A review of Countdown Arena 1 to 4 By Eric Singer (Superman's Pal) March 21, 2008 Rating: 0.5 / 10

Writer: Keith Champagne
Penciller: Scott McDaniel
Inker: Andy Owens

"Literally billions of innocent lives are hanging in the balance. Times fifty-two."

Where do I even begin with a story this ridiculously bad? Set the wayback machine for 2 years ago when Captain Atom was appearing his "Armageddon" series. He was a good guy then. Even when this whole Atom as Monarch in the Bleed storyline began about a year ago in "Ion" it sounded like he was on the side of good. Now he's just evil, glowering and cruel. Why? I don't know. Doesn't seem like the writer does either. This book stinks of a plotline created by committee and handed off to someone with minimal direction: "Just have a bunch of Elseworlds guys duke it out for 4 issues ... should be pretty sweet!"

See, to preserve the integrity of the Multiverse, the Monitors are killing anyone that jumps from one 'verse to another, weakening the walls between. Monarch aims to end this senseless slaughter by travelling the Multiverse killing innocent people and forcing heroes to murder each other for a spot on his anti-Monitor hit squad. It's tough love at its most retarded.

Monarch is trying to assemble a "best of the best" team of alternate Earth heroes to form an army to take out the Monitors. But he doesn't really go after the best, none of the New Earth, Earth-1 or Earth-2 guys. Just a bunch of obscure Elseworlds characters. Obscurity aside, within the story they may be the best in the Multiverse right?

No. He chooses three versions of each character from the Multiverse, like three Supermen, and tells them that if those three don't cooperate in his game, there are 49 other versions of Superman out there he can go to. So he didn't really grab the best three, he just grabbed three pretty good ones. Now he tells the three Supermen to fight one another to the death, and the winner will join his army.

This raises way too many questions. First, why kill off two of the Supermen, why not just recruit all three to his army? It would give him that much more power for his battle, and would make the Supermen more cooperative. Assuming that Superman has a code against killing in most universes as he does on New Earth, the Supermen will try to rebel against Monarch rather than play his cruel game. Even if they agree to fight each other the winner will always be plotting to mutiny against Monarch rather than follow him into battle. Which is pretty much what happens in this comic. Even after Monarch demonstrates that he will willingly destroy their homeworlds for disobedience, they continue to plot against him the entire series. What a terrible way to build an army. If he had asked all three to willingly join him in taking out the Monitors they would have agreed. Besides which over in "Countdown" and "Countdown Presents Lord Havok and the Extremists" we saw that the Extremists and the Crime Syndicate were both asked to join Monarch and yet he didn't make them fight in the Arena, nor punish the Extremists for refusing his invitation. Do these writers talk to each other?

The next problem is that every time these guys rebel against Monarch, he defeats them handily and puts them back in line. So if Monarch can disintigrate Green Lanterns and KO Supermen with a wave of his pimp hand, why does he even need their help? He's already attained power beyond Darkseid or Imperiex or any other cosmic baddie. Or why doesn't he just collect alternate universe Monarchs since they're obviously the most powerful being in the universe? Well, he does. He assembles a group of 40-some alternate Captain Atoms. You're telling me that with 40-some Captain Atoms he still needs a Nightshade on his team? A Blue Beetle?

This 52 Earth concept has really gone in the toilet. I can only imagine how the pitch session went after Infinite Crisis.

"We’re gonna bring back the Multiverse!"

"Really? Wow ... unlimited storytelling possibilities!"

"Well, not unlimited, only 52."

"Okay ... well 52 is still a lot, think of all the alternate worlds we can come up with!"

"No, not us, we’re going to use it to bring back the Pre-Crisis worlds, Elseworlds, Tangent, stuff like that."

"Okay, I guess it will be cool to see some of those again. Bring them into continuity."

"Not for long though -- we’re going to put them all into an Arena and make them kill each other!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, it’ll be sweet, like we’ll have the 'Gotham By Gaslight' Batman fighting the 'Red Rain' Batman ..."

"Why would they fight each other, aren’t they both good guys?"

"Because Monarch is forcing them to fight to the death!"

"Monarch? Is he still around?"

"We’ve got a new Monarch, it’s Captain Atom."

"Captain Atom? Isn’t HE a good guy?"

"Not any more, he’s a cruel and evil general now leading an army of Multiverse heroes."

"Why is he evil now?"

"Because he’s MONARCH! Remember how 'Armageddon 2001' was originally supposed to have Captain Atom be Monarch, but they changed it at the last minute to be Hawk?"

"Sort of ... wasn’t that story like 17 years ago?"

"Well now Captain Atom is Monarch the way it was always intended, he’s a cosmic despot who will kill as many innocent people as it takes to save the universe! He’s a total badass!"

"Okay so Captain Atom, I mean Monarch is now a murderer, and he wants guys to murder each other ... wouldn’t it be easier to recruit bad guys instead of good guys?"

"What do you mean?"

"Wouldn’t it be easier to round up a couple dozen Darkseids or Doomsdays? They’d be willing to go around killing people. Batmen, not so much."

"Because we’re using Elseworlds characters, which focused on heroes, not villains. There are a lot more cool alternate Batmen and Supermen than there are Darkseids and Doomsdays."

"So you want to bring back recognizable Elseworlds heroes."

"Yeah!"

"And you’re going to kill off most of them in just a few pages?"

"Yup!"

"And the rest of them become badass killers working for Monarch’s army of evil?"

"Exactly!"

"F%&@ING AWESOME!"

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