Convergence #1 (2015) Review

Who Runs Convergence?!........... Well, It's Not Master Blaster

Written By: Jeff King, Scott Lobdell
Art By: Carlo Pagulayan, Jason Paz, John Starr, Peter Steigerwald
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: April 8, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Alright, it's finally time to get into this Convergence thing and after seeing the prologue to this story in last week's issue #0, I have to tell you I got pretty pumped.  As it turns out, when Superman spent that time in the black hole at the end of Superman: Doomed, we find out that he went to a world outside space and time, where he came face to face with the Brainiac God that we all saw get spanked in Futures End.  As it turns out, when that Brainiac went to collect Superman's city and got "spanked", the sentient planet where Brainiac kept his domes went a little crazy when his "God" didn't return.  Without the guidance of it's "God", the planet decided to create a body of it's own and put Brainiac's collection to the test to see which one is the best........ So yeah, some Thunder Dome like action is going down.  Superman was sent away, having his mind erased by the trip and the once planet became Telos: the bringer of Convergence.  Let's check out what this issue has for us and see what Convergence is all about.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins in a way that's very odd to me.  It appears that we're seeing the Injustice Gotham at the end of it's run.......... I mean the city is fucked.  The weird part is, it looks like the Dome had just disappeared because Superman shows up and it looks like he just escaped prison now that his powers have returned and he goes back to get his revenge on Batman and the other heroes that betrayed him.  Now I know that what I just said sounds pretty reasonable for what we know the Injustice Superman to be like, but the city is already destroyed and we're not shown any other opposing city that caused all of the destruction.......... and this just leads to Telos destroying the Dome and claiming that it was a failed experiment.  So much for Injustice I guess.

Moving on, we get to the real focus of the story and that's the characters from Earth 2: World's End, who mysteriously vanished at the end of the series when they were about to get hit by Darkseid's omega beams.  No, they didn't end up traveling back in time and then having to fight to get back to their present.......... because that would just be ridiculous.  It appears that these characters consisting of Batman, Dick Grayson, Val-Zod, Flash, Green Lantern and Yolanda Montez were transported away to the sentient planet........ which is also Telos, right before they were about to die....... but the problem is because their world was destroyed, they don't have a city to belong to and man does that just grind Telos's gears.  While it's kind of a cool concept to have these characters being outside the normal function of Convergence because of the loss of their world........... It seems that we still have some left over World's End nonsense to contend with.  Dick Grayson doesn't mention his son once, only his dead wife Barbara and instead of finding out how Yolanda Montez survived giving all her Avatar-ness to Green Lantern in World's End, we just get the "because" that we had to deal with throughout that weekly series........... Oh and also she still has some Avatar powers......... again, just because.  

In the end, Telos captures these Wonders and then gives his evil monologue about what he's doing to them and all the Domed cities, where we once again hear that he's pitting doomed cities against one another to find out which one is the best.............. That's it.......... That's all....... Man, something better happen next week.

That's it for this issue of Convergence and where the issue #0 really peaked my interest and got me hyped to read this event, this issue does the exact opposite.  We're bogged down with World's End nonsense that nobody seems to want to explain more than just it happened "because" and besides for that......... nothing really happened here......... at all.  The only thing positive I can really say about this issue is that the art was good and I really dug the way all the Wonders of Earth 2 looked here......... but that's about it.  Hopefully the rest of Convergence is a lot more interesting now that we without a doubt know what Telos is up to and we can get on with the story.

Bits and Pieces:

I'm really glad that we started this event off with an issue #0 because if all we had to this story right now was this issue, I wouldn't be excited at all and would think that we're in for a long two months.  I still have high hopes that this series will rock but this issue was just nonsense that was  making sure that the plot is drilled into everyone's heads.  The only saving grace is that this issue is filled with excellent art.

5.5/10