DC's "Convergence"

"Convergence" is DC's latest attempt to reorganize, or at least play with, their fractured continuity.  When you think about it, DC's relationship to its continuity is a lot like a 13 year old's relationship to his penis.  He knows that he should stop playing with it so much, but he just can't leave it alone.

In this particular company-wide crossover event, yet another iteration of Braniac has preserved several versions of Gotham and Metropolis from pre-Crisis continuity to the present.  All of these various Gothams and Metropolises have been placed under an unbreakable dome for a year, and all of the superheroes living under these domes have been de-powered.  It is only with the lifting of the domes, and with the announcement that a champion has been selected from each city, that the superheroes regain their powers and begin to battle one another for their cities' survival.

In other words, it's a lot like Marvel's Secret Wars meets Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Substitute Braniac (or Telos, or Deimos) for The Beyonder, add other worlds to your stock of superheroes, and there you go.  Thus we have the Wildstorm heroes inhabiting the same universe as Captain Marvel, the pre-Crisis Barry Allen inhabiting the same universe as the New 52 version, and so on.  It's total overkill, and many of the heroes begin fighting other heroes with a ridiculously low level of motivation to do so.  A voice in the sky basically says, "Fight!" and most of them do just that.

Reading through Convergence took me quite a while.  It's 89 issues long, and like most other crossover events it's not much of a story.  There are so many titles in Convergence, and so many of them from pre-52 continuity, that I had trouble remembering the backstory for some of the characters.  Aside from the Convergence title itself, no other title has more than two issues, and what results is a blur of similar characters in similar situations. 

I mean come on - it's not the 80s anymore.  Does anyone really want to read another issue of Batman and the Outsiders?  Does anyone really want to know how the Supergirl Matrix and red-haired Luthor are getting along?  Unlike Crisis on Infinite Earths, which painted a grand picture against a cosmos-wide backdrop, this "event" feels paper-thin, and rushed.  More than anything, it lacks grandeur.

Of course there are exceptions to the above, or maybe I should say diamonds in the rough.  The first Convergence issue of Wonder Woman is great, as is the throwback Blue Beetle featuring all of the Charlton characters.  But these exceptions are few, and are overwhelmed by the mediocre writing in other titles.

Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy parts of it.  It was nice to see pre-Crisis Barry Allen again.  It was nice to see the characters from Flashpoint, and also the Crime Syndicate.  But why throw the older superheroes from Kingdom Come into the mix?  Why use the Justice League from The New Frontier?  Why Captain Carrot?  Some of the characters blend better than others, and including ALL of them smacks more of marketing strategy than competent, cohesive storytelling.

Compared to previous DC crossover events like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis (my personal favorite), Final Crisis, or even 52, I'd have to say that Convergence is an abject failure.  It's simply reaching too far, and it wasn't planned well enough.  It also lacks drama, and as a story it should have been driven by its characters, not by a corporate need to revise a failing continuity.

But hey, perhaps you could take Braniac as a metaphor for DC Comics itself.  Perhaps you could mine Convergence for a deeper meaning, and a deeper relationship between a comic book publisher and its characters.  The meaning, the metaphor, and the relationship thus drawn aren't cheering, but they are something to ponder.