkening back to Shelley from #0, at what point are you playing the super-hero or actually the part? No-Beard is only an old man, waiting to die, without the underground pirate story behind him. [needs citation]
• Rats show up repeatedly in this issue. Here they are an example of blind greed. In No-Beard's story, the Puritan kiddie-snatchers did trade with "talking rats." There is a rat perched on the switch controlling the rails at Dead Man's Junction, and two rats look on during the final confrontation of No-Beard and All-Beard in the radioactive chamber of the Foundation Stone.

Seven Soldiers: Zatanna #2 - "A Book in the Beginning"

• Gwydion hunts Zee and Misty across San Fran!
• They stop at her friend Cassandra Craft's shop where they will us the magical arsenal to make a stand.
• Gwydion is a celtic version of Merlin, a were-dragon
• Misty's power come from a magic die, possibly connected to the die we see in Guardian #2!
• Prowley the cat! Prowl + Crowley!
• Cassandra sold Dyna-mite rings... possibly to dan who used them in #0?
• Rando dude crackling with electricity pulled up to Cass's shop and dropped off a hat for zatanna, claiming he "came back for the books".
• Eternal Gentleman's Outfitters...
• The cabinet of Ali-Ka-Zoom, a roach motel for spirits. What happened to the cabinet that it needed to be broken down? = see guardian #4
• Gang of hero kids... Newsboy Army murder case... = see guardian #4
• Ali-Ka-Zoom; merlin of the ghetto. Cracked up after murder case, wandered Los Angeles as a homeless. Last they heard he was dead. = see guardian #4
• Gwydion says he serves the new supreme architect of the universe...
• Is Gwydion an Imp? An elemental homunculus.
• Phantom Stranger returns with some bread!

Seven Soldiers: Klarion #2 - "Badde"

• Horigal chases Klarion beyond the wicket gate and is about to eat him until he is shot by Badde and then run over by the train we see in Guardian #2.
• Ebeneezer Badde!
• Klarion's dad's name is Mordecai...
• A leviathan of children; lost kids banding together to create a hive mind!
• The place all-beard and no-bear found with the die is the house of croatoan, where a god once dwelled, leaving behind only chains.
• Klarion finds the die of the beard-pirates.
• Theses goons work for mister melmoth, they want a child from limbo town...
• Badde is a hunter of children, it's why leviathan hates him...
• Could Badde be his dad? Did he kill his own father?
• Mister Melmoth is revealed!

Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #3 - "The Perfect Knight Returns"

• 30 years after the fall of Camelot, Peredur, Bors, and Galahad emerge from refuge in an Atlantis type kingdom and go to the land of the Dwarrow men, where they use Bors' hammer to split the atom and create a primordial atomic bomb to use against Mordredd!
• Note that the three knights who convince the dwarves to split the atom are the same three who tradition tells us succeed in finding the Holy Grail: Galahad, Bors and Peredur/Percival. The idea that the Grail has here been replaced by - or is equitable to - the atom bomb is, in some ways, far more disturbing than the unsettling imagery of Mordredd the undead king.
• They had three remaining imperishable treasures...
• Helen 'Sky High' Helligan: she can draw the sword, she must be pure of heart!
• Gloria Friday, obviously Gloriana...
• Primordial Arthur and a primordial Camelot
• Friday claims the sword is one of four treasures Arthur stole from Sheeda-side, but seven given from god to men...
• Helligan's sister's wedding in New York...
• So Arthur died before the Sheeda invaded Camelot?
• Galahad was broken by Guilt as well...
• Sheeda refers to Excalibur as the sword of Aurakles...
• Helligan gets a poison kiss, will she get zombified?
• WHAT! Spyder is alive and has joined the sheeda? Have they resurrected him as an undead servant? Fits with the True Thomas poem, where Thomas becomes a servant of the faerie queen.
• Spyder is the one who shot Vincenzo, and he has the cauldron, but how did Vincenzo get the cauldron?
• Summer's End...
• Galahad is also resurrected as a sheeda slave!

Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian #3 - "Siege at Century Hollow"

• Century Hollow, global theme park, has gone awry when the androids gain autonomy and take over.
• Jorge Control has gassed everybody; faking a terrorist hack on the island to cover up the fact that he wants to kill his wife.
• Spartacus code: turns slaves into rebel outlaws.
• Jake is still suffering from the aftermath of Larry's death: Carla is pissed and blames him for her father's death, even though it had nothing to do with him. She rejects his marriage proposal.
• Hurricane Gloria: a cover for the impending Sheeda invasion? A veil over castle revolving? it's off of Honduras at this point.
• So this ginger chick Hannah is the other half of the 'rich people' that created CH. She stutters.
• Jorge is her husband, and she insulted him, probably causing the fake hack.
• Newsboy army base jump deus ex!
• Marriage is an illegal sham, accuses Hannah of loving machines more than him, he made her...
• Ed stargard is a man-baby!!?!?!
• Secret history of the OG newsboy army next issue!

Seven Soldiers: Klarion #3 - "The Deviant Ones"

• So the people of Limbo Town descend from the Roanoke colony, mysterious puritan settlement that disappeared leaving only the word Croatoan carved onto a tree.
• They had contact with something not human (Sheeda) creating the witch-man bloodline. Ashamed of these sins, the went to live underground reverting to a darker religion.
• The group in this meeting room is part of the Silencio Mob.
• Melmoth runs a hostel with runaway kids.
• Melmoth and the Silencio mob want to invade Limbo Town.
• In panel four, we see that Mister Melmoth has terrible scarring around his neck, as if his head were once chopped off and then reattached...
• Deviant Ones gang!
• Members: Mouse, Billy Beezer, Murderrella-rella, Nob'dy
• Goldenboy was the OG leader of the gang?
• Team Red: kids graduate when they turn 16...
• Costumes of Stripesy, Star Spangled Kid, Crimson Avenger, Miss America, Liberty Belle, Wonder Woman, the iron hand of Iron Hand...
• Sapper Drill!
• "Practically a challenge, I'd say. Don't mess with the witch-boy, Billy. Curses come to this one as naturally as breathing does to you or me."
• Goldenboy returns, and he reveals that Team Red is a hard labor gang. gold mines in the red place...
• Erdel Gate... MARS!
• Klarion goes to save his people!

SCHIZOPHRENIC ANNOTATIONS ON SEVEN SOLDIERS: PRELUDES & NEW WORLDS [PART ONE]

Justice League of America #100 - "The Unknown Soldier of Victory"

• Pretty basic bronze age super antics: multiversal threat brings the JLA and JSA together for their annual team-up, they split into teams to defeat the foe, and come together at the end for a classic deus ex machina to tie everything up nicely.
• Ramon Solomano makes a cosmic hand to destroy E2, but wouldn't he destroy himself since he's from that planet? Where is his base at the end of the issue? = I guess he just wanted to blow up the world!
• How did the Hand lose his hand? = in the first loss to the 7S when the machine fell on him.
• We get an intro to Oracle, a cosmic being from the realm beyond who can travel the multiverse at will. His powers can send individuals through time and he can display the past, but he cannot unveil the future.
• Wing is obviously the unknown soldier!
• Unfortunate that Wondy stays behind. This came out during her Denny O'Neil kung-fu I-Ching era!
• So the 7S used a weapon to defeat the Nebula man, and it scattered them across time. The weapon was revealed and mentioned back in Geoff Johns' Stars & STRIPE #9.
• Fun reveal of the Ollie and Roy on the 7S being E2 counterparts!

Justice League of America #101 - "The Hand That Shook the World!"

• So opening page mentions that the hand around the world is made of nebula energy... connection to the Nebula Man that scattered the 7S? = This implies that the Nebula Man is a creation of the hand...
• So nobody remembers the 7S because the feedback from the battle with Nebula Man created what Diana refers to as a time-warp, erasing them from history and scattering them across time.
• This truly was a pretty basic smash-em-up scavenger hunt in classic Gardner Fox style split team fashion.
• We get the additions of Alan Scott, E2 Dick Grayson, and Terry Sloane Mister Terrific as a final team to seek out the Himalayan grave of the unknown soldier.
• In the final page, Iron Hand sneaks in to ambush E1 Diana!

Justice League of America #102 - "...And One of Us Must Die!"

• Great final panel! Loved the sacrifice of Red Tornado!
• The highlight of this issue was Diana absolutely clapping up Iron Hand with a lovely fake-out.
• Zatanna's way of defeating Circe was super fun as well.

JLAC #1 - "Island Of The Mighty"

• Ultramarine Corps! And their ultra-city superbia!
• Warmaker One, Goraiko, and the Master (formerly known as Pulse-8 IIRC)
• The Knight (Cyril Sheldrake), Jack O'Lantern, and Squire (Beryl Hutchins)
• Contrary to what many on the internet believe, Goraiko doesn't actually speak in haiku, the syllables are off!
• Knight's moto-radio plays Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols!
• Magilla was a famed Hanna-Barbera primate!
• Guy the gorilla gangster is reminiscent of Batman's Gorilla Boss and Animal Man's Mod-Gorilla Boss!
• Nebula Man is from the JLA/JSA crossover we just read!
• "Information sent backwards through time..."
• So Cyril is the new Knight after his dad died at the hands of Springheeled Jack, black sheep of the royal family.
• Easter eggs in the sci-fi closet: Thanagarian harness, Dalek, head of Iron Giant...
• JLA is lost saving someone else's universe.
• Neh-Buh-Loh: "A Great harrowing is coming..."
• Cold region of the vampire sun, eternal fogs, last country, huntsman of the wild ride
• Queen of Terror...
• Batman's boom gauntlet and UFO! Secret JLA outpost on Pluto.
• So we have the present version of Qwewq in the Pluto base, and the jla is lost within.
• An adult version of qwewq is Neh-Buh-Loh, and he has come back in time and joined Grodd to take over the world.
• Batman represents Hades, so naturally his secret base is on the planet Pluto, just as future-Batman was responsible for guarding Pluto during the DC One Million event.

JLAC #2 - "Master of Light"

• Black Death, meta-human poison.
• Qwewq essentially contains our universe.
• JLA followed him into there, but how did he get access to Qwewq and the Pluto outpost? Did he get in on Earth, and they just transferred it to Pluto afterwards?
• Metaleks, Old King Coal (concepts revisited in Batman & Robin + Action Comics).
• Sheeda spine riders...
• Neh-Buh-Loh apparently seeded his form in the Master but is now separate while Master is possessed by a spine rider.
• So Cyril and Jack served together in Qurac (as soldiers or superheroes, I'm not sure).
• We see an invisible figure which is probably the disembodied aura of warmaker one.
• Goraiko is a receiver remotely controlled by a human.
• Black Death might have poisoned Qwewq from within, and he was sent by Grodd as a distraction.
• Neh-Buh-Loh is bred to kill supermen, sent to destroy seven .

JLAC #3 - "Seconds To Go"

• New additions to the Ultra-marines: Olympian, Kid Impala...
• Cyril was in a coma? Drug and alcohol addiction? Could it be because of his father's murder?
• So Black Death planted a seed of evil in the infant Qwewq, and adult Neh-Buh-Loh + Grodd planned this to ensure his future malice.
• Brilliant! The ultramarine corps is sent into infant Qwewq to save the poisoned earth! An Authority is born!

Seven Soldiers of Victory #0 - "Weird Adventures"

• Prologue: "True Thomas"
• True Thomas! I, Spyder!
• A black flower is grown for every secret drowned in slaughter swamp!
• Who is the ferryman?
• Solomon Grundy! Cyrus gold, the miser! Was lynched after killing children.
• The swamp is an in-between place.
• "True Thomas" is a ballad, also known as "Thomas the Rhymer," that originates from Scottish folklore and has been passed down through generations. The ballad tells the story of Thomas Learmonth, a historical figure from the 13th century who was known as Thomas the Rhymer due to his poetic abilities and reputed encounters with the supernatural.
• The ballad begins with Thomas encountering the Queen of Elfland while he is out walking. The Queen entices him to join her in her magical realm by offering him gifts and promises of knowledge and beauty. Thomas, unable to resist her enchantment, follows her to the Otherworld. Thomas spends seven years in the fairy realm, where time moves differently. He becomes the Queen's lover and is granted the gift of prophecy and poetic inspiration. However, Thomas also learns that he is bound by the fairy realm's rules, and when he eventually returns to the mortal world, he will be compelled to serve the fairy queen whenever she calls upon him.
• The poem is rich in supernatural elements, exploring the themes of love, temptation, and the blurred boundaries between the mortal world and the realm of the fairies. It showcases the allure and dangers of the Otherworld and highlights the complex relationship between humans and the supernatural.
• Sheeda soldiers riding mosquitos/flies, are they spine riders? And they suck blood via spear into a container on its back?
• Another schmuck with bows and arrows: are they referring to Ollie and Roy from the OG soldiers? Or maybe Thomas' dad?
• Seven Unknown men of slaughter swamp. Seven Doors. Six colored speech bubbles, is the ferryman the seventh?
• Who sent Thomas to kill the seven = they did themselves!
• Tailor...
• Are they cleaning the poison out of Thomas, or are they revamping his personality? Is that what they mean when they want him to "kill himself" = yep, just like dc comics writers who rebirth characters
• Thomas' dad was Alias, The Spider + his brother was just the Spider.
• Part One: "Shelly & The Super-Cowboys"
• Shelly Gaynor, the Whip. Her gramps was the golden age Whip and part of the All-Star Squadron.
• Part Two: "Big Time Country"
• Vigilante fought the buffalo spider in the 1800s when he was lost in time due to the battle with nebula man, before the jla/jsa picked him up.
• Miracle mesa, hunting ground of gods that revolves through many worlds.
• Gimmix, Boy Blue, Dyno-mite dan. Seventh soldier got cold feet.
• Boy blue sonic horn.
• Jacqueline Pemberton, any relation to Sylvester, the OG Star Spangled Kid? Gimmix knows Zatanna. Therapy group. Demonic abuse. = see Zatanna #1
• Part Three: "Midnight At Miracle Mesa"
• Buffalo spider lures them to miracle mesa, where the Sheeda attack them. Neh-buh-loh!
• The harrowing, the harvesting of man! I think they're all dead.
• Epilogue: "Save Seven"
• "And thrice enough to fill great Arthur's ship, we went into it. Except seven, none returned from castle revolving."
• The unknown men are putting items of the new batch of seven soldiers: guardian's helmet, shining knight's cape, Frankenstein's gun and gloves.
• They leave the time-sewing machine behind. Is that what they used to revamp I, Spyder?
• We see six exit, is the seventh (the ferryman) staying behind as the sheeda invade?
• Six more black flowers grow in slaughter swamp.

Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #1 - "The Last of Camelot"

• Sheeda invade Camelot. They've come to reap the city from the future, and will come again when a new kingdom rises to destroy it.
• Lancelot, Gawain, Caradoc, Peredur, Bors, Galahad.
• Neh-Buh-Loh kills Lancelot. RIP
• Castle Revolving.
• Catacombs of Oethanoeth.
• Justin and Vanguard.
• True Lantern.
• Arthur is now zombified. They call Justin a "false knight" = see Shining knight #4
• The inexhaustible Cauldron. The Undry. Brings the dead to life and heals all wounds.
• "It once sang in Murias, at the mighty Dagdas table." 
• Olwen, passed around Gloriana's court.
• Gloriana Tenebrae, shadow queen of the Sheeda, the Morrigan.
• Caliburn Ex Caliburn, Arthur's sword. Treasure of Findias. Only pure of heart can draw the blade.
• Snow white imagery: apple, fairest of them all.
• Ystin threw the cauldron into the time liquid of castle revolving.
• Olwen is revealed as a fetch, a changeling. Is Ystin wounded with venom?
• They bust out of castle revolving, but shards of other-glass get in vanguard's neck and they crash into modern day Los Angeles. Ystin is taken into custody, while vanguard is left bleeding on the pavement.
• Are the Tuatha Dé Danann representations of the New Gods?
• Is the dagda a representation of Aurakles?
• Is Nuada a rep of Arthur? = Nuada is orion
• Falias, Findias, Murias, Gorias; stone, sword, cauldron, spear

Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian #1 - "Pirates of Manhattan"

• Great stuff!
• Pirates of Manhattan: No-Beard and All-Beard.
• No-Beard (Moz): he can't figure out how to work a camera, a cheeky reference to Grant's disdain towards tech?
• All-Beard's rituals a reference to Moore's pagan fanaticism?
• A map of New York's secret subway!
• New York is referred to as the Cinderella city, between Metropolis and Gotham.
• Jake Jordan.
• Carla, Lauren, and Larry Marcus.
• Manhattan Guardian newspaper, ed stargard: is he an AI? HE was apparently a kid crimebuster = see Guardian #4
• Golems Four...
• Gets a costume, a car, a horse, and a helicopter...
• Mister Miracle, Shilo Norman, to escape an artificial black hole = See Mister Miracle #1
• Newsboy army...
• What is the ultimate treasure All-Beard is searching for? = see #2
• The taxi in this street scene has a pumpkin on the side. Weird. I wonder whether we’ll see that again later. (Yes, we will.)

INFINITE CRISIS #5-7 + TIE-INS REVIEW!

 

• Infinite Crisis #5 - "Faith" = A perfect Earth doesn't need a Superman! Freaking brilliant! That whole E2 sequence was great, but I am confused as to how the logistics of Alex Luthor's multiverse spawning works. If the new Earths are manifesting in the same space as New Earth, then what is the point of the rift at the center of the universe with the hands? Booster and Jaime arrive in the Bat-Cave to both join and form the squadron to take down Brother Eye. Booster claims that the future records informed him of the members but claim that Bats would never have found the satellite without the help of Jaime. Could he be lying? Most likely. Although I believe that the Wonder Woman tie-ins rehab'd Diana extremely well, the sequence with the E2 Wonder Woman was pretty cool. Rucka's prose was much better than Johns' one page stitch-up conclusion to put Diana on a brave new path going forward, but it was nice I guess. I've mentioned the Firestorm stuff since it keeps popping up, but I have no desire to read those tie-ins and seeing Martin Stein back as the co-pilot is good enough for me. Three great scenes finish this issue, with Dick and Conner teaming up for an assault on the tower, Alex Luthor dropping a banger line before unleashing a thousand parallel earths, and the return of both the Flash and Superman-Prime with the Anti-Monitor-esque armor!
• Superman #226 - This Is Your Life, Part I : "My Heart" = One of the most fascinating kinds of tie-ins; a three issue mini-arc-interlude that takes place between the pages of the main title's fifth issue (specifically between page 17 and 20). And it's written by Joe Kelly alongside an A-Tier artist-mix? Count me in! Loved the scrap book and the idea that the brawl between two Supermen is in itself breaking continuity and connecting them on another dimensional plane to where they will experience each other's origins. I genuinely believed this was just a recounting of the E2 Superman's origin until we got to the Renato Guedes drawn sequence where it hits you that NE Supes is going to play by his own rules.
• Action Comics #836 - This Is Your Life, Part II : "My Soul" = Well gah damn! The road to hell is paved with good intentions! Fascinating way to characterize E2 Supes, a man stuck in the Manichean mindset, two sides, two colors, one solution! The redux of the Post-Crisis Superman history was pretty hilarious and kind of terrifying towards the end; two men of steel embarking on twin crusades to fix their opposite's worlds, all to save the life of one woman, their soul be damned!
• Adventures of Superman #649 - This Is Your Life, Part III : "My Folly" = And just like that, a brilliant arc culminates in an even more brilliant segway into the line that made #5: "A perfect world doesn't need a Superman." Joe Kelly gives us doomsday in two dimensions as both Supermen are faced with impossible enemies shattering their impossible dreams. On one hand we have a modern age Superman coming to the realization that the Golden Age could never last forever. On the other we descend into absolute chaos as a Golden Age Superman enacts his own authority upon a reactive reality. Obviously the E2 Supes-led Authority is so much fun to watch delve into an even crazier crisis than what is occurring in the actual Infinite Crisis, but the fall of E2 at the hands of the Anti-Monitor as Superman reflects on Bruce's words from the first issue is extremely powerful and poignant.
• Teen Titans #33 - "The Brave & The Bold" = Fantastic! Wolfman and Johns, both Crisis writers, both Titans writers, unite their respective darling boys for a quiet moment among the chaos! Very powerful writing for both protagonists, and so immensely human interactions from the first sons of the world's finest. Cassie also gets a spotlight in this where we get an escape route to prevent her from losing her powers. Her arc finally comes full circle from the beginning of Teen Titans to the Land of the Dead arc in WW to now: Ares and Cassie are to be tethered via blood relation so he can exist in this reality as the rest of the Olympian Pantheon departs. Very cool.
• Infinite Crisis Secret Files - "Heaven" = Some very intriguing character development for The Survivors very late in the game, but Wolfman presents it in such a believable way that it ends up working pretty well. E2 Superman is so blinded by his love for Lois that it clouds his judgement and feeds the negative aspects of his outdated moral compass. Superboy-Prime is psychologically manipulated by Alex Luthor via the crystal looking glass walls of the Heaven dimension. Super-powered teen-angst paired with the destruction of your entire world is already a cross to bear, but stuck in a timeless prison as you are tormented by past trauma is beyond worse. Alex Luthor might have it the worst of all: grown to a man in less than a tenth of that time, he is at war with himself. He has no past, a survivor of a dead universe only to be raised between moments by a primordial celestial watcher. He has no future, trapped within a paradise purgatory of his own making. Even worse, he is a Luthor of Earth-3, an anomaly of virtue in a world of vice: but just like the New Earth Luthor occasionally phases between good and evil, this Luthor begins to tread the line as well. There are a couple of continuity mess ups that bugged me: one in particular was Superboy viewing the death of Max Lord even though that didn't happen until after he and Alex started their machinations. We also learn that Alex was the one who zapped the files from Brother Eye in the Countdown special, though if he gave the satellite sentience and pushed it to fall into the hands of Lord from the get-go, then why would he have to delete them? Could he not access them? Or did he not give control of the satellite and Lord just stole it from Bruce on his own? One of the few mysteries in Infinite Crisis that remains unclear.
• Batman Annual #25 - "Daedalus & Icarus: The Return Of Jason Todd" = A fun epilogue, but Winick goes a little overboard with the justifications and the intrigue regarding his paradigm shift, and jeez that moment in Hush with the Clayface switcharoo. Was it editorial, or did everyone unanimously agree to have their cake and eat it too? We'll never know. The Ra's and Talia stuff was interesting, but the Lazarus factor might have cluttered it too much. Yes, I love the movie adaptation where it's the only reason for his resurrection, but when you start the issue with Superboy-Prime's cosmic reality-altering punches, I'm already inclined to accept that without the need for the intertwining with Ra's soul energy or whatever.

• Infinite Crisis #6 - "Touchdown" = Full circle dammit! RIP Conner Kent, you went out like Superman, putting the lives of the universe above your own. There's a lot to love in this chapter, the split narrative as Batman leads his squadron against the eye in the sky while the children of the trinity assault Alex Luthor's tower. I'm laughing pretty hard at the fact that I've mentioned the irrelevance of Firestorm's presence throughout this event only for him to save both Supermen and Wonder Woman from Alex by blowing his freaking finger off. The feedback from division of the Earths appears to consume a large portion of the space league, threads left to be picked up by 52. Spectre returns to kill off Star Sapphire (setting up plot points for Carol in the GL title?). The nuTrinity frees the prisoners from the tower allowing us to get an awesome moment where Black Adam kills Psycho Pirate. Loved seeing Alex Luthor reach out to the reader to access Earth-Prime, and the splash seeing various alter-earths in Perez glory was great. The fact that it's a new Blue Beetle that brings about the fall of OMAC and the legacy of Max Lord is so earned, and I just can't help but recall that moment in the Countdown special where Ted says: "I am the second man to call himself the Blue Beetle. I tell myself there will be a third. And I hope whoever he or she may be, they do it better than I have." FULL CIRCLE, DAMMIT! IT'S OVERTIME!
• OMAC Project Special  - "The Lazarus Protocol" = What a great reveal! The person who imbued Sasha with the anti-OMAC power was Brother Eye himself! In the Countdown mini the characters had postulated that it was Max who did it as a failsafe against Brother eye going rogue, but that didn't explain why she could resist his powers back in #3. Now we have a final answer: Eye had planned to use Sasha as his own failsafe if system failure was imminent. Really enjoyed the espionage vibe we get in this, something that I wholeheartedly hope is continued in Rucka's Checkmate series. Waller being promoted to Black King is very interesting, and having Fire, Jessica Midnight, and possibly Mister Bones of the DEO as the supporting cast has me hooked! Sasha's freedom in that last page makes me so happy; she is one of the best things to have come out of this era of DC.
• Villains United Special - "A Hero Dies But Once" = War drums beat as an army of evil-doers assemble, aiming annihilation at the city of tomorrow! Gail Simone's sharp prose and Dale Eaglesham's stunning art give us cracked mirror POV's: Oracle on one side coordinating damage control as heroes are scattered to contain the various breakouts, while on the other side the Society puts the finishing touches on their grand design. J'onn gets a great moment and splash page, while the Secret Six themselves are reduced to an ancillary role, providing Green Arrow with a head start before the final act. As battle lines are drawn, a black sun rises to unveil only Doomsday for the heroes!
• Infinite Crisis #7 - "For Tomorrow" = An epic for the ages! We are officially done with "Post-Crisis" DC, now we enter the event era of the Hypercrisis! We get some really great moments in this issue: Bart is revealed as the Flash that emerged at the end of #5, J'onn's line of "Take to the skies", the Thin Green Line, and the battle upon Mogo were all so much fun. My favorite however was Batman's dance on the brink of the abyss, the staring contest with oblivion as he wields the weapon that killed his parents to enact final vengeance over justice. He hasn't really had his therapy session like Supes or Wondy yet so it's all up for grabs: will the Bat finally break? But like the first truth of Batman (something Morrison eventually touches upon in Return of Bruce Wayne), he was never alone. The bell is rung, and Diana comes to pull him back from the forever pit. Brilliant. Very sad to see E2 Supes go, but the Survivors (besides Prime) were never really meant to survive past this event. Prime himself, as Alex stated last issue, has been changed by the New Earth, he's become a part of its narrative. I loved the extra lines they added in the trade collection during E2 Supes last moments, and that depiction of him and Lois embedded in the stars is beautiful. As for the status quo cleanup: space gang is still missing, Crispus is our new Spectre, some kid finds the Tangent universe GL staff washed up on shore, the Speed Force is gone along with Wally and his family, while the Trinity depart to find themselves on their own spiritual and introspective journeys. I'm assuming Diana's Invisible Jet is from the E2 WW which is great, and a depowered Clark sets us up for Busiek and Johns Up, Up, & Away! Our overarching villains get what they deserve in the end; Prime is locked up on Oa, while Alex fails to predict a wild card as his doppelganger gets the last laugh.

And that's a wrap for Infinite Crisis and Countdown everybody! This was a huge journey that took more than a year to complete (including planning and research for the optimized reading order), but I'm so happy to have made it in one piece! I can't say I'm sad it's over since there is so much good material to read following it, but to catch up on the highlights of 2000's era DC was way too much fun. To read over a dozen series intertwined to recreate a sense of suspense and excitement within a design built by the architects at that time is something I recommend to any comics fan. This truly reminded me of when I first got into comics during the Rebirth era, and every title I picked up felt like it mattered in some way and was contributing towards the grand narrative. Although Rebirth didn't turn out the way it was supposed to, the building blocks behind Infinite Crisis and Countdown sure did, and I'm so glad I was able to do this! I'd like to thank the DC Wiki and Half-Price Books for enabling me to find literally every single tie-in I needed, and some great trades they put out alongside the main one. Finally, thank you to Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Judd Winick, and every single artist and writer who worked to create this wonderful event!

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.