LNH/REVIEW: Kid Review's Slightly Unhinged Reviews: Beige Countdown

[Drew Nilium]

A stage, with three silhouetted figures facing away from us! One by one they 
turn around, revealing themselves in the light!

The first one turns around! A young approximately-girl with ribbons in their 
dark hair, wearing a tweed jacket over a button-down shirt and tie, and holding 
a spiral notebook! "Numen Kid Review!"

The second one turns around! Pale skin, spiky pink hair and short-adult 
proportions under a flower-print labcoat! "Pneuma Kid Review!"

The third one turns around! Purple hair in twintails, wearing a leather jacket 
with metal rings hanging off of it and studs on the back making the periodic 
table entry for magnesium! "Ekpyrosis Kid Review!"

"Have arrived!"

Ekpyrosis Kid Review steps forward. "And we're gonna smack down your style sheets!"

"I--" Pneuma Kid Review pauses, turns to them. "No, what?"

"No no no!" Numen Kid Review hops down and starts gesticulating wildly! "What 
we're *actually* gonna do is start reviewing stuff in a new way! Specifically we 
just, had a reason to want to re-read Beige Countdown while we were putting it 
up on the wiki and we decided like, why not just go over it issue by issue and 
talk about each one? So we did, so here we go!!"

====

Prologue: I love this nonsense. <3

#12: I've read the Infinite Leadership Crisis a couple times, so I remember the 
status quo leading up to this point pretty well. This issue sets up where things 
are going to go next, and it's good at it; the stuff about the LNH leadership 
election is, of course, very relevant to stuff I've been working on.

#11: I love the weird, metafictional dread of the opening scene. Arthur is 
really good at evoking discomfort and presenting a situation which you can't 
quite grasp onto the metaphor of in a way that increases the ambiguity and the 
uncanniness.

#10: God, every time I come around to Rob's writing it impresses me. Even 
knowing how good he is, you forget the lavish amounts of detail and the 
thoughtfully worked-in gags that slide in and energize every paragraph. And 
here, he's taking a whole bunch of Legionnaires he doesn't usually write and 
exploring each of them, throwing them into situations that are custom-made to 
show off what's interesting about them. He even throws in wonderful detail about 
the koala-focused ship design of the Christicantthinkofagoodname Empire. 
Aaaaaaaa I want to be this good at all of this.

Betterman's Last Flight: My god, this is a lavish story that makes you think you 
know exactly what's going to happen and then rugpulls you perfectly. :D

#9: Rob is pushing himself hard in this one, exploring all kinds of superheroic 
themes, stretching characters and the things they represent. It feels like kind 
of a struggle, one that's flawed at times, and I wonder if that's why #8 hasn't 
come out yet; but it's a worthwhile effort, interesting, engaging, and 
enjoyable. Jack Kirby's musings on art are my favorite part, and they're an 
expression of this fundamental problem, you know? It's worth slapping up what 
you can and getting it out there.

Special: I love this so much. The terrible fantasy of an awful guy and it's 
hilarious.

#7: Ripping Dancer's darkest moment. This is fraught and good. In another 
writer's hands, Lucas Dunn's story could feel exploitative, but here, it's 
just... what happens, sometimes. You have to put your hand out to help, even if 
it may not be taken.

#6: I love Irony Man's absolute tiredness and done-ness here, the feeling like 
the life is being sucked out of him by this deal, and the ambiguity as to 
whether he threw the election. (Also, I'm absolutely bringing back a gag from this.)

#5: Oh my god this is such a ridiculously good psychological profile story. Holy 
shit with Bicycle Repair Lad peeling away Hex's facade. It's so good, holy shit. 
Arthur mentions at the end being worried about getting BRL wrong but this is 
perfeeeect.

#1: Another spectacular character exploration story. This is the alpha and the 
omega of the Ultimate Ninja, or at least, Arthur's take on him, a creature 
deeply entwined with violence, finding happiness in violence, letting it lead 
him to peace, but finding out that, in truth, he's become more deeply entwined 
with responsibility - not heroism, but a simple sense of a job that needs to be 
done, and which shall be done, with violence. It's gooooooooood.

#0: This is where it all comes together, and wow, it *comes together* into this 
tangled ball (complimentary) of emotion, legacy, tragedy, continuity, magic, 
death, and strangeness. It's a slide toward the inevitable, but one that shows 
how it's been held off, again and again, and presents the possibility that it 
can be stopped, and the possibility that it can't. Weird and strong.

====

"We wanna do this with Beige Midnight too!" enthuses Pneuma Kid Review. "But we 
might do something else first! Who knows!! I sure don't!!!"

"And if you're wondering why there's three of us now..." Ekpyrosis Kid Review 
shrugs. "Don't worry about it!"

====

Drew "trying out a lot of new stuff from now on" Nilium