The 40 2-issue mini-series have lived and died according to the talents involved, and this week, Shazam! is once again the high-water mark, just beautiful, while most of the rest have been merely okay despite their strong showing on Week 5. I don't want, or need, to get into it too much. But the main Convergence series, well...
It's really a bad case of missed opportunities. Lame spoilers ahead.
Convergence #8 plays out like this big multiversal Crisis in which Brainiac returns to promise everyone will be returned to their own universes. What he really seems to mean is that they'll return to time lines about to be extinguished. And though a few have to go back to the Crisis on Infinite Earths to give their lives - Flash and Supergirl, of course, but also Parallax and absurdly, pre-Flushpoint Superman with wife and child - to "reset" the Multiverse lest it collapse into a single universe again, there isn't REALLY any kind of visible reset, or reboot, or anything that seems to change the New52 time line. In fact, what the art shows is the original Earths becoming the Earths we see in The Multiversity Handbook.
Because I don't think it's accurate to say, as DC seems to have promised, and Newsarama claims in its analysis, that the other timelines are now "open" and "continuing" as alternate Earths (though the spots Morrison left as "?" on his map could have housed them). If that's the intent, it's certainly NOT what the art above seems to imply. "Each world has evolved, but they still all exist." Yes, Earth-1 continuity still exists... AS NEW52 CONTINUITY! Maybe I'm wrong, and one can go back down "hypertime" to former continuity, so what? It's only a symbolic gesture, so long as there are no series to continue those stories. Well, Newsarama says that "in coming months, according to DiDio's statement, readers could see comics about everything from pre-Crisis Earth 2 Justice Society to pre-Flashpoint Question". Sounds like they're jumping to conclusions there, and it's really NOT AS CLEAR AS THEY SAY that those continuities can still be accessed or will. Not at all. The truth is probably that DC will give itself permission to create projects that, like their digital comics, explore older or entirely new continuities (series like Prez and Bat-Mite certainly seem to be outside mainstream continuity), without feeling the need to catalog every Earth. Which is fine by me, but seems absurd after they've had Morrison go to the trouble of doing just that!
The Multiversity is also at the root of another missed opportunity, and that's of seeing Justice Incarnate, the self-appointed guardians of the Multiverse who banded together to take care of any future Crisis at the end of the event. Where are THEY when the Multiverse is threatened with collapse by the Telos planet trying to pierce through to Earth-0?
And hey, Convergence made a big deal out of Telos' true identity, but then never revealed who he originally was, did it? Groan. Ok, well, at least we'll always have Jeff Parker's Shazam...
*Sneak Peek: Justice League United does refer to "anomalies" caused by the Cosmic Convergence which must be dealt with lest the universe is destroyed, but if that's DC admitting the event DID cause retcons, it's never made clear in the event itself.
Comments
But it wouldn't be the first time they pulled a switch at the last minute, undoing their own plans in some kind of panic. Monarch as Hawk is an early example, Flashpoint came just after a then pointless history of the DCU and announcements for a new Who's Who, and so on.
Thanks for Multiversity, Grant! Now it's all moot! Could happen.
This is, what, the third iteration of "what we did wasn't working, but we're going to keep the guys in charge who were responsible..."?
And in a couple of years, they will do it all over again.
This, exactly. Every time a new DC cartoon starts, they position all the characters so as to be maximally usable; why can't DC do that for their comics? I grant you, there is always bound to be disagreement as to what is the "best" version of a character, but I don't think DC really has any idea. Or if they do, it's fully obscured by their insistence on charging off in new directions.
The number one thing DC should be having each creative team do (editor / writer / penciler) is think about the question: what are three things that should appear in a good story about this character / team? Then be sure to deliver on that.
There ought to be a rule that nobody but Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison is allowed to write Superman, because while they don't always nail it, they have a vastly better track record with DC's top hero than anyone else. Seriously, I remain astonished that nobody can write a good Superman, except apparently for those two.
Anon: Well, as a Superman fan from way back, I can't really agree with your assessment of Superman writers past and present, especially since the Superman we have now is a billion miles away from any iteration of the character I've ever liked. So if Morrison and Johns write this character well, it doesn't really matter, because he might as well be someone else. I like Morrison's Action Comics, but have no interest in what Johns is doing whatsoever. A matter of taste I'm sure.
But yes, totally, I frequently reference the Bruce Timm DCU when trashing what the comics are doing wrong. Some characters are made for instability and change, others are icons and straying too far from that iconicity will always be undone down the line, but harms the character when sustained too long.
Sadly, Morrison is usually more interested in doing Something Very Meta than writing a straight Superman story, and Johns tends to make his heroes secondary to whatever larger story he's trying to tell.
Johns's most recent Superman arc was about an extradimensional Superman-like character (yawn) who, it turns out, had an evil agenda. BOR-ing. But at least there was a scene in there where Superman tried to convince the citizens of Metropolis that there is no perfect world out there, all we've got is each other and we need to build a better world together. Then, in the issue after that, Superman was temporarily powerless but he still talked a gunman into surrendering without hurting anyone, by showing respect and helping the gunman find a better way. That may well not be enough to make a person buy a Johns comic, but I think it shows that Johns at least gets Superman.
The fact that everyone is coming out of this comic thinking a different thing happened is a BIG problem. If you're doing an event that has an IMPACT, then we need to know what that impact is. If it's just a couple of months of fluff with no real impact, then don't pretend it does!
Between the actual text of the book and DC's PR, it doesn't seem like anyone at DC even knows what really happened or what it means for the Multiverse. Or they're trying to please everyone and the result is pleasing no one. "Yes, your favorites are back, but they're also gone forever, unless you read it to mean they aren't, but we know they are, except when they'll be back again, maybe, but don't quote us on this."
So I don't believe for a second that Superman is hard to write. It's just that too many people who's handled the character just DIDN'T WANT TO WRITE HIM.
"So I don't believe for a second that Superman is hard to write. It's just that too many people who's handled the character just DIDN'T WANT TO WRITE HIM."
Amen!
to what's already been said without sounding repetitve, but yeah I resoundingly echo a lot the thoughts and sentiments expressed so far.
I don't know why, but I continually find myself amazed that Dan Didiot still has a job after al this. Seriosuly, he has to be eithe rbe blowing or black-mailing, or both a lot of serious higher-ups @ Time Warner, because anywhere else, in any other medium, if you mess up that frequently and cause this much confusion, you're as gets pink-slipped. And yet here we are, and he's still employed.
The ending unfortuantely answered my main question about where Morrison's Multiversity stands in all this. "It does if you want it to? seems to how DC's handling it. Its a damn shame really. we waited all that time just to see it finally printed and then Convergence happens right along side it to pretty much cock-block it on every level.
I mean, they had the opportunity as many of you have already pointed out, to simply place the survivors in those 7 unmarked Earths, and just didn't do it.
Then they blatantly ignored Multiversity, outside of what they picked and chose to use via his handbook, as well as ignoring the Justice Incarnate in favor of their JLU. You know if you're just going to ignore the man's hardwork, why continue to hire him? Yes, proabbly because he's a guarentee sales-maker, but what's his incentive for doing any more work if its just matter to DC in the overall scheme of things?
Insanity.
And for all we know, he's only implementing decisions that are coming from above him, and his talent lies in justifying them. I mean, this is a guy that for all his flaws, WANTED to write OMAC and Forever People, sure sales busts. So I'm not entirely sure he's on the team we think he's on. (Which isn't meant to start a debate on his qualifications or intentions, I wouldn't be in it to win it.)
I read very few of the minis. And why did nu52 Superman & Supergirl watch from space while the fight on Telos went on?
It doesn't make sense unless it's some kind of comment on the current Supers' lack of heroism.
I'm agin Anon, Superman has had some great writers other than John's and Morrison in the last decade; there's the aforementioned Roberson. Kurt Busiek. Gail Simone. Greg Pak in current Action Comics. Scott Snyder did some good stuff with Superman and Lois in Unchained ...
As for Dan Jurgens' handful of issues, as ever with Jurgens, they were solidly enjoyable. He never puts a foot wrong, but it seems he wasn't allowed to step out in a new direction either - this is holding pattern stuff, waiting for Morrison's Action Comics to set up stuff. Jurgens does some great stuff with Lucy Lane, but she vanished with Lobdell. I'd say buy it for a good run read, but it's not essential to your Joy.
(Contrast with "Zero Year", where Batman's entire methodology was justified, from the theatrics of a bat costume to how not killing foes is more effective.)
Of course, if DC has its cake and eats it too, then yes, all these continuities keep existing. We'll see if any writers are allowed to progress their stories.
Anon: As for Superman Unchained, I don't know how good the writing was, because the art made it unreadable. I hate Jim Lee's work with the passion of a billion burning suns, it's all unmotivated splash pages and little substance. I didn't get beyond a single issue of that often-late series.
@siskoid: you are right. The current heroes watch but do nothing. QUESTIONS FOR YOU!!!! Did Brainiac ever tell Telos his real name? What did Justice League United do out in space? And, not that I'm complaining, but what happened to all the nu52/WildStorm characters?
There are some really solid characters there outside of the Midnighter and the awesomeness that used to be the Authority, but not anymore.
I personally think the mistreatment of those Wildstorm characters, many of which were created by Jim Lee is really weird.
They work better as their own thing in their own universe, otherwise they just stand out as bad derivatives of the more well-known and popular DC heroes.
I'm not sure we'll ever know who Telos really was. To me, he felt like a Silver Surfer analogue, but without the true nobility that a character like Norrin Radd possess.
I guess in the end it doesn't matter, much like Didio and DC stopped pretending that Pandora really mattered post-Flashpoint.
As for Wildstorm, they were on the Convergence planet, so I guess they returned home, but that would be confusing in the art piece, because that home is now Earth-0 along with the Big Three. So a clear example of No, these worlds DON'T all still exist in an "evolved" state.
But yeah, I don't care about any Wildstorm property. Jim Lee just seems to try and try to push them until they become relevant enough for him to get a lucrative movie deal, but readers never take the bait!