Counting down the Top Five Things You Need to Know about Countdown to Final Crisis #5!

5. Peristalsis. The Great Disaster plays out this week not with a whimper, not with a bang, but between two slices of white bread. That's right; the much-anticipated event is the comic book equivalent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – plain, simple, unadorned, a staple of your caloric intake. You knew it was coming, and when it arrives, it is exactly what you thought it'd be. Nothing more. Nothing less. Issue #5 leaves nothing to chance, a safe storyline that adheres to convention and cliché, constrained and easily washed down with a glass of milk. Autopilot on; eat up.

4. Plot It Yourself. The Morticoccus spreads across the globe like any other world-devouring virus: fast and expansively. It causes chaos and the usual "fighting in the streets," which leads to the inevitable "bodies in the streets" scene. Nothing out of the ordinary. There are strange side-effects to the virus, namely humans turning into animals. The stuff of legend. To be fair, it could only go down like this if one is attempting to fulfill Kirby. Two people, our POV characters, make their way through the cruel streets to find loved ones and are attacked by the virus' victims. No surprises here. The world's "great minds" are frustrated by the virus, impotent and sideline-sitting. A standard development, as is the ever-popular European or Middle-eastern countries that blame each other for the virus and use it as an excuse to – wait for it – a bit more – okay, now – set off a few nuclear weapons. Gotta love it; it's a classic. In the end, the last survivors hole up somewhere, the last hope for Earth, while the rest of the planet goes to Hell in a handbasket. You may say that you could have written this yourself. You'd probably be right, and if you had, I'd be taking you to task right now for not bothering to think outside the box.

3. The Path Pretty Much Taken All the Time. DC could have surprised us here. They could have turned things on their ear and eschewed convention and cliché for a bit of original thinking. End-of-the-world disaster stories can be great. They strike some chord deep inside us that speaks to our feral ancestry and makes us question how much can be piled on civilization before it snaps like a house of twigs. But Countdown #5 walks a well-traveled path, beaten down by many a book, movie, TV show, and music video. Where are the surprises? Where are the "didn't see that one coming!" moments? What we are left with is a sense of "getter dun," and a reluctance to bother with anything more than a traditional plot line: virus-chaos-survivors-curtains. I think we deserve better.

2. What a Waste of Thigh-high Boots. A few words about Una: anybody who's been following these reviews knows by now that she's not even remotely my favorite Countdown character. Hell, she's not even remotely close to anything remotely resembling any fictional character at all. She got a few licks in this week, threw a few martial arts kicks and talked tuff, but as usual with Countdown, it was too little too late. She was never Duo Damsel to me, or even Triplicate Girl. Una was a cipher who was pushed on us as some kind of pivot point in Countdown, but ultimately she was simply a chump. Alas, to paraphrase the Grim Reaper, "She's dead now, so shut up." I will now shut up about Una. Rest in pieces, doll.

1. Drawing a Blank. That leaves Mr. Buddy Blank, our narrator for the second issue in a row. Good night, sweet Prince, we hardly knew ya, Buddy ol' pal. I'm still not sure which Buddy Blank you were but give me a break; DC didn't exactly twist my arm to get me to like you. You were kind of smart, kind of sarcastic, kind of mopey, and a whole lot of sappy. That's a lot of "kind of" and not much "whole lot of." This was the perfect series for you to be part of.

Liftoff!

Major Tom to Ground Control: I liked that scene with the knife-brandishing bulldog. That mutt should get his own series. I'm not kidding. He was cool. Send me up some more of the stuff.

(Extra credit to those of you who recognize the title of count #4)

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