A bland start to an event.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Jurgens, Jeff King
Art: Ethan Van Sciver
What They Say:
Where do worlds go when they die? The Earthquakes felt round the Multiverse, Superman’s lost days after “Doomed,” the World’s End-all these points will converge as the history of the DCU is spun from a new perspective, the perspective of a mad god and his arrogant child. The biggest story in DC history ties into literally every DC story ever told-and it all begins here. Kingdom Come, Red Son, Wild West Justice League, Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew-all the worlds you remember can still be found on Telos. Everything matters. Every story matters.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Against my best judgment for quite some time, I ended up picking up the zero issue of Convergence. The event series is one that I like in concept since the idea of doing something funky and weird while moving offices across the country makes a certain amount of sense to just play with it all and have a good time. Having been a DC Comics fan since the 80’s, there’s a lot of characters and ideas that I’d like to see come back, but at the same time I’m just not that deeply invested in it all anymore and am more likely to trade-wait for something like this so I can check out more books than usual and those that I might not otherwise. But I found myself suckered into picking up the zero issue because, damnit, it has Dan Jurgens writing it. And I enjoyed a lot of his old event books from years ago. It also doesn’t hurt having Evan Van Sciver handling the art chores.
Unfortunately, Van Sciver doesn’t really get to flex his creative side here all that much. This book is all about setup in a sense, but it doesn’t leave you really feeling it with what it wants to do. We’re dropped into Superman having apparently followed Brainiac into a black hole, presumably from some ongoing event I’m not reading nor given any heads up about here to make sense of it, only to find himself facing this sort of ultra-cosmic Brainiac that exists out of the timeline and deals with all sorts of universes and timelines. It’s not an unfamiliar idea for comics fans in general, so you can run with it easily enough. But the book is just so dialogue heavy between the two where they’re talking past each other and Brainiac isn’t really explaining anything that it just gets bogged down as he goes on about the variances in Superman’s lives across the universes, and that he’s the central figure that Brainiac has to contend with in each of them. Not a bad concept to work with, but what we get is that is ultra Brainiac is going off to Superman’s Earth for a mission of its own and leaves Superman to contend with this weird world that he’s now found himself on.
Where this places us is on a world that goes on for millions of miles and is essentially a large sandbox of playthings orchestrated by a version of Brainiac that’s left behind, but is actually the consciousness of the world itself. Through it, we see many domed cities of Metropolis that have been collected by the ultra Brainiac and that there are endless variations that Superman can choose from so he can have a new place to call home. What’s neat is that we do see so many variations of things here as the two “engage” each other in dialogue, getting a look at the numerous ways that Brainiac has been presented over the years in all its forms. There’s some fun moments with Metropolis itself, but that’s weaker overall because it’s not a compelling city visually – at least outside of its 31st century aspect. But that’s what the book is mostly about, just running through the setup in a mostly obtuse kind of way before it drops us into… well, other books where we’ll see these various timeline worlds converge and fight it out. It’s not actually teased here, though we get a lot of pages showing off books from over the decades that will make appearances.
In Summary:
With the zero issue clocking in at five bucks, it doesn’t do much here to feel compelling or engaging. It’s like Brainiac(s) and Superman are having a tense afternoon tea as they talk about the reality of things, with Brainiac being the smart guy in the room and Superman just wanting to go home to presumably more interesting things. And I’m kind of in Superman’s camp here. There’s not a lot really going on here and we get a good chunk of time with wastelands and barren backgrounds while playing with some light philosophical ideas. The general idea of the series is one that’s certainly fun since it plays to what I find used to be one of DC Comics’ strengths in its multiverse. But it’s executed in such a bland way here that it’s practically turning me off from looking at the other books all that much, though I might pick and choose a couple. I can’t imagine myself picking up any further prime Convergence issues if it’s like this one though.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: April 1st, 2015
MSRP: $4.99
