Buy Pile Report

So, as I said, I wasn't picking up much today. In fact, I think this is the first time in two years that I was able to pay in cash instead of my old friend Mr. Plastic.

Come to think of it, the only two books I bought were the two weeklies I read, Countdown (yes, I am a glutton for punishment) and Messiah Complex (which is weekly for another four weeks).

And Part 10 of Messiah Complex, Uncanny X-Men #494, certainly ups the ante, which I don't mind at all. Frankly, I had started to feel like there were no twists up Marvel's sleeve at all in this event, so seeing that last week's final page surprise of Bishop shooting Cable was not simply a final page stunt certainly piqued my interest.

Not only is Bishop now the renegade factor in this series, for some reason wanting to off Li'l Baby Genejoke, but we also see that he's around in that desolate future Jamie and Layla are stuck in. Does this future actually mesh with what we already know of Bishop's future? I don't know. But, I am not going to geek-out and examine that until after I'm done enjoying this crossover.

You also have to be intrigued by Professor X's new part to play in this whole fiasco. Here's hoping the writers are not going to pull a "Professor knows best" ending. All in all, this event is chugging along nicely.

Countdown #17 was not quite as smooth as Uncanny was this week. Don't get me wrong, it was not a bad issue, it certainly had a lot of action and a lot of plot development — in both the Palmer plot and the Mary Marvel story — but the entire time I was reading it I just kept asking myself "Where the hell did this stuff come from?"

I don't mind at all this whole Bob-the-Monitor double-cross, I in fact find it to be rather creative... but it all just happened so abruptly and confusingly. The entire scene I was wondering if that villainous Monitor was Bob or Solomon. I guess that's the problem with using soooooo many characters who look exactly alike.

I also don't mind the idea of all these monitors having to deal with Monarch's Bleed Army — but this entire idea was built up in a Countdown spinoff miniseries, not at all in Countdown proper. This had better not be a large part of this "Final Crisis," because if I am going to shell out $156 for all 52 issues of Countdown, I better damn well get all the important facts in it.

As I said this was not such a bad issue, but if you've read the first 34 of these things, you're going to wonder why some of this stuff is going on. You'll probably enjoy this issue more if you are one of the smart ones who only started buying Countdown recently, with the "Final Crisis" now just around the corner.