Should I pick up "Countdown" in trade?

[handOFfate]

I was just wondering about Countdown to Final Crisis and and whether I should pick up the entire series in trade. Just for the record, I loved 52. Sure it moved slowly at times, but for the most part I found the stories rich in characterization. Is Countdown the same kind of story as 52?

[Captain Jim]

Not really the same kind of story.

Did you read 52 as a weekly, or in trades?

[botch]

by the time it comes out in trades, final crisis will be over and you'll know the whole story so it will be pointless and ruin your reading experience. unless you stay away from comic shops and forums for a year.

[Laughing Mask]

by the time it comes out in trades, final crisis will be over and you'll know the whole story so it will be pointless and ruin your reading experience. unless you stay away from comic shops and forums for a year.

yeah. i make the same mistake a lot.

[Petertime]

Should you get countdown in trade....

First, if you aren't aware countdown is something people tend to argue about...a lot, so these are just my thoughts.

this story is much different beast then 52...
other than being weekly series, they don't have much in common.

I loved 52, but 12 weeks into countdown, the story still wasn't doing it for me so I dropped it.
To me, where 52 was a self contained story, countdown connects to a lot of the events in the rest of DC and since I wasn't reading half of them, half the story wasn't of relevance.

I've read a bit about the series here and there since, and some people seem to really be enjoying it more now then they did when it started.

I think its the kinda thing you kinda have to just try to see if you like it.

I know I am looking forward to the next weekly, because its one writer handing the core story, and I happen to love that writer (Kurt Busiek)

If you're a regular at a comic shop, ask them (if they know your tastes)
My guys recommend stuff to me regularly, and they've got a good handle on what I like....

[Will.S]

I guess it depends on when they release the first few Countdown trades.

At this point if you haven't gotten the singular issues you might as well wait for the trades and just jump straight into Final Crisis but Countdown hasn't finished yet to be able to judge it as a whole. It did get better once they stopped the "reference a comic of the month!" crap so that should tell Dan and the rest of the editors that stuff like this is better kept self contained.

[soda]

I will agree with the poster who said that countdown was really slow for the first half of it, but, for me, the story really picked up the pace around issue #25 or so. The last half dozen issues have been some of the best stuff I've read, so I'm glad I stuck with it.

That being said, the entire point of having a weekly book is to pick it up every week in the comic book shop. I think that's what DC's point is, and I don't recommend picking up a book like countdown as a trade. However, it takes all types to make the world...

[Paul Newell]

I think that's what DC's point is, and I don't recommend picking up a book like countdown as a trade. However, it takes all types to make the world...
What I've found, when I went back and read the first 25 issues in a block, was that it read much better like that rather than weekly. It seemed much more cohesive and didn't seem to drag as it did weekly.

[MWGallaher]

No.

I think this will seem really awful in a trade edition. Your first volume is going to have inconsistent art by a parade of pseudononymous Brazilian studio nobodies, with tedious tie-ins to "Amazons Attack" (which would require you to buy two other collections to understand, since that story was split into a Wonder Woman trade and, I assume, a trade collecting the main miniseries). The inconsistent timelines will, I think, seem magnified: over the course of a few issues, Mary Marvel's story progresses over the course of apparent weeks, while Pied Pipers covers days, while Karate Kid's covers hours...but they're all intercut, so it stresses the reader's natural perception that scenes in an individual issue either occur sequentially or simultaneously.
If you feel like you need to read this to "get" FINAL CRISIS, I'm increasingly suspicious that this won't be the case. All evidence is that FC will be mostly self-contained, not spinning from some dramatic COUNTDOWN finale. I could be wrong; we shall see.

[Captain Jim]

You don't have to read Amazons Attack to understand Countdown.

[Will.S]

You don't have to read Amazons Attack to understand Countdown.
Yeah, in fact I didn't read it at all at the time and I still understood the gist of it.

After reading Amazons attack I wish I didn't though :( .

[MWGallaher]

You don't have to read Amazons Attack to understand Countdown.

You may be right about that. Did they explain in COUNTDOWN why the public stopped picketing the shelters? I can't recall, but that would be an example of what I was getting at: if the status quo of the main characters' situation changed without explanation (i.e., Holly is staying at a shelter and it's dangerous to try to leave because throngs of angry citizens are protesting, and then in the next issue, that's no longer a problem or impediment), then I'd say you can't really understand the story. You're just following the events that you're shown, without grasping how or why the situations change.
But frankly, that's my problem with the series overall. Even the storylines that have been confined to COUNTDOWN seem to be events we have to just follow without understanding why. Based on recent weeks, Solomon could make any concievable turn in a given issue and we'd be unjustified in complaining that "he wouldn't do that." He just does stuff, and we watch it and shrug.

[DarKye]

I wouldn't recommend reading it.

The only similarity that Countdown bears with 52 is the amount of issues.
I can't really go into details without throwing spoilers, but let's just say that when people say "Countdown is finally starting to pick up" after thirty something damn issues, well, it says a lot about the whole thing.

[BurningStarIV]

I've just been reading the spoilers and summaries posted around the internet. I had been buying the Countdown issues, but VERY quickly lost interest and removed it from my pull list. And I had a moment where I considered getting the trade, but most people have just been very "bleh" about Countdown. So, I opted to seek out the detailed synopsis of what's been happening to keep abreast of the situation in the DCU without wasting my time and money buying a series that just doesn't catch me.

[Will.S]

You may be right about that. Did they explain in COUNTDOWN why the public stopped picketing the shelters? I can't recall, but that would be an example of what I was getting at: if the status quo of the main characters' situation changed without explanation (i.e., Holly is staying at a shelter and it's dangerous to try to leave because throngs of angry citizens are protesting, and then in the next issue, that's no longer a problem or impediment), then I'd say you can't really understand the story. You're just following the events that you're shown, without grasping how or why the situations change.
Not from what I recall.

The only other time you get the Amazons Attack continuation is when we see Holly and Harley be confronted by Hippolytain the cave.