Yesterday my Twitter feed was crazy with promotion for Convergence, the latest symptom of DC’s Eventitis. I was going to ignore the whole thing after my disappointment with The Multiversity, a series of unconnected one-shots taking place in the multiverse. It was overpriced and depressing. Even if I had money coming in I wouldn’t pick that up anymore. It’s everything I don’t want in my superhero comics. In other words, typical New 52.
But then came the listing of the week four tie-ins. Much like Blackest Night, a series of comics will be produced acting like certain titles never went away. They just became zombies. Convergence is different in that they will be going back to previous continuities. The post-Crisis timeline, Tangent, Kingdom Come, and Flashpoint are represented in the story. the buzz came from the news that the pre-Crisis DCU would also take part in the event. This was hailed as great news…mostly by the comics press like Newsarama. However, when you get into the details this isn’t the potential return of any non-New 52 continuity, and it’s not the great news it’s being treated as.
Newsarama has gone over the information DC Comics has let out and may have pieced together the basic plot. Through tricking two versions of time-traveler Booster Gold, Newsarama theorizes that Brainiac has taken over Vanishing Point, where the Linear Men observe time and space (and were asleep at the wheel when it came to protecting the DCU from Flashpoint creating the New 52).
What’s the deal with all the domes mentioned in the solicitations?
Answer: Each dome contains a location from DC history that Brainiac has collected.
Working under the assumption that Brainiac was told the location of Vanishing Point, he’s now able to access any time or place from DC’s history by traveling along the timestream.
And it’s important to know that Brainiac is, at his core, a collector. There have been various incarnations of Brainiac in DC’s history, but ever since the beginning, he was known as an alien who stole entire cities, shrinking them and putting them into bottles, so he could learn more about the universe.
Since Convergence stars a version of Brainiac who can travel throughout the timestream from Vanishing Point, it looks like he’s collecting entire cities or locations, and instead of putting them into bottles, he’s putting them under “domes.”
So it seems that, once Brainiac got access to Vanishing Point, he traveled to the pre-reboot DCU and bottled up Metropolis and other cities of Earth. And he must have done the same to alternate earths, like Captain Carrot’s world. And he traveled to the future as well, putting the Legion of Super-Heroes under a dome and Booster Gold’s future into a dome.
In Convergence, these worlds finally encounter each other, because Brainiac is putting them onto one planet (presumably Blood Moon, the planet/spaceship on which Brainiac is known to travel), and he’s watching what happens when they all meet.
At least Jeff Parker is writing this one.
So some cities will remain under domes according to some solicits while others will have the domes removed. Interesting plot, but think about what this means. Brainiac has access to all of the DCU’s history. All of these cities are either coming from the proper timeline, or offshoots. I know there were writers and editors pushing for the Kingdom Come miniseries to actually be the future and would work towards that even if other writers and editors were ignoring that attempt. All of these cities, according to the solicits, have been “under the dome” (and I’m sure the CBS TV series had nothing to do with this story idea…yeah, right, Marvel isn’t the only one being ripped off here) for a year. This leads to my first question.
Are these other universes alternate timelines or the actual DC Universe ending at the point the next continuity started? Trying to explain what I mean would confuse me as well as you, but I’ll to go with the analogy of the New Gods. The old gods died and a new universe was created. That as I recall is part of the origin of the New Gods of New Genesis and Apokalips. This is also popular in other sci-fi like Doctor Who, that our universe (or the universe of that story) is simply a replacement that will one day die and be replaced by something new. Is that what happened? Were the Legion of Superheroes and Kingdom Come eras supposed to be part of a replaced timeline? You can make the case for Flashpoint as it was the DCU altered and later replaced by the New 52. However, the Tangent universe (which was fun until “Superman’s Reign“, if not sooner) and anything else that showed up in the Multiversity series (Newsarama mentions Captain Carrot’s universe as part of this event and he showed up in the first Multiversity one-shot) are not DC history, some way off from the DCU proper, whatever that may be at the time.
This means Brainiac has access to the multiverse, or hypertime, or whatever DC is going with now. Confusing, isn’t it? As I’ve said in the past, Crisis On Infinite Earths made things worse, not better. Assuming we’re going with the multiverse/hypertime theory over the replacement theory, this means that Brainiac has kept some of our favorite characters away from their universe for a year…and you only wish that was the last bit of torture they’re about to deal with. When we see the Titans, it’s AFTER the events of Cry For Justice. (Beyond that I don’t know. The solicit talks about Roy trying to resurrect Lian instead of helping the team, but writer Fabian Nicieza claims the solicit isn’t !00% accurate.) Superman and Wonder Woman are having a…wait, sorry. Superman and LOIS LANE are having a baby, and we know that’s never gone right since the Crisis. (There’s a story from the Armageddon 2001 event where Lois dies because the baby kicked too hard in the womb.) Another Superman and Supergirl try to use to Phantom Zone to escape the dome and learns Supergirl would die during the original Crisis. Also, she’s wearing that stupid headband.
Do you really think the people who have killed pregnant Lois more than once won’t do it again?
The solicits also mention the main universe(s) heroes fighting not just the villains of Earth-3 mark 1 or Quard, but Captain Carrot, the Tangent Heroes, Flashpoint Aquaman (who could be called a villain, really), and the Kingdom Come heroes. It’s hero versus hero in this story. The lighthearted fun won’t be there. Nobody is going to be the same, ala Dr. Light, that we remember them. I could do multiple articles going over every solicit and pointing out what I don’t like (and admittedly what I do), but it’s Christmas time and I have more important things to go over.
And they’re not staying around. There isn’t going to be an Earth-S based series when this is over, or the Charlton heroes coming back in their classic form. They’re all going to be tortured, possibly killed off, and then never be heard from again. This is the 2000s. This is the New 52. DC has declared war on fun (insert movie rumor joke here). It’s all angst, darkness, complicated villains who come off cooler than the heroes…do you really think, even with some of the names on board like Len Wein or Dan Jurgens (who is also taking part in Future’s End, the least fun you can get with the DC Universe…for now) that we’re getting something like “Retroactive”? I don’t think so. This isn’t the return of the pre or post Crisis DCUs. This is the further torture of pre-52 and the “improving” (read “darkening”) of the classic versions. Look at what DC produces nowadays, people.
So yeah, I’m not interested in Convergence. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong but this isn’t some heralded return of either of the classic universes. This is DC ripping off Marvel’s upcoming time-travel storyline, while screwing around with our nostalgic favorites. I’ll stick to trying to get more classic comics (when I can afford to again) rather than the further desecration of the DC I knew and still love.
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