Convergence #0 (2015) Review

Written By: Dan Jurgens, Jeff King
Art By: Ethan Van Sciver, Marcelo Maiolo
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: April 1, 2015

Moving Day

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time for DC Comics to make their big move to Burbank and that means for all of us superhero fanatics that it's time for the Convergence event.  As Dan Didio and Geoff Johns move the sofas and desks and Jim Lee gets the beer and pizza, we'll be diving into a strange tale that will extend to all universes and timelines of the DC Comics Universe and it all starts here with issue #0.  Let's get into this story and see if Convergence is as big as DC is hyping it up to be or if it's something to keep us busy while Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner look at paint swatches......... Yeah, there will be a lot of moving jokes in the future.  Let's check out Convergence.

Explain It!:

Our event begins at the end of Superman: Doomed, where our favorite Kryptonian flies into a Black Hole with the Brainiac known as Vril Dox.  As we all know from adventures that that have taken place after that story arc, Superman has no memory of his time in the black hole or how he got back............ Well guess what...... We get to find out what went down here.  Superman is met by the Brainiac God that we first met in the Futures End series and this Brainiac tells us that he is the true Brainiac and Vril Dox and every other version of the character that we've seen is only an extension of this one true Brainiac's consciousness.  If you've read Futures End then this won't come as any big surprise but I bet this is going to blow a lot of people's minds that didn't follow that foray into Five Years From Now.  Well, after the introductions and a bit of exposition, Superman finds himself chained up by Brainiac and is shown every universe and timeline where he has died, but the thing that gets to Brainiac is that it is never by his hand.  Eventually, Brainiac leaves to go and collect the New 52 Superman's city and in a rage of frustration, our Man of Steel breaks free of his bonds and goes to stop Brainiac from taking him home.......... Only thing is, Superman is in a vast desert and the Brainiac God is nowhere to be found but the first version of Brainiac from DC's past is there.

After Superman confronts this version of Brainiac about where the real Brainiac is, we see the character begin to change into all the forms that Brainiac has taken over the years as he asks Superman to choose his city.  It all becomes a little Inceptiony here as Metropolises are stacked up, upside down, side by side.......... It's all a vision though because domed life would never work this way...... don't worry, we'll get to that.  So the many faces of Brainiac gives us some exposition about how it is actually the sentient planet that they are on and long ago the Brainiac God found it and put it in this place outside of space and time and started keeping his stuff there.  His stuff as I'm sure you know is domed cities of worlds that were about to be erased and this planet Brainiac is all freaked out because after the Brainiac God left to go collect the New 52 Superman's city, he never returned.  If you read Futures End, you'll know that he was stopped by Superman Five Years From Now and put into a pokeball by the Atom.

In the end, Superman refuses to choose a city and resigning that the Brainiac God will not return, the planet Brainiac lets Superman go back to his world and time, knowing that the travel will erase his memory of everything that transpired there.  As the issue closes, the sentient planet chooses to continue his former masters work but altering it to find out which of these collected worlds is the best of the best........ Thus begins Convergence and with the party of pitting domed city against domed city, this sentient planet wants to make sure that he's properly dressed, so it creates a body for itself, merged from all the versions of Brainiac and becomes Telos, the big bad of the Convergence event.

That's it for this opener to Convergence and even though it presented information that I already knew from Futures End, this was a really cool and fun prologue to this event.  Now for readers who haven't been following Futures End, this is a great jumping on point to get all the information that you'll need to truly appreciate what DC is throwing at you here and even though I had my trepidations about this story, I find myself getting pretty excited after reading this.  It should be a lot of fun and if the story and art continue to be as good as this, then it should really be something special and not just something to tide us over while Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul rent the moving trucks and Robert Venditti and Van Jensen buy new furniture.......... Yeah, some more moving jokes.

Bits and Pieces:

This is a issue that does it's job of really getting you into the story and letting you know what you need to know right off the bat.  Cool callbacks to Superman: Doomed and callforwards to Futures End and you know what happens?  They all Converge...... Yeah, it's a good time.  An event due to DC moving or not, this has made me really interested in seeing what else this event holds.  Check it out!

8/10