Countdown to Final Crisis, Volume Two by Paul Dini and Various

The six unconnected stories are beginning to come together at last, showing that despite all that happened, the true, coming Crisis hasn't happened yet.

Jimmy Olsen has somehow inherited strange and powerful abilities, but they come and go. When he tries to team up with his longtime friend, Superman, to fight crime under the name of "Mr. Action". Unfortunately, his powers desert him at the worst time, denying him entrance to the Justice League and leaving him quite beat up. But Jimmy can't leave it at that. The mystery of where his powers came from and why they come and go with such abruptness makes him start investigating the source of his new, strange abilities. But can he live with himself when he realizes that his abilities are being stolen from other superpowered individuals? And can he figure out why he is getting them?

Holly Robinson, the former Catwoman, has met and become friends with Harley Quinn, the Joker's longtime girlfriend. Now, both of them are sheltering in a shelter run by Wonder Woman's native sisters, the Amazons. For some reason, the Amazons are recruiting among the downtrodden women of the cities, and they have tapped Holly and Harley for membership. But when they are taken to Themiscyra for initiation, is their induction all they were promised it would be, or is something else afoot? Can Holly find out the true situation without falling prey to the faster, stronger, more powerful Amazons?

Mary Marvel defeated Black Adam, longtime foe of her family. In response, he ceeded her his powers over magic, going back to being an ordinary man. But in accepting his powers, Mary finds herself no longer fitting in with her family, and being unable to control the new powers she has inherited. Asking Zatanna for help, Mary soon finds her powers racing out of her control, and wanting to be used in ways that seem less and less evil to her. But when she attacks Zatanna in her home, Mary finds herself allying with a female supervillain named Shade as her power seems to corrupt her and fill her with disdain for so many magic users who would drain her new powers away. Will Mary continue her descent into villainy, or be able to stop her plunge into evil and contempt for others?

Karate Kid is a refugee from the Legion of Superheroes in the 30th Century. But a super genetic disease makes him unable to return to the century of his birth without infecting and killing everyone else in the Legion. But he is desperate to find a cure and return home. Unfortunately, everyone he seeks out to help tells him they can find no sign of any disease. But is he truly disease free, or is the disease hidden so well that no one can find it? And are the people he is going to for help being honest and truthful with him? Or is the disease he supposedly carries going to be placed there by Darkseid, who is slowly bringing Karate Kid to him?

Donna Troy and Jason Todd have become displaced from their real place in the Multiverse, and with a Rogue Monitor they call Bob, have been seeking to find Ray Palmer before the other monitors find and eliminate him. But doing so means they will cross into other universes where the monitors are already recruiting villains, some dark reflections of the heroes of our own universe, in their quest to stop the coming conflict. But can they avert the coming crisis, or is their interference making the coming crisis even worse? And when Jason comes face to face with a heroic analogue of the Joker, whose daughter he met, fell in love with and died, will Jason be able to separate his hatred for the Joker who killed him in one of the universes with the Jokester, a hero who fights against a Villainous Injustice League?

Pied Piper and the Trickster are two villains that everyone believes murdered Bart Allen, the former Impulse and the New Flash. And in a way, they are responsible, but they didn't do the deed themselves. Still, their attempts to clear their name put them in opposition to Wally West, the new/old Flash, the Police, and every hero wanting to build up their street cred by bringing in the two villains who killed the Flash. With no one left to fall back on, the two must look to other villains for help. But can they trust anyone to help them, or will the other villains sell them out for the Price on their heads even as they look to find the one truly responsible for the Flash's death?

Well, I didn't read the first volume, so it was kind of hard to see where some of the story threads were coming from (the Mary Marvel one especially), but once I got into the stories, they were all just fine, though some of them were very hard to read (seeing Jimmy Olsen get the crap beat out of him by the Justice League was painful to read, as was the whole "Mary Marvel going to the side of evil" plotline, where she is being manipulated through some sort of mind control to the side of evil). Other than that, I enjoyed the book a lot.

It was especially nice to see the Real Legion of Superheroes that I remember reading in the late 70's and early 80's again, even though the only one we get to see is Karate Kid, the guy with no real superpowers, but enough knowledge of Karate to be able to compete with people who cast lightning or could increase their mass and strength exponentially. You gotta love someone like that.

I also loved the appearance, or should I say the re-appearance of some of the old-time characters like the Newsboy Legion. But I must say that most of the time, the proliferation of different DC Universes seems merely a ploy to collapse them again, and by doing so, sell more comic books. The storyline is a bit of a non-starter for me, as I view the whole idea rather cynically after having read Crisis on Infinite Earths back in the day.

So, while I think the books themselves are good, the whole idea just gets a "ho-hum" from me. Been There, Read That, Got The T-Shirt. This is nothing more to me than a rehash of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and that was done better, at least in my eyes. If you haven't read that, then yeah, this might seem mighty earthshaking. Otherwise, it seems like a version of that old saying, "Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it".