CONVERGENCE: Third Times the Charm Edition

Let's end this year off wrong. Civil War II left a bad taste in my mouth, so lets drown it out with some comic book arsenic, CONVERGENCE. The event that revealed many horrible truths about the comic book industry. The burning frustration you feel lets you know the poisons working.

If I feel up to it, I'll take tie-in requests after the main book is finished.

HARD MODE: Since I really hate this event and yet feel every Holla Forumsmrade needs to know about it, I challenge anyone to summarize these issues into greentext. It may seem easy at first, but we go to crazy town fast.

EDIT: Had to include all of those cool variant covers of stuff that doesn't happen in this event.

Right off the bat, we're bombarded by convoluted shit. Nu52 Superman is traveling through a black hole and gets captured by COSMIC GOD BRAINIAC.

This Brianiac from the Future's End event, where he survived flashpoint to become a Monitor-like god being. If you didn't already know that, you'd shit be shit out of luck right now.

Don't worry though. It'll only get more confusing from this point on.

So apparently, COSMIC GOD BRAINIAC spends a good chunk of his infinite powers watching Superman die over and over again in multiple continuities and timelines, figuring out ways to kill him. He "tests" Nu52 Superman and then fucks off, probably to invade Earth-0 I guess.

What I find interesting about this splash page is that it makes Superman #149, the silver age comic where Luthor murdered Superman, a canon timeline, despite being it an imaginary story.

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Honestly, the first part of this issue is lost on me since I didn't read the Nu52, but now we're getting into the issue proper. Superman escapes and finds himself in the main backdrop of Convergence: a giant, featureless desert with no interesting points whatsoever.

Oh, and Brainac's back! Even with godlike powers, Brainac still can't find a decent pair of pants.

Tights I can understand. A speedo I cannot.

Correction, is isn't THE Brainac, but merely A Brainiac. He's in charge of maintaining boss Brainiac's collected cities and he's kind of pissed the boss is gone.

I kind of like these pages.

Appropriately trippy and surreal. Really sells the mood they are going for.

And Superman just punches him. Is Nu52 Supes known for being a blunt idiot?

Here we learn that Brainiac has been stealing cities out of time and space and storing them on sentient planet that is outside of time and space, sort of like an external hard drive to the DCU. Also, Supes has been battling the physical representation of that planet, who is now in crisis since Boss Brainiac is gone.

I hope you're not lost already, because this ride hasn't even started yet.

Unfortunately, any creativity will pass with most of the coherent storytelling.

Yay, more punching. You'd think Supes would take a hint. Planet Brainiac has enough of the punching and decides to just launch Supes off the planet in such a way that he'll forget he's ever been there, until the plot demands it. Good writing here.

After experiencing the "uniqueness" of Nu52 Supes, Planet Brainiac decides to be his own man…planet…thing and have the countless imprisoned cities fight. For reasons.

So begins CONVERGENCE.

Some attention grabbing ads!

I want to let you know that this pitch is almost entirely lies. Most of these Earths either show up briefly or not at all.

The Superman Red-Blue Earth(another imaginary story made canon) appears just long enough to be destroyed. Love that DC.

Soak it all up my friends. It makes the poison much more virulent.

#1 of CONVERGENCE!

I should mention that Convergence does have a few nice variant covers…of match ups that never happen. We also have an Injustice variant. I wonder if that Earth will appear in this issue.

With the Bat-Gordon cover, I once again wonder: Who the fuck at DC thought that was a good idea?

I laughed a lot harder than I should have.

This is why I put "For reasons" as Planet Brainiac's motive for having the cities fight. He says it's survival of the fittest, but then he goes ahead and destroys cities just because.

Also, I want to take a second to point out that the domed cities have been trapped FOR A YEAR. IN REAL TIME. That means all of the cities have already gone nuts before Planet Brainiac went rogue. I don't know why the editors thought this was a good idea.

I dunno, user. Convergence was total bullshit, but I really think Marvel's stolen the cake and devoured it here:

> Her whole platform for fighting decides to join the God circus at the end

I was at least mildly entertained by the rubbish alternate universes Convergence put us through.

All things considered, it's not a terrible way to cull a ton of dead weight characters and spare plot threads. It's like the best possible WHAT IF? scenario.

Have everything fight to the death, pick up the pieces that the audience likes most, cram them back into the disgusting brown play-doh ball of main continuity, and then carry on.

I hope you faggots like splash pages, because that's 90% of this event.

Behold, our protagonists: The Survivors from Earth-2. AND MORE FIGHTING. Wonderful.


Nah. Civil War II is bad, but it's coming from a company that's spent last couple years being purposefully bad for hashtags. You knew what you were getting into with it. It was "Marvel Pisses You Off 2: Even More Shit".

Convergence was like finally realizing your grandpa's senile. This was supposed to be the big fan appreciation event, but instead showed us how degraded DC had become under Didio's rule. If the New 52 didn't kill DC, Convergence finished the job.

Even more Earth 2 characters! More exposition! More liquid metal!

Planet Brainiac shows up. But he has a new name, Telos. Personally, I think Planet Brainiac is better.

This issue contradicts the previous issue. Instead of Nu52 Supes inspiring Telos to go all fight club with the cities, it's these interlopers from Earth 2. Regardless, Telos decides it's time to purge the hard drive.

Like you or I, I'm sure Boss Brainiac will be pleased when he boots up his planet and find only one city remains. Very pleased indeed.

So many splash pages.

This is retarded.

Also, more Earth's that we probably won't see.

Thanks OP

We're not over yet. There are #9 issues of Convergence counting the #0 issue. On to #2.

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Some more Earth 2 shit.

Is Earth 2 even around anymore?

And Telos annihilates the Stan Lee universe by being an asshole. Fucker even lampshades it.

I don't know about you, but this exactly what I want from a fan pandering event: the mindless slaughter of beloved characters.

It unfortunately is. This event even leads to it's next big story arc.

More fighting and drama.

Goddammit, so many words. Are they trying to play up the fact Earth 2 Grayson is an author or is the writer just bad at comics?

We also got a whole line of comics based on this event too. I don't know what DC was thinking there.

So we're apparently stealing stuff from Morrison's Batman. I think. It's kind of a generic looking Batman.

Hey, more Superman Red and Blue. Them fighting is quite ridiculous, but we'll get to that later.

Is this supposed to be entertaining or something?
This reads like a dumb teenager 's fanfiction.

Bruce is sad and lonely.

Now here is where we really go off the rails.

Everybody meet Deimos! You don't know who Deimos is? He's the badguy from the 70's WARLORD comic. You might remember him from the JLU episode "Chaos at the Earth's Core". Even if you did know him though, DC decided to redesign him for some reason, which kind of removes any thrill his appearance might have.

This obscure fucker is going to hijack this event.

It gets worse.

I can't believe we're only at #3 of mess.

More variants. I like that Demon cover, but that Nightwing and Flamebird cover just reminds me I could be reading good stories instead of this crap.

Who's Flamebird?

More robot fighting.

Nightwing and Flamebird were guises of Superman and Jimmy Olsen when they were fighting crime in Kandor during Silver Age.

And Telos just murders them. Because he's a lunatic. It seems I was mistaken about about Superman Red and Blue getting killed.

Still, more beloved characters getting mindlessly slaughtered. Cheers to DC. Excellent event.

I think Earth 2 deserved it's fate. Only idiots would trust a guy with skulls for kneecaps.

It seems the House of Skartarus is keeping all of the interesting villains safely locked up during this event. Wouldn't want them to get lose and make things exciting.

In other news, all of the Morrison villains drove out to the middle of nowhere to beat up an old man.

And then they all get blown sky high.

OH BUT THE JOKER SURVIVED! Only to be quickly murdered by Telos.

This fucking event.

#4. Pretty variant covers of shit that doesn't happen at all.

Are you guys enjoying the event so far? Because it took over DC's entire output for two whole months.

Oh no. The splash pages are back.

More gobbledygook from Telos.

I'm sure somebody at the DC offices thought this was exciting. I like Warlord, but having obscure c-listers at the center of a giant event like this is retarded.

Speaking of Warlord, here he is! And he didn't get a redesign. What the fuck DC?

I really hate these splash pages, and it's only going to get worse for here out.

Oh no, Deimos is evil. Who could've seen that coming?

MORE SPLASH PAGES!

What is even happening here?

This is a clusterfuck.. but it's far more fun than Civil War II in a lot of important ways.

As much as convergence was fucking shit at least we got Jon from it, I might story time it in here after op is done

BOSS BRAINIAC IS BACK! And trapped in a…ball?

Yes, apparently at the end of Future's End, Boss Brainiac was trapped in a T-ball, the kind used by Mr. Terrific. Another wonderful plot point that would make no sense if you didn't already know it.

His big plan was to summon Brainiac? Isn't that a little bit like stopping a fight by saying "I'm telling your Mom!!"

Kid, we're only at #5. We've still got a ways to go.

Again, more variants of lies.

Oh the drama! Telos isn't a sentient planet at all! He's a alien warrior mind wiped by Boss Brainiac to watch over his planet! Oh the humanity!

Too bad we won't learn who Telos actually is in this event. It's just a stinger for Telos' DCYou book.

Fucking hell.

What is it with DC an having alternate universe versions of characters running around all the damn time and rewriting the universe and whatnot

YAY! MORE SLAUGHTER! What is this bloodlust you have, DC?

More fighting and more hooks for books.

So Deimos summons Brainiac…to banish him again? Wat?

Lucky, WARLORD IS HERE TO KICK SOME ASS!

It's all started with Crisis on Infinite Earth. It was such a huge event and bringing in so much profit for DC they suddenly got a hard on over multiverse crossover stories. It was supposed to be a once in a blue moon event. But now they do this kind of event every fucking Tuesday.

I'm sorry, did I say "kickass"? I meant "die like a bitch".

Fuck, who is this event even for? I don't know.

Can you believe we still have three more issues after this?

We lurch on with #6.

Fucking look at that Stever Rude variant. Such beauty is wasted on this shit event.

*Steve Rude

I apologize for all of the spelling mistakes I've been making.

The Nu52 universe shows up just to let you know that this is pretty important.

So let me get this straight, a guy called Warlord that wield a sword but rather than swinging it at him like a WARlord supposed to be he prefer to tackle the guy? Wut?

Ah yes. "Death magic". Still a mystery to me as it was ages ago when I first storytimed this.

Finally some major characters show up in this event.

It's like nothing but splash pages here.

Superman says some inspiring shit and then they take off to form an army of heroes to smash Deimos.

This is something they should've done at the very beginning of this event.


Of all the things to shove in this comic.

So begins the rather lackluster super brawl. Deimos really has the pick of the litter. What do we got? We got the Extremists, Flashpoint Justice League, The Crime Syndicate, a random Black Adam, a random Ocean Master, a random Gorilla Grodd, a random Deathstroke, a random Lex Luthor(why isn't he the villain?), and the Kingdom Come heroes.

I always see Kingdom Come Supes, or just Kingdom Come in general, always portrayed as villains. I've never got around to reading it, but are they all rotten assholes? Or is DC being fucking lazy?

#7. It really feels like this event should've ended two books back.

This giant rock monster is called the Oracle. Apparently he was important enough to include in this event.

Or disposable enough. This feels like a disposable hero event.

Anyway, it's fighting time.

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I sympathize with Parallax. I too grow weary of this shit.

Still don't know what this "Death Magic" shit is. It seems an asspull to get everyone to fight some more.

THANK YOU PARALLAX!

Scratch that. Hal fucked up again.

Convergence #8. The ride is almost over.

Batman driving a Metal Men Batmobile. Even at the end, DC has to remind me what this could've been.

Hal just never learns.

Boss Brainiac is back. Again.

I think this last issue of Convergence is by far the most interesting of the lot. It's like DC's saving throw for this event.

Brainac goes through all of the fucked up shit that happened in the DCU.


Whatever helps you sleep at night, Didio.

Braniac is tired of being an almighty god being and wants to go back to the simpler times of destroying planets for knowledge. However, to do this, he needs to expel all of the energy he's collected, which is coincidentally what's needed save all of reality.

Unfortunately, that pesky CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS is keeping him from saving the day.

Brainac sends some of DC's mightiest heroes(and Parallax) to stop COIE.

CAN OUR HEROES ACCOMPLISH THE IMPOSSIBLE?

Sorry, those pages are out of order and I can't fix it.

Well, they did.

So that's that. With a handwave, COIE is effectively reconnected from the DCU.

*Retconned

But it's not over yet. We have even more splash pages.

Nice to know some characters I don't care about got their own planet.

That was the main Convergence book. Thanks for reading my train wreck of a storytime. I hope you guys found it as exhausting I have.

I might get to the tie-ins a bit later.

I don't even care about 90% of these characters and I still think this entire comic was a waste of time. Are old fans supposed to enjoy seeing people they used to read about show up for 3 pages and get killed by robots?

Apparently DC thinks so.

I have no idea who the target audience was for this event. It's too dense and obscure for casuals, yet too shallow and empty for fans.

I'm a total comic book casual and I have no idea what any of this was.

Did I get everything?

user you forgot Earth 2 characters got a new planet. Don't ya care about Earth twwwooooo? :^)

What the fuck is Earth-2?
Why have an Earth-0, Earth-2, and Earth-52?
The only people who can or want to keep track of that shit are the hardcore autistic fans, and judging by what I see around here, they don't enjoy it either.

Earth 2 was one of the big "focuses" of this event.

No one enjoys it. Especially when it makes no since and involves changing the names of previous continuities/universes.

The idea of fights between characters from multiple universe is actually pretty novel. It's not about the idea, but the execution. It was horribly executed and the writer have no knowledge about the worlds he's supposed to write. So his solution is to kill them immediately.

Dammit typos,

Multiple universes
writer has

… since when? Seriously, I'm not joking. Maybe it's novel in comic books, but fanboys have been doing that for ages.

Crisis on Infinite Earth

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You'd think that

If I understand correctly, the current Superman is from another universe, the one from a couple of DC reboots ago

As for the Superman native to DC's current universe, I believe it went something like I HAVE TO GO NOW MY PLANET NEEDS ME and then he died on the way back to his home planet and then they promised never to bring him back

I guess that's less stupid than saying he punched the walls of reality and changed everything

Moderately

That's putting it mildly. It seems like the idea here was to have a soft reboot by creating a plot so convoluted, and then pull the new continuity out of their asses.

Power Girl and female Red Tornado makes my dick hard, so I like E2 when it's drawn correctly.

Well, Nu52 Superman was a bitch.

I think the current Superman is PreFlashpoint Post COIE, and probably has something to do with Dr Manhattan.

How do you think it feels to be a DC nerd? I know most of this shit and I'm still confused. Why this convoluted set up? Why focus on Earth 2? Why bring back characters just to randomly slaughter them? Why the fights? Why Telos? WHY DEIMOS? WHAT THE HELL IS DEATH MAGIC?

Bat-mite cleaning out his cosmic comic book collection would've been a better plot than this shit. At least that might've been fun.

This is one of those instances where an experienced editor would have been useful. Too bad DC completely purged them from their offices.

DC did not give a fuck about this event.

Daily Reminder that Convergence wasn't the worst event ever, because it tanked so hard they had to start Rebirth.

I still can't get over this. They retconned CoIE with a fucking off-panel handwave.

How did they get away with this?
How did they go from this to Rebirth?

It was all so bad that they had to actually shape up and write good shit again.

They got their shit kicked in so hard by the market that they literally handed everything to Geoff Johns.

Convergence :Superman #1

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Convergence :Superman #2

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Justice Riders got it the worst…killed offscreen by Flashpoint Hawks. Or Captain Carrot loses to Harley (and Harley goes insane again after she regains her sanity due to the dome, thanks Pam)

That was beautiful user.

That's Earth-2? Fucking hell, DC. There's already an Earth-2, it's the Golden Age where GL has a bitchin' cape and Flash has a WWI Mercury helmet.

One of my favorite Convergence tie-ins (next to Blue Beetle, Freedom Fighters, JSA and Titans)

you got it all right but this one. Warlord is a John Carter of Mars ripoff, not a Conan ripoff. (Not that you would have any idea of this from Convergence.) Warlord was a USAF soldier who got transported to Skartis.

Why don't we have any more Warlord stuff? Hell, Amethyst and even Space Cabbie got a shot..why not Warlord? (Hell, Claw the Unconquered appeared in Time Masters)

I remember reading this porn comic about Warlord invaded earth and defeated all heroes and raping all the superheroines. I thought the character was a made up character by the writer as his wish fulfillment fantasy. Turn out he's a real DC character.

I didn't even know Space Cabbie was a thing until I saw Justice League Action.

Space Cabbie's a thing. Knew him from either Superman Adventures or Justice League Adventures. Funnily enough that issue also had Superman being chased by Lobo. (I think..it's been awhile)

wait I thought the planet came up with the convergence plan on it's own?
is this a Marvel book with a DC logo?
disgusting
that's almost funny
I thought the puns were over…