this better not be like captain america reborn...

Tim Drake, you also forget how Countdown had the sub-plot "Monarch vs. The Monitors" & the Countdown: Arena tie-in miniseries. Did either Infinite or Final Crisis have anything tying into that? HECK NO!!

Countdown never happened. That's the basic stand of DC.

Except that Trickster is dead.

Yep... which is both a good and a bad thing. There were some decent parts to Countdown (the Challengers, and the Piper/Trickster stuff), and Paul Dini probably did his best with the editorial nightmare he was handed... but on the whole, Countdown is better off forgotten. What sucks is that I plopped down $2.50 a week for that crud for an entire year, not to mention the Death of the New Gods "mini" series, and was then told: "Ooops, we didn't know what we were doing, and none of that stuff actually happened. We just screwed you out of $250+ dollars for an imaginary tale without imagination."

Even so, I'd rather remember it than Final Crisis...

I believe the current Action Comics issues have a back-up story featuring Captain Atom and it concerns his role as Monarch.

It's Batman reliving past experiances while the Joker plots to take over his body. Meanwhile, Bat's former sidekick has taken up the role of Batman. How is that like "Reborn" ???

Well, Final Crisis is a follow up to COIE, as it continues and expands on the story of the Monitor(s), who was/were the central characters of COIE. I don't think that's highly superficial. Now you may not like Morrison's interpretation of the Monitors (and by extention, his revising of the nature of the Monitor and Anti-Montor in COIE as their "probes"), but it doesn't invalidate that the story certainly connects with COIE through both the nature of the multiverse and the Monitors .

I think RIP stands on it's own quite well as an exploration of what makes Batman the ultimate crimefighter (he bests the Devil afterall). If they hadn't hyped it as the "Death of Batman" it may have played better, but the "Last Rites" issues really dovetail nicely with Final Crisis.

Countdown and DotNG were an editorial mess up of the highest order and DC should rightly be raked over the coals for them, but that doesn't impact Morrison's story. But you repeat another point that I find interesting, that the focus should have been on the main characters of the DCU. Looking at the original Crisis, the focus there was on the Monitors, Harbinger, Pariah, and Alex Luthor, all characters created for the event. Despite this, it was a successful event, where as Infinite Crisis and Identity Crisis, which did focus on the main DC characters, were both awful messes. So I don't think that who the event focuses on really factors into how it comes off as much as a good story does. Obviously we don't agree on what makes a good story (nor should we, it's highly subjective), but I think COIE disproves that it has to be the JLA at the centre of an event to pull it off.

I can see where this would upset fans of the character, no question. To continue the COIE analogy however, Earth-3 was destroyed in as much page space as was given to J'onn's death. Kole (a major Character in the leading book at the time) and Huntress (A DC mainstay) were obliterated in less space. I think it was very much in keeping with the pacing of the story, where Evil stays one step ahead of the heroes and rapidly builds up steam in the first 4 issues.

Again, I'd disagree that they were sidelines or footnote, and say they were consequences of the main story and certainly a part of it. And despite your disdain for the New Gods, the removal of Darkseid is a major status Quo change for the DCU as he's been trotted out as the preeminent villain for the past 20 years. RE-introducing the Multiverse to the DCU at large is also an event of consequence, albeit one they are holding back on exploring until Morrison gets to it.

Once again, you are free to like or dislike the series, but you can't argue it wasn't connected to the other Crises or was without consequence to the DCU.