Part 7 of the "Kingdom of Zod" story arrives at your Local Comic Shop tomorrow in the form of Superman Unlimited #17. Since there's no reason to expect Booster Gold will be in that just as he was not in parts 5 or 6 last week, I'd like to talk about something else today, specifically 2007-2008's Countdown to Final Crisis.

Since this is a Booster Gold blog, I should mention up front that Booster Gold played only the most tangential role in this weekly series follow-up to 52, making only cameo appearances in the 2-page backmatter of issues #43, 42, 41, and 20, while the "Dark" Booster Gold of an alternate Earth (presumably Earth-3) briefly appears in issues #16 and 15 just to get his butt kicked. (If you're confused by that numbering, know that Countdown numbered its issues backwards from #51. "Count Down." Get it?)

But I don't mention Countdown today because of its Booster Gold content (or lack thereof). I mention it because this past weekend I finished reading it for the first time. For financial reasons, I chose to forgo buying most issues when they were new, and after strongly disliking Final Crisis, I never had the interest in going back. A collection I recently acquired had almost all of the outstanding issues, so I finally took the plunge. I have to say, younger me made the correct decision; it's every bit as bad as everyone said it was back in 2008.

From the very start, Countdown is a jumbled, meandering, repetitive and self-contradictory mess, badly hindered by art teams who didn't communicate and editors either unwilling or unable to rein in a series of terrible creative choices and corporate mandates. In its best moments, the story is clearly just marking time; in its worst it's wallowing in torture porn. Reading this as it was coming out must have frustrated more than a few readers away from DC Comics, necessitating the line-wide New 52 Reboot just three years later. In summary: it stinks.

The good news here, and there is good news, is that Countdown has remained unpopular with readers and creatives alike. So far as I can tell, it has been largely ignored and forgotten in the years since its release. With any luck, it remains possible that more recent DC "event" stories with significantly more Booster Gold content could experience a similar fate. Therefore, in a very accidental way, the story of Countdown is a story of hope, and a little hope is never a bad thing.

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If you happened to pick up Wonder Woman #777 earlier this month, you may have recognized her gender-swapped Earth-11 counterpart, Wonder Man. What you may not have realized is that Wonder Man and Booster Gold have history. Sort of.

For the rest of that story, let's turn back the dial to Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Superwoman/Batwoman #1, the first appearance of Dane of Elysium, aka Wonder Man.

written by Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti; art by Kalman Andrasofszky, Kanila Tripp, John J. Hill

Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Superwoman/Batwoman was released in 2008 as a tie-in to the year-long Countdown (to Final Crisis) series, and it re-introduced readers to Earth-11, an alternate universe first visited in 2005's Batman/Superman #23 — though it wasn't called "Earth-11" at that time. The reconstitution of the DC Multiverse in the wake of Infinite Crisis wouldn't be revealed until roughly two years later at the conclusion of 52. (And they say the DC Multiverse is too confusing. Pfft!)

As you can see from these panels, Earth-11 shares much of the history of Earth-1, including familiar events of Identity Crisis (2004), Wonder Woman #219 (2005), and Amazons Attack! (2007).

All Booster Gold fans will remember Maxwell Lord's killing of Blue Beetle in the accurately titled Countdown to Infinite Crisis. Well, on Earth-11, those events played out somewhat differently.

The Maxine Lord executed by Wonder Man didn't kill the female Blue Beetle. She killed Beetle's best friend: Booster Gold.

Thus, in a way, Wonder Man avenged Booster Gold's death!

A guy like that can't be all bad.

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