Convergence: Justice Society of America #1 (2015) Review

Cocoon 3: The Dome

Written By: Dan Abnett
Art By: Tom Derenick, Trevor Scott, Monica Kubina
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 29, 2015

I'm getting redundant when talking about Earth 2 and how much I love the characters that inhabit it but screw it, I'm going to say it again.  The whole reason that I got on board the New 52 and went ga-ga over DC Comics again was when they announced Earth-2 to the line-up of comics because I just loved the Golden Age heroes and thinking of them reimagined for a modern age was something that perked my curiosity.  Yeah, the last bunch of months have been hard to remain optimistic about it, but keep the faith people, our Earth-2 Wonders have the ability to be great again......... and here we'll see our original characters keeping on keeping on.  Man, they're getting old but these old dogs still have a few tricks to show us.  Let's grab our denture adhesive and our Bengay as we jump into this geriatric issue.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins in a Pre-Crisis Earth 2 Metropolis, where our JSA heroes have gone and gotten old.......... Yeah, they were old, to begin with, but after a year of living without powers under the dome...... well, they're finally feeling their age.  Our story begins with Jay Garrick visiting Kent Nelson in the hospital because we find out that Kent has been in a coma since the dome surrounded the city.  During this scene we have Jay just talking to the unconscious Kent, just explaining what's going on in the world and it really comes off sweet and a bit sad because here they are, the Justice Society of America and they are powerless to stop this threat that has captured their city and if that wasn't bad enough, they're just too old to do anything even if they had their powers.

We move from that scene to atop the home of Carter Hall who is having a discussion with his son Hector of Infinity Inc. about what they should do in the future, which then leads to a  passing of the torch-like talk when we see that Jay is really making the rounds on this day because he scales the high ass fire escape steps to Carter's roof to visit his friend and discuss getting old and how much it sucks.  The complaining and reminiscing are interrupted though when Carter gets a call from Alan Scott who tells them that the hospital called him because Kent has woken up.

In the end, our heroes rush to Kent's room to find his eyes open and him saying "One Last Time".  Of course, this is the moment that Telos gives his survival of the fittest speech and the dome goes down and as our heroes begin to feel their powers return, they realize that Kent is out of bed and he tells them that he can make them young again one last time so that they can defend their city, but the cost of the spell means that this will be the end of them.  As our issue closes we see that our heroes have made their choice as they rush out all young as hell to fight a ravaging Qwardian machine that looks like it must have been just waiting for the dome to come down to attack because man does it show up immediately.

That's it for this issue of Convergence: Justice Society of America and let me just tell you that I really enjoyed this issue but I can see people just picking this up off the shelves at their comic shop and not really getting into it because even though I loved the hell out of it....... There isn't a lot going on here.  Just a couple of old men visiting their old friends and reminiscing about old times and wondering where their place in the world is........ but that's exactly why I liked it so much.  I love these Golden Age characters and I like to see heroes feeling vulnerable and there's nothing more vulnerable than getting old and feeling useless.  Just a day in the life of a retired hero that just happens to be in a dome and it worked so well, plus we get the added bonus of this issue's cliffhanger where we get to see our heroes all young again and promising that they're going to continue taking care of business even if it's just one last time.  Excellent issue with great art all the way through.  If you enjoy the Golden Age DC characters, there isn't any reason you shouldn't be picking this issue up.

Bits and Pieces:

Some might complain that this issue is boring or isn't action-y enough for them and if that's the case then I believe that this issue wasn't for them in the first place.  Like the aging characters themselves, this story takes it time and lets us understand how completely insignificant our Golden Age Earth 2 heroes feel at this point in time.  It's just a really nice addition to this Convergence event that allows us to feel the vulnerability of these heroes and it rocks one hell of an awesome cliffhanger.  Definitely check this one out.

9/10