Last post was a bit silly: the guys at Comic Pants are having a vote on whether their new trade paperback reviews should be called "Fat Pants" or "Waiting for the Trade." Seeing as most of their other features already have pant-related monikers (i.e. "Bell-Bottom" Picks, Short Pants), I was hoping they'd go for "Fat Pants."

Anyway, onto other things. Last March, all DC Comics jumped forward by one year. Then in May (I think), DC launched [i]52[/i], a weekly series that showed what happened during that missing year. Despite starring mostly minor characters, the series has done very well in sales, and has shipped on time every single week (and in a time when many monthly comics come out late, that's really something).

Now it looks like DC wants to capitalize its success with a new weekly series, titled [i]Countdown[/i]. It starts at issue #51 and goes down all the way to zero. I'm pretty excited: one of my favorite writers, Paul Dini, is the main story architect, and one of the main characters is going to be Superman's pal himself, Jimmy Olsen. The series looks like it's also going to solve some lingering questions, such as where Ray Palmer (the original Atom) has disappeared to, what's up with Mary Marvel, and what's been going on with the New Gods.

More info on [i]Countdown[/i] can be found here:
Paul Dini interview
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/003562848.cfm
Dan DiDio (Senior VP-Executive Director) and Mike Marts (Senior Editor) interview)
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=102192
Keith Giffen (layout penciller of [i]Countdown[/i] and [i]52[/i]) interview
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=102928 (there's a beautiful line in here where Giffen tackles the recent comic book lateness problem head-on)