Keith Giffen, layout artist from 52, is returning for Countdown; once again, there will be a rotating crew of artists. (In the first four issues, they'll include Jim Calafiore, David Lopez, Carlos Magno and Jesus Saiz.) And most issues will have backup features, although what exactly they'll be is still under wraps. Countdown's biggest formal difference from 52 is on the writing side, since the four-writer "rock band" format of 52 was hard to duplicate, and as Dan DiDio, DC's senior v-p and executive editor of DC Universe, put it, "From a publishing perspective, the reality is that if you don't have scripts, you can't draw a comic." Instead, Countdown will be "showrun" by Paul Dini, who had a similar role with the animated incarnations of Superman and Batman, and worked as a writer and story editor on Lost. He's overseeing and breaking down the story, which, DiDio said, will provide "more flexibility on the writer side." Individual issues' scripters will include Adam Beechen, Tony Bedard, Sean McKeever and the team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray.

52 has been very effective at driving traffic to direct-market comics stores every week, but that traffic hasn't necessarily translated to increased sales on other series. Countdown will attempt to remedy that: while 52 had an isolated time line, Countdown will chronologically run alongside DC's other major superhero titles—although it won't continue 52's practice of having each issue take place in a single week, which DiDio noted made cliffhangers much harder to pull off. Countdown "will act as the spine of the universe for the next year," DiDio said. "It allows us to move the story line forward and reflect it in all our other series—it won't be something where you have to buy every other comic to understand what's going on, but you'll get a sense that there's a world out there, and they're all part of that world. We have a weekly distribution system; we should tell stories that match that distribution." Big crossover events, of course, are infamous for logistical disasters when a crucial title falls behind schedule—Marvel's Civil War is the most notable recent example, and DC recently announced that Wonder Woman 5, originally scheduled to be Allan Heinberg's final issue, will be replaced by a fill-in, perhaps to avoid throwing off the Amazons Attack project. Countdown, DiDio said, is being prepared as far in advance as possible to make it easier for other series to dovetail with it: as of February 12, he noted, the first 15 scripts had already been written, and the first eight had been drawn.

So how much is Countdown thematically a sequel to 52? "Apples and oranges," DiDio said. "This moves fast—it's much more action driven. But one thing they have in common is that Countdown will explore some of the parts of the DC universe we haven't seen in quite a while." In particular, it will involve some of the ideas Jack Kirby created for DC in the '70s, and that the company has deliberately given a low profile over the past few years: the New Gods, the Great Disaster, the Fourth World and the villain of the piece, Darkseid. "It was a rather concerted effort on our part," according to DiDio, "first to keep the Fourth World material out of our comics, and then to find the point to reintroduce it. Most people point to those stories as a high point in comic book storytelling, and of Jack Kirby's long, incredible career. It's so rich in depth, we'd be foolish to not take advantage of it. We just had to find the best way to do it."