Description:
A CONVERGENCE tie-in graphic novel!
Once, there were infinite Earths. Then there came a Crisis…a
Zero Hour…a Flashpoint. Worlds lived. Worlds died. But some worlds
must now fight for their future—in the Convergence!
The evil alien intelligence known as Brainiac has stolen 50 doomed
cities from places throughout time and space and sealed them behind
impenetrable domes. Now, after a year, the domes will come down—and
the heroes and villains of 50 dead worlds must battle to be the last
one standing!
In this volume:
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS: The Dark Knight and his army of allies
face the rage of the One Man Army Corps, OMAC!
THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN: The Man of Steel and his mighty cousin
Supergirl combat the criminals of the Phantom Zone and the sentient
apes from the world of Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth!
SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES: Stranded in the future,
young Kal-El and his high-flying friends must save Metropolis from
the invasion of the Atomic Knights!
GREEN LANTERN CORPS: Hal Jordan, John Stewart and Guy Gardner must
overcome their differences to defeat the mad gods of the Great
Disaster!
HAWKMAN: Katar Hol and Hawkwoman soar into battle against some of
Kamandi’s deadliest foes!
The CRISIS era’s most memorable characters wage war against the
classic creations of Jack Kirby, the King of Comics himself, in
CONVERGENCE: CRISIS BOOK ONE!
Collects:
Convergence: Superboy and the
Legion of Superheroes #1-2, Convergence: Batman and
the Outsiders #1-2, Convergence: Green
Lantern Corps #1-2, Convergence: Adventures
of Superman #1-2, Convergence: Hawkman #1-2
Authors:
Various
Artists:
Various
Published
By: DC Comics
Published
When:
Oct. 20 2015
Parental Rating:
Teen
Review:
This collection of Convergence stories could
become a case study in the arrogance of genius superheroes. Across
these various tales, Braniac 5, Hal Jordan,
Bruce Wayne and Superman
are all trying to
figure out the dome – what is it, where
did it come from, how can we get out? Only
Superman appears to be
involving the larger scientific
community
in the analysis and experiments. As usual, my review will cover each
two-part tale separately. These tales are
often disappointing, but for the sake of Supergirl’s vision and Metamorpho’s
tragic transformation I’ll raise the score for the whole collection
to 3 capes out of 5.
Superboy and the
Legion of Superheroes
This is a sweet
story, one in which Superboy
grows up a little. Stuart Moore weaves into the
tale many elements of Superboy's internal
duality. He comes from
an alien planet but lives now on
Earth. His time is from
the past but here he is in
the far future.
He wrestles with childhood
memories and childish
emotions (especially poignant
is his whisper at one point, that "I
miss my dog") vs the weight
of responsibility that has been given
to him by
the Legion. The
leadership role does ring a bit false, that
they would award to this obviously youthful
and still
maturing hero such a significant leadership
role. If the Legion team
were truly as egalitarian as they say in their core philosophy, his
leadership would be earned, not accorded by dint of his future-to-him
history.
The art in
the first chapter is
annoyingly amateurish. Eyes and hairstyles
show influences from the world
of Manga; the figures
look very basic, drawn over-simply;
proportions are frequently out of whack. In
one panel, Colossal Boy is said to be stuck at 12 feet tall, but if
that's true then
the Invisible Kid
right beside him must be 9
feet tall. And the relative
height of Lightning Lass and Superboy changes from one panel to the
next, from nearly equal in one to
her barely reaching his shoulder in
another.
The artistic combination
of Mark Farmer and Gus Storm in part 1 switches
to Mark Farmer and Peter Gross in part 2,
and the result is
more solid and consistent visuals.
Batman and
the Outsiders
The 1980s-era stories of Batman
and the Outsiders
always struck me as odd. The Batman stories
of the time were portraying him increasingly as a dark, dangerous
loner. Gathering a group of Outsiders and leading them as in this
series seemed in such contrast with Batman’s solo books that they
were impossible to reconcile.
In this story, as well, the dark knight, the
solo crime-fighting vigilante is willingly leading a band of B-level
heroes into battle. But then the strength of this Mark
Andreyko story is in the touching
relationships and
the drama between
them on a human level.
Geo-Force and Black Lightning need to learn to
cope with the real world, and how they can make it a better place,
despite the dome-induced loss of powers. Katana and Halo have some
sweet interactions. But the plight of Metamorpho towers above them
all.
The year-long suppression of super-powers under the dome meant that
Metamorpho became Rex again. He was able to have a normal life with
his romantic partner. And a year into their time together, they were
only growing closer together, their love for one another stronger.
Which makes the scene all the more poignant
when the dome is lifted and his
toxic form returns during
an intimate moment with her. It leads
to a burn on her and an emotional scar on him, a
moving sequence that is mixed in with the other powers and battles of
the story.
The team works
together to battle OMAC and the mutant throngs that follow in his
wake for the attack. The battle rages throughout the second part of
the story, in all its destructive force, and artist Carlos
D’Anda keeps the pages filled with the
intensity of the combatants and the size of the resulting
destruction. That aspect of the story is unremarkable, and pales in
comparison with the heart-wrenching pathos of Rex-turned-Metamorpho
and the beauty with which his story unfolds within the larger drama.
Green Lantern
Corps
Guy Gardner
was always one of the most annoying
heroes in my books, back
in the Justice League International days in
particular. His leadership and courage in
the Injustice comics were the first turn toward likability in my
eyes. In this Convergence tale, he is the central character, and
while he exudes all of the machismo and arrogance I’ve come to
expect from Guy Gardner, his fearlessness is on full display. Whether
confronting impossible odds against a powerful enemy, or wrestling
with his inner demons with the help of his therapist, this is as
close to a likable Guy Gardner as I have ever met.
He is a fascinating and complicated (if not particularly nuanced)
character in this 2-part tale. His core is ultimately that of a hero,
but the exterior is, as ever, a brawny act-first thug with serious
grudge. The grudge may, however, have some merit and he trades
therapy for fisticuffs to work through it.
In the meantime, he teams with John Stewart and Hal Jordan to
conquer some terrifying foes from the Durvale and Earth-AD universe,
a battle that is ultimately mostly backdrop for Guy’s journey.
The artistic credits go to “story-tellers”
David Gallaher
and Steve Ellis
with Ande Parks
doing the inks.
They concentrate more on the human part of
the story, body language and facial elements, appropriately matching
the visuals to the narrative emphasis.
Adventures of Superman
The strength of this tale is in Supergirl's
introspective narration. It almost makes up
for some gaping flaws in the plot.
Metropolis is trapped, as in
all Convergence tales, under the dome.
Elsewhere it renders the heroes powerless,
a fact barely acknowledged in this one. In fact, their loss of powers
adds to the absurd and ludicrous scenario.
With the help of science, Superman and
Supergirl plan to enter the Phantom Zone, somehow get back out of it,
somewhere outside the dome, then return and help their city from the
outside.
I know, I know.
Comics laws of science are
not the same
as for our reality,
we must suspend
such thinking in order to believe in
super-powerful beings who can fly, transit the vastness of space,
freeze with their breath, have laser eyes, and more. But
this proposed solution to their Dome
problem really stretches that suspension of
disbelief!
The first problem is the very large assumption that
stepping through a portal from domed Metropolis into the Phantom Zone
will somehow restore their powers. Then, if they
do manage to get
into and then
back out of the Phantom
Zone, they will
still have no idea where in all
of space-time is the Dome and
their city. Yet
they are confident that they will be able to
find it and rescue it. Such naivete or
arrogance! I expect better writing from Marv Wolfman, this is well
short of his best work.
But our heroes do get out of the dome and into the Phantom Zone, and they do have their powers return. And they encounter a gang
of denizens and prisoners of the Zone. This leads to a seemingly
endless series of panels and pages, depicting gray-clad prisoners
pummeling Superman. Artist Roberto Viacava
may have done this section on auto-pilot,
they are so many and so repetitive.
Fortunately, Supergirl manages to evade them,
long enough to receive visions of her future. Since the Convergence
is bringing together many realities and times, she stumbles into a
nexus of future paths, and this pre-Crisis version of Supergirl
discovers that a brave but tragic sacrifice and death lies in her
future.
This is where the story-telling gets stronger
at last. Through the rest of the story, Supergirl is distracted to
varying degrees by this revelation. Her emotional
reaction and her need
to wrestle with the glimpse
of her own future death made for moving reading, and
ultimately saved an otherwise forgettable Superman tale.
Hawkman
The 40 different Convergence two-part tales in
these collections show occasional glimpses of different aspects of
what life might look like if an urban center was trapped and
completely cut off for an entire year. This tale focuses on elements
of social unrest – if a
city of several million were
really cut off for a whole year, under
mysterious circumstances, would society fall apart? Our
Covid pandemic has
shown
how unlikely it is for people to all get along, or to
have patience, or endure shortages, or even
to agree to leave things to the experts.
Fortunately, Hawkman and Hawkwoman are visiting
Metropolis and get trapped by the dome. Since their powers are
mechanical and technological in nature, they can still use their gear
to help quell conflicts. And since, it turns out, this particular
unrest was manipulated by a secret society of Thanagarian refugees,
the presence of the Hawks is even more fortunate.
But of course, in a Convergence story, their
opponents are not a local terror cell, but rather some of the
sentient animals of the world of Kamandi. Their battle moves outside
the city, where they face vast hordes of man-bats and militaristic
rats.
Our
author Jeff Parker and artists Tim Truman and Enrique Alcatena
keep the second half of the story moving at a brisk pace, after a
somewhat plodding first section. It ends with mystical visions
granted to the Hawks, as they move quickly past the horrific
implications of what they have seen, and rededicate themselves to one
another, no matter what the future brings.
ISBN-10: 1401258085
ISBN-13:
978-1401258085
Language: English
Pages:
272 pages
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