Committed to counting down the Six Things You Need to Know about Countdown to Final Crisis #6!

6. Ain't Got No Speakers, Ain't Got No Headphones… The scope has widened and the stakes upped in our beloved weekly and the Great Disaster rears its ugly head, but get out your phonographs 'cause I'm about to play my favorite broken record – most everything presented herein could make for tense, even exciting fiction but the lack of historical precedent in the series means the punch is most definitely milquetoast. Don't even get me started on the promise of a cover that's never delivered upon, either. (By the way, for all you Marvel fans, a "phonograph" is a record player.) [EDITOR'S INTERRUPTION: Ouch, Jim! Where'd this come from? A Marvel fan pee in your Cheerios this morning?]

5. Gel-Swabs to the Rescue. The Morticoccus virus is a deadly thing, seemingly mutating to such a degree of rapidity that it cannot be halted by our most advanced medical technology. Great. Got it. That in itself is interesting. It's a timely thing, topically poignant as we deal in the real world with flu viruses that resist vaccines and grow out of hand. I'm even going to give a few points to the wacky idea of Morticoccus turning us all into animal-people – if I understand that correctly. What kind of bugs me is that there was the potential to deliver the "Holy Crap!" impact of the virus with a much greater payload by taking the information that is basically crammed wholesale into this one issue and have doled it out over the past year. Imagine what a character in its own right Morticoccus would have been if it had been developed as any other character should be. I also find it a bit hard to swallow that because it "assimilated" Karate Kid's blood that it's a "millennium ahead of us." Isn't the 30th century a fictional almost-perfect place, at least in DC comics? The whole page of exposition about Morticoccus' resistance due to future this-and-that is pretty damn confusing. I expected better of the future. I want to return all my Legion comics now.

4. Duo Damsel in Distress. Una continues to be a candidate for Cipher of the Year. The constant reminding we receive this week concerning her angst over the departed Karate Kid is almost insulting. There's been nothing shown in the past year that leads me to believe that she feels any sort of deep love for Val, and if she does, no reasoning behind it. Furthermore, her insistence that she has any "31st century know-how" is also an insult to my intelligence. I challenge any Countdown reader or member of the Countdown Crew to show me any precedent for any such "know-how" – or any sort of real characterization. Guys, you want to place this much story weight on Una, you're going to have to give us something that looks like it could support it. Stop making out like she's Our Lady of Countdown or something.

3. Everyone Grab a Buddy. I appreciated Buddy Blank's narration and the lack of dialogue balloons like I would any break in conventional comic storytelling. Some of the more interesting issues of Countdown have digressed from the commonplace (and the mundane) by adapting a different way to tell the tale. Buddy's voice has several instances of allowing entry into a "common" man's viewpoint on the Great Disaster, and I applaud the choice. I was glad to see Buddy at all this week, though I have to wonder why the bit from issue #12 was seemingly dropped. You know, when that big explosion went off and we see that word balloon plaintively asking, "Grandpa…?" The absence of explanation for this may lead us to believe this isn't New Earth but rather some other Earth and some other Buddy Blank. If that's the case…why? Why confuse things further? Can't shake the feeling that Buddy Blank is another Countdown thread that's been clipped short for necessity's sake.

2. Set-up for the Tear-down. I also wonder why this series has gone out of its way to give critics ammunition. This week Buddy notes that the Palmernauts and other hangers-on call themselves "superheroes" and that he's not so sure that's the word he'd choose for them. What else can I do but agree with Mr. Blank? Spot-on, sir; they're some of the most pitiful examples of their species. Countdown Crew: if you'd stop feeding me straight lines, I wouldn't feel the obligation to play off 'em! "Great Disaster"? Comedy gold!

1. Checklist. So, what do we have at this point? A virus spreading across the globe, making people go nuts and somehow causing giant fires. A desperate, now-morose band of scientists wringing their hands over their inability to cope. Superheroes who want to kill each other. And the "greatest" Green Lantern of them all leaving Earth to seek help after having been exposed to a sickness that he's just witnessed throw civilization to the dogs. Yep. A genius among genius. Credit where credit is due.

Liftoff, Typhoid Hal! Fly, baby, fly!

Major Tom to Ground Control: We just saw Green Lantern zip by, sweating bullets and with the most ghastly pallor. He got a flu shot this year, right? Control? Control?

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