Convergence: Plastic Man and The Freedom Fighters #1 (2015) Review

Nazis, I Hate These Guys

Written By: Simon Oliver
Art By: John McCrea, John Kalisz
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 29, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Oh man, the Nazis have won the war and have taken over New York, not to mention the rest of the formerly Free World.  This looks like a job for...Plastic Man?  Yeah, the Freedom Fighters I can see but good old Plas doesn't strike me as one of the Inglorious Basterds and even though he was a walking, talking, stretching Nazi fighter back in the day....... It's still hard for me to see it.  Anyway, Earth-X's New York is trapped under the dome and like I said, it's under Nazi control, so let's see how our Freedom Fighters are dealing with the Nazi menace in a world without their powers.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our story begins in one of those wraps around styles where we begin towards the end and Plastic Man tells us his story about how he got in the mess he's in........ Which happens to be him locked in a dungeon awaiting to hang with the rest of the Freedom Fighters.  The reason our heroes are about to have their necks stretched in a way that we don't want to see is that Plastic Man got a little too big for his britches.  The Freedom Fighters were taking it to the streets, Doobie Brothers style when Plastic Man decided that they weren't doing enough.  If they really wanted to stick it to the Nazis they had to draw the attention of one of their big guns........ The Silver Ghost.  A super-powered hate mongering Nazi badass, who after finding out that the New York Freedom Fighters humiliated the man in charge of the city, Herr Kommandant, he took the next flight into the city where our heroes were waiting for him.

Once our heroes saw the plane coming in, Plastic Man stretched onto the scene and attempted to put an end to their Ghost problem before it even started......... but when the Silver Ghost addressed him by name, Plastic Man went all gooey with ego because this uber big bad knew his name and he ended up missing his opportunity by taking a shock and falling down onto a building below.  He truly missed his chance to take out this threat because right after he landed, the dome appeared and our fighters of freedom found themselves powerless in enemy territory.  If that wasn't bad enough, the people of New York turned on freedom and what America stands for by abandoning their beliefs for the security that the Nazis offered them during this dome dystopia.  

In the end, we learn truly how bad things have become under the dome when Plastic Man's own sidekick and pal, Woozy Winks betrays him to the Nazis and captures the rest of the Freedom Fighters.  So we're back at where our story began with our heroes facing the gallows but this day is different.  Where hope had been lost for the entire year before, with the rising sun and the dome disappearing our heroes escape their bonds and intend to remind everyone that freedom rings......... Hopefully, they won't get instantly stomped by the silly Futures End Batman monster in the process.

That's it for this issue of Convergence: Plastic Man and The Freedom Fighters........ which is really just a Plastic Man story because the Freedom Fighters barely play a part in this at all.  Really though, there isn't much to say about this issue besides that I really got into the idea of this Nazi-occupied New York, who's people completely surrendered their beliefs and morals to their enemy for the promise of safety and security.  It was a really dark and interesting concept that I wish could have been explored further, but this is only a two-issue mini and we had to have our standard bringing people up to speed about the dome and what our heroes are up to for the first issue.  The art was okay enough but with it just came off lacking in the end and I just wish we were given something different. 

Bits and Pieces:

While I had high hopes for this title, in the end, it just doesn't have enough time to explore the landscape and atmosphere of this Nazi-controlled world because of its need to bring us up to speed with the dome and how it's affected our heroes.  Pretty standard stuff and besides for a couple of interesting concepts that aren't explored as much as I would have liked them to be, there isn't much to this issue.  Heroes good, Nazies bad, Dome goes up, Dome goes down.

5/10