Countdown to Final Crisis #26

"Countdown" has been renamed "Countdown to Final Crisis" as of issue #26. While "Countdown" issues #52-27 choose to utilize the "Heroes" method of story telling - jumping from group to group showing a few pages of each story line as you go - issue #26 is generally exposition focusing on the Monitors. I believe DC was shooting for this issue to be a good jumping on point for readers as the first two-thirds of the book has the various Monitors talking to each other regarding the current state of the Multiverse. I thought we already went through this earlier when they all agreed to something but now they are all agreeing to "war", whatever that means. The true motivation behind Monarch, formerly the very cool Caption Atom, is still not revealed. He must be brain damaged as Captian Atom was never evil and he comes across as such in these pages. In the end we jump to Earth 8 to catch up on "the Challengers", Kyle Rayner and company, on the search for Ray Palmer. Why are they searching for Ray Palmer? Who knows? Then we jump to Earth 15. Why? I don't know. I need a scorecard for all of these Earths. Can DC put up a chart at DC online to help me out? Oh and Darkseid has something to do with all of this as seen in the last splash panel. I know we are headed to Final Crisis, but head writer Paul Dini and company are taking their sweet time getting there. I just don't see the character motivations and what this all has to do with the New Gods, Ray Palmer, Monarch, et al. Hopefully these guys will kick it into high gear as we get to the home stretch but color me unimpressed with the series to this point.