For anyone that knows me they know that my favorite comic book character ever in the history of all comic book characters is DONNA TROY! The original and only Wonder Girl for me. The comic book series "Countdown" heavily featured her as a starring character, so you can just naturally assume that I read the crap out of that series. I discovered many moons later that they had also released a novelization based on the comic book series, so again you can just naturally assume that I wanted to read the crap out of it. I finally got around to it!
One of the largest issues with the weekly series that this is based on is that it felt like a bit of a discombobulated mess that the writers threw together. It feels like they were told "these are the characters you have to work with. Have fun doing whatever the heck it is you do with them for this series." The reason that I state this is because it does not feel like there was any real "point" to the overall story arcs contained within, especially when given in a context of what directly spun out from this series is Final Crisis. Final Crisis had no connection to anything that happened here. As a result of the mess I did not have a lot of hope for enjoying this book. I felt that it was an obvious one faerie point review, but it gained two stars which is a feat unto itself with such a hateful heart that I had for this series. Yes, I Mr. Optimistic had a hateful heart! Oh how I loathe this series and everything to do with it.
The book, and I think largely thanks to the writing of Mr. Cox, made the mess somewhat more manageable. All of the elements of the mess were still there but they made a lot more sense in his world because he described out the original intentions in a manner that was not available in a single panel of the ongoing series. One was unable to assume certain things, such as Donna, Jason, and Solomon being "The Challengers of the Unknown". Here though he just puts it right out there and calls them this throughout the entire book. It helped to make it feel like they had a larger point in the overall context of the series instead of just being thrown together for the sake of sells. Also Cox helped to make the pieces of the Amazons and Mary Marvel storyline fit better into the overall arch of "Countdown" as well. I believe that the Mary Marvel scenes were easier to swallow because we had access to her thoughts in a way that was not as easily accessible in the original. These little tidbits to how she was feeling helped me to understand that while she had become a spoiled brat that there was a hurt little girl inside of the shell as well. It made it an easier pill to swallow to see one of the nicest characters in DC history to become a bad-ass villain! I wish they had done this in the comic because I would have enjoyed it!
I would recommend this series to those that want to have a better understanding of what DC was trying to do with the original comic book series. I would also recommend it to those that enjoy reading comic book relate novelizations. The story does have a beginning, middle, and end so even though it leads into the "Final Crisis" series one that just simply want to read a comic book novelization would also be able to enjoy this as a singular book instead of having to go out and purchase the next novelization as well. I also recommend this to anyone that has had the pleasure of reading Greg Cox's other books in the series, such as "Infinite Crisis" or "52". The nice thing is you do not have to read these other two books to enjoy this book. I will always love my Donna Troy, but the original source material for this had to be hard for Cox to pull from and I am sure he counted down all the hairs he lost in the process. (Yeah, so a comedian I am not)
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