Review: Convergence Flashpoint book 2

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 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:
THE ATOM: It’s atomic fusion as Ray Palmer joins forces with Ryan Choi against the man who killed him—Deathstroke the Terminator!
SPEED FORCE: Wally West leads the Flash family in a race to protect their city against the onslaught of Flashpoint’s warmongering Wonder Woman!
THE TITANS: With their team in tatters, Starfire, Donna Troy and Arsenal are the last line of defense against the world-conquering Extremists!
BATMAN AND ROBIN: It’s up to a dysfunctional Bat-family—the Dark Knight Detective, his son Damian, and his prodigal protégé Jason Todd—to stop an Extremist invasion of Gotham City!
HARLEY QUINN: When the going gets tough, the tough get crazy—which is why Harley Quinn is teaming with Poison Ivy and Catwoman against Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew!
The legends of the pre-Flashpoint DC Universe make a last stand against threats from worlds both brutal and bizarre in CONVERGENCE: FLASHPOINT BOOK TWO!

Collects: Convergence The Atom #1-2, Convergence Speed Force #1-2, Convergence The Titans #1-2, Convergence Batman and Robin #1-2, Convergence Harley Quinn #1-2
Authors: Various
Artists: Various
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: Oct. 27 2015
Parental Rating: Teen

Review:

This is the final TPB collection in this series, the end of the Convergence cross-over story-line and our Convergence-related reviews. As usual, we will review each in turn. Overall it merits 2.5 capes, the stories are pleasant enough but cannot hold up in the larger crossover collection.

The Atom

A good comic or graphic novel will tell as much or more of the story through the art and the visual narrative as through the words and the written narrative. The pictures, layout, colors, sequencing, framing and more all communicate to the reader, in the best such stories.

There are places where this tale reaches for such lofty heights. I am not familiar with the broader body of work by Steve Yeowell (pencils), but I like what I see in this story. There were several pages where I paused to admire the visuals, as he worked wonders with a very strange concept – the changing hands of the Atom. The dome eliminated the superpowers of most heroes, but somehow the Atom had the ability to make one hand extremely large. It’s an idea that could turn utterly ridiculous visually, and Yeowell works hard to rein in the potential for silliness in the imagery and communicate just the idea.

This is perhaps most effective and most subtle at the conclusion, where the Ryan Choi Atom works some mass-redistribution wonders. Subtle enough art that I had to pause on the relevant panels – writer Tom Peyer leaves entirely in the artists’ hands the job of showing us the results.

Peyer’s tale is pretty dark in other places, with stabbings and severed limbs, and Yeowell does not shy away from graphic representations of those scenes, a shocking contrast to the garish blue and red colors of Atom’s outfit.

A story at times touching, confusing, challenging and with several points of artistic interest.

Speed Force

In other Convergence stories, author Tony Bedard has given us some dark tales. In Convergence Aquaman it was a battle to the bloody death; while in Convergence Green Lantern / Parallax the former Hal Jordan wiped out an entire city.

This story had the potential to go to some dark and violent places, too, with Flash (Wally West) facing a battle-hardened warrior Wonder Woman and her legion of amazons from the Flashpoint universe. In fact, she taunts him in preparation for the slaughter, a nice little trash-talk sequence.

But this story needs to stay children-friendly, and Bedard pulls it back from a darker precipice. For Wally West is not just a superhero, he is also a father, and this has been bring-your-kids-to-work year. His children were with him, bound by the Speed Force, visiting Gotham when the dome trapped them, away from home and powerless for the year.

Then there’s the turtle. Fastback, the speed-force-powered turtle joins Flash in the battle. How dark can you go when telling a tale with children and heroic amphibians as side-kicks? (My daughter tells me turtles are technically reptiles not amphibians; my push-back is that they also do not have super-powers or talk in a southern accent. But of course, she’s correct.)

This is a light story, in both art and plot. An amusing enough read, although what it is doing in the Convergence crossover is a puzzle.

Titans

Summarizing a story or a character’s history in a succinct way is a frequent challenge, especially in a crossover event like Convergence which may bring in readers unfamiliar with the nuances of the character. Fabian Nicieza attempts exactly such a summary for Speedy, the former sidekick of Green Arrow and now a Titan. He uses the first three pages of the story to do so, which gives artists Ron Wagner and Jose Marzan Jr a lot of room to work with. The result is a beautiful summary of the key moments of the life of the hero now known as Arsenal. An especially nice touch was the graininess of some of the panels, a nod to the look of comics in earlier eras.

The background is not just an FYI – it is crucial to the narrative. For Nicieza’s story hinges on the potential return to Arsenal of his dead daughter. Will he make a devil’s bargain to get her back? Will he shoot Donna Troy and Starfire in cold blood? With the rest of the Titans outgunned by a group of Extremists, will he rise to the challenge?

Outside those first three pages, Wagner and Marzan Jr give us a stream of dynamic panels, filled with dramatic action, clever views, and loads of emotion. Since Arsenal / Speedy is not high on my personal list, I had low expectations for this story, but was pleasantly surprised and impressed by its depth and power.

Batman and Robin

In my youth I met the art of Denys Cowan on DC’s The Question series, in the late 1980s. The Question, famously, has a faceless mask, covering all features with a blank white-flesh covering. With that for context, his art in this series is jarring. The faces are a never-ending stream of sharp angles, prominent cheekbones, and full lips. The Penguin in particular has a needle-sharp nose, in profile, and painfully protruding cheekbones.

There are also constant pencil-lines for shading. Sure, it’s a classic drawing technique, but feels overused to the point of distraction in this short 2-part tale. Whether that is on Cowan or his penciller Klaus Janzen, it took away from the overall enjoyment.

In terms of story, Ron Marz weaves together fraternal tensions between the Damian-Robin character and his predecessor Jason Todd as Red Hood. The mutual resentment leads to blows, but can they put aside their differences and their animosity to work for the good of their city? With a little manipulation by the Batman, they find that they can.

The Extremists, the champions of their rival city in these Convergence games, are little more than a villain-of-the-month, fodder for our heroes to defeat and save the day. The result is an average story, sort-of fitting the overall Convergence arc. If only its art was pleasant to look at.

Harley Quinn

Like the Speed Force story earlier in this collection, we get anthropomorphic super-animals in this tale. Harley Quinn must face Captain Carrot in a battle to save their cities. But unlike the Flash-meets-Fastback one, this tale has a layer of ambiguity, as Harley’s meds have long since run out. Could this all be a psychotic hallucination? A crazy dream?

Steve Pugh’s story takes Harley on quite a journey, from villain to hero to villain and back again, all in the span of a two-issue comic. She’s busted mid-heist; she meets and falls in love during her rehab; she is turned loose and appears to slaughter her opponents; but not everything is as it appears and her goodness-streak re-emerges.

This is a fun, trippy romp, through the mind of Harley and the cartoon world of Captain Carrot and his crew. Artists Phil Winslade and John Dell keep it loose and fun, putting some real grit into Carrot, and emotion into the supporting characters like Poison Ivy or Harley’s love interest.

ISBN-10: 1401258360
ISBN-13: 978-1401258368
Language: English
Pages: 272 pages