Double-crosses and Dragons. Epiphanies and miraculous recoveries. This issue ends up being a lot more engaging and thought provoking than some of the previous chapters. Dare I say it? The featured groundwork has actually piqued my curiosity!
This issue gives us a new piece of information regarding the competition that I found rather interesting: up till now, I had assumed that the winner of the competition and their city would be returned to Earth and reintegrated into continuity; turns out the winner is actually being granted all of the planet Telos, and the losers destroyed. Seems to me that Telos is going to become the setting of the new Earth 2: Society book. Keeping in mind that we technically won’t have time to see the entire competition drawn out to completion, hence, not every city will be eliminated. So it’s quite possible that the planet Telos is going to be comprised of more than just the Earth 2 heroes. Come June, we may be looking at a comic in which any non-eliminated city from any timeline can show up and we may get to enjoy appearances from a plethora of heroes throughout the DC pantheon. That could be really interesting.
Other than that little nugget, the issue itself is rather straightforward and basically consists of a castle raid and a conversation with Telos. While the majority of my interest was situated around that aforementioned clarification of the rules, the castle scene did have some enjoyable parts as well. Deimos ends up headlining this section, along with other supporting cast members of The Warlord. To be honest, I found it slightly odd that these characters would be featured so prominently in such a major DC event, when most likely, a minority of readers is familiar with these characters. No offense to any Warlord fans out there, it’s just not a group of character that is commonly associated with DC. Perhaps DC is counting on this book to reintroduce them to a new readership.
The issue had a very quick pace to it, and I’ll give credit to artist Stephen Segovia for that. The issue is 28 pages long, but 11 of those were two page spreads. It literally makes the book feel more like 17 pages long if you only count the 2 pagers once. Usually I would say that this is an attempt to spread a smaller story out over more pages in order to increase page counts and make us pay more for it. This time, I actually found all the 2 page spreads to be highly dynamic and compellingly laid out. Seeing as how they were actually quite beautiful to look at, I’m putting this down as a positive. I also thought his linework on the abstract elemental shapes was very pleasing to the eye. Things like the liquid metal, clouds, swirling dust, and waves of wizardly energies.
Lastly, I’d like to say that this review was rather difficult to write because my mind kept wandering to the overpowering thoughts I was having for Batman #40. I know that has nothing to do with this issue, but I just can’t stop thinking about it, and wanted to share with you the fact that the newest issue of Batman has sent my thoughts racing.
- Telos “heals” Grayson’s spine. I guess he really did get shot in the spine and paralyzed. It looked more like he got shot in the side last time, but I guess not.
- Deimos is actually a bad guy and tricks the heroes into helping him raid a castle in order for him to steal the powers of the time masters. I’m not sure how much DC expected this to be a surprise. If you know anything about the characters, you’d have expected it. But as I already mentioned, they aren’t from one of DC’s more known works, so maybe more people were shocked by this turn of events.
- Deimos acknowledges the Earth 2 heroes as the original heroes reborn. This was another throw away comment that I found very interesting. The time interference from Flashpoint essentially turned Earth 1 into Earth 0/New Earth/New52 continuity. Personally, I figured that these heroes we have been following were the Earth 2 heroes from a New52 version of Earth 2, but this issue implies that they are actually the same Earth 2 heroes from pre-Flashpoint reconfigured by the time disturbance. My question is: Why would a time disturbance on Earth 1 effect Earth 2? By this logic, shouldn’t the New52’s Earth 2 be the same Earth 2 that existed pre-Flashpoint?
- There is a small piece of Meta that exists in this issue. Grayson says, “You have to know that all life, all parallel realities, all ideas have value.” It felt to me as if it was a comment on comics and continuity in general. You should enjoy whatever you want, regardless of how much it matters in the bigger scheme of canon.
- Anybody else getting the vibe that Telos might not actually be a bad guy, per se.
Interesting Facts:
- In today’s issue of Convergence, Deimos mentions that the Flash was the first to encounter a breach in the Multiverse. The incident Deimos was most likely referring to was Flash #123 (1961). In the story the Golden Age Flash (Jay Garrick) and the Silver Age Flash (Barry Allen) meet. I think it is interesting that the cover says that it “is sure to become a classic”, because it actually did.
- Deimos also mentions that the Flash is at the center of things, a point I brought up a couple of reviews ago when I pointed out that Flash has always been a major player in DC’s universe altering story lines.
- The Hour-Man was one of the original members of the Justice Society of America. Above, we can see him in his first appearance in Adventure Comics #48 (1940) and later that same year along side his team mates in All-Star Comics #3, below.
Recommended if…
- You are interested in speculating on the potential post world of Convergence.
- You’re a fan of The Warlord characters.
Overall:
I feel like we have reached a turning point in the Convergence storyline and things are finally starting to happen. To me, the first 3 issues felt rather repetitive, but this felt like it was covering some new ground for a change.
SCORE: 7.5 / 10
