Dirty Pool

This month, DC put out a little crossover between the three Superman titles and Wonder Woman, "Sacrifice." Supposedly, this book tied in with the Coundown miniseries The OMAC Project, written by Greg Rucka (who also writes Adventures of Superman and Wonder Woman). Except, as it turns out, "Sacrifice" is not a tie-in, it's a direct continuation of the story, enough so that readers who jump straight from OMAC 3 to OMAC 4 will find that the antagonist of the book has died off-panel. So what we have is two hijacked books.

Rucka issued an apology for his "dirty pool" on Newsarama. Well thanks for the offer, Greg, but if I need a handjob, I've got someone.

And the bitch of it all is, I don't think OMAC needed four extra issues to tell this. If the main plot points and emotional beats are: Max makes Superman hallucinate, Superman beats up Batman, Wonder Woman tries to stop Superman, can't and so she kills Max to break his control, guess what? That's OMAC issue 4. Building it up as a mystery? Pretty lame mystery, one that anybody who'd read the Crisis Counseling writeup of OMAC #3 could have figured out by the end of Superman 219.

What we got out of this was two pointless crossover issues that diluted the narrative, and two issues that could have been compressed into one, a six-issue minseries that's really a ten-issue minseries, and several thousand gypped readers.

If you knew it was dirty pool, Greg, then you should have done something else. That you didn't tells me you're not as regretful as you wish us to believe.