Matt,

My guess is that Luthor put up the satellites, then Bruce took control of them at the end of the first Superman/Batman arc, when bought up a lot of LexCorp. I think Bruce "lost" them in the takeover of KORD Corp/WayneTech.

I'm still going to pass on "Day of Whatever", but I'm picking up the other three, though I'm somewhat less interested in Rann/Thanagar than OP and VU.

I thought Kyle was the Lantern in R/TW?

Also heard that Captain Comet is in it. Though "beloved" might be a little strong unless you were a huge fan of the Secret Society of Super-Villains.

Donna's coming back in her own mini.

I was going to pick up "Day of Vengence" before I knew it was part of all this.

It is about the Spectre, after all. ^^

I agree with you on that point Mike. It is a waste of a good toy. The story PROVES that it's a waste of a good toy. It was terribly destructive. It's possible that Ted will come back rather than be replaced by some one new but I don't trust anyone at DC to make me believe that he's Ted rather than some take on Ted. Shazam told him that he was being sucked into a battle that was meant for more than a mortal man and took the Scarab from him. It sounded like an apology for what is to come. SHAZAM seems to me to be the type to help the helpless unless he has a reason not to. That's why he gave Billy and his sister and Freddy access to his power. He didn't want another Tech Adam on his conscience. I wonder if Ted's death isn't a bit like Wonder Girl's being killed by a Super Man robot only to wake up and join a battle somewhere else in a place with red skies. Of course Lilith looks to be gone and forgotten and few have complained about her loss.

Someone previously said that Beetle was not redeemed so much as degraded. I disagree. He WAS redeemed in my eyes at least and the rest of the comics DCU was more or less condemned by their own lack of empathy. They looked bad and the plot made them look bad and it was pretty clearly on purpose. SO congratulations to the writers. I don't like the comics version of the Justice League or the Justice Society much anymore. They might as well be the Justice Machine now. And to stretch that metaphor further when I don't like the Justice Machine then I don't care if Diviner kills Challenger or if they get back together again. I don't care if Talismin is really dead or if Demon is going to get help for his dope promblem, if Maxinor is going to betray them all or if Blazer hates her father and mother and the implants are killing her. I just stop caring. The JLA are exposed as a bunch of Myopic Jedi idiot savants in a clique. Ted was shown to be a much better friend to them than they were to him. 

I still see the end of the book as the writers having Beetle announce that he is not made of the same stuff as Dan Dreiburg. That counts for a little.

It doesn't make up for killing Beetle though.

I reiterate that it was the Justice League who got really got drug through the mud. Powerful yes. Loyal. No. Caring? Not really. Sympathetic? Not so much.

They might as well change their names to the back stabbing too busy for you right now so sorry here's a flight belt as a consolation prize bastard league.

Maybe it will turn out that Max killed a brain washed Durlan impersonating the real Blue Beetle who is really out on a  mission for the New Gods trying to get Ambush Bug to go back to wearing pants...at least when he's in public.

Brian Lockhart wrote: One more thing- You could just as easily argue that Giffen and DeMatteis "drug Beetle through the mud" because he was a serious character for decades, even when Len Wien wrote his new adventures for DC, until the "funny League" got a hold of him.

I wouldn't argue that at all.  I'd say it's a fact.  Where were those who thought COUNTDOWN was a rotten Beetle story when Giffen & DeMatteis were writing he and Booster so completely out of character as to be unrecognizable...characterizations that did so much harm to them in 17 years that no one, fan or fictional character, took them seriously?  Sorry.  As much as some love the late 80s JLA and FKATJL, it ruined these characters for almost 20 years, making them the butt of far too many jokes and the laughing stock of the DCU.  For the life of me, I can't see how anyone can defend FKATJL while bitching about COUNTDOWN, particularly on the grounds of the former having more "respect for character" than the latter.

I think there is a distinction to be drawn.  Whatever you or I think of the "Bwa-ha-ha" League of the late 80s, it worked.  And by worked, I mean sold books.  I'm not sure what the level of sales were, but they were strong enough to justify the Justice League Europe spin-off and the Justice League Quarterly book and I may be forgetting some.  And while there may have been other economic reasons for the spin-offs, they were all mostly based on the "Bwa-ha-ha" template.

This isn't like Morrison on Animal Man, for example, where a creator took a little used or cared for character, did some crazy stuff with it in a book that, frankly, never sold that well even with all that, and left the character (whatever Morrison may have intended) damaged.

DC didn't just tolerate the funny Justice League, they embraced it and promoted it.  They made a lot of money off it.  And now they're crapping all over it and, to some extent, the people who loved it.  In fact, they're taking advantage of the success of the "Bwa-ha-ha" era TO crap all over it.  It's the emotional connection that they're exploting to sell give the story in COUNTDOWN its punch.  How many fans would care at all about a story that involved Detroit-era Leaguer Vibe putting a bullet into Gypsy?

The "Bwa-ha-ha" era may have damaged some characters, but it wasn't trying to do that.  It was trying to do something positive and useful with them.  There's nothing positive or useful about what's being done to those characters now.  They're just being sacrificed.

Mike

ASM under JMS is still making a lot of money for the company, but I don't think it's treating that character with much respect at all.  That's how much credence I give to the hit that was the BWAHAHA era of JLA.

I'd contend your statement above, specifically.  I don't think they were doing anything positive or useful with them, Booster and Beetle especially, when they all-but openly mocked their inability and ineffectiveness as superheroes...something never seen in Blue Beetle's book and touched on, but dealt with, in Booster's book.  They crapped on these characters and changed them into Abbot and Costello in order to have a comedy duo in the JLA.  Frankly, if nothing else, COUNTDOWN rectified this for me.  They are not the buffoons, lovable or not, that Giffen, DeMatties & Co. made them out to be.  We can debate all day whether or not Beetle should have died (I don't think he should have) but his portrayal in COUNTDOWN went a long way to correct what I see as the mistake of the late 80s laugh-fest that was the JLA and it's spin-offs. 

Nuts. Mike just said everything I was going to say, and said it better than I was planning on.

There was absolutely no damage done to any of these characters during the 80s that could not easily be undone. Do you lament that Beetle and Booster were played as comic relief? So play them straight again. Problem solved.

It worked for Batman.