Convergence #3 Review/Recap

Convergence #3 Recap/Review On Youtube

 

Convergence #3 Recap

The heroes of Earth 2 stand with Deimos, who warns them of a demon who holds this world captive.  They are well aware of this demon, and know of the threat that Telos poses to everyone on this planet.  Their conversation is interrupted when they are attacked by more drones.

A battle ensues, and Val-Zod Superman is nearly captured.  Telos is pleased, and goes to deal with the only city that is refusing to fight – Kandor.  In this place, the Kryptonians have gathered, and sworn they will be no man’s puppet.  But Telos appears before them and insists they must fight.  Meanwhile, Jay Garrick rescues Superman, and Batman arrives in a borrowed Batmobile to help fight off the remaining drones.  Sadly the vehicle is damaged during the fight and no longer working, and Batman was unable to get any reinforcements.  Every city here is making an attack – or under siege.

[Related: Complete Convergence Reading Order Checklist]

In Kandor, Telos murders one of their heroes, causing the entire crowd to attack.  The great being calls them mad, saying they had such promise as a race of Supermen.  They could have easily won the Convergence but now Telos chooses to destroy this city.  As he stands among the dead and the ruins of what was once Kandor, the being declares this shall be a lesson to anyone foolish enough to challenge him.

Meanwhile, the Earth 2 heroes are in trouble.  Val-Zod’s formidable power is rapidly draining without a yellow sun around to fuel him.  Deimos says that he found the knowledge and power to stop Telos – something the being fears that exists deep down within the centre of this planet.  The sorcerer asks that the Earth 2 heroes follow him, so that he may show them the answers they seek.  Lacking any other options, they consent, but Batman insists on staying here.  He’s out of Miraclo, a pill this version of Batman uses to function as a superhero, and he was followed by an unknown faction out of Gotham City.  Even though he doesn’t know Batman very well, Dick Grayson insists on staying with Thomas Wayne, and the two men prepare to buy their friends some time.

Underground, Deimos leads them to a city called Skartaris.  He was driven from this place by a despot who wanted to claim this land as his own, seeking the great power that lies within here.  Alarms go off within the castle of Skartaris, and a woman named Shakira imprisons the masters of time, knowing that Deimos will have need for them.

Above ground, the people following Batman arrive, and they are revealed to be a host of Batman’s villains from the city he just visited.  They don’t know this Batman, but will happily kill him just the same.  Man-Bat grabs Dick Grayson, and Batman is forced to fight the rest of the villains alone.  Thomas proves more than a match for his enemies, until he is stabbed by Zsasz in his abdomen.  The villains manage to get Batman in a hold, and ask Doctor Hurt what he wants to do with their new captive.  Hurt declares that first they will kill this Batman, then the other one, and then his boy.  But Thomas will never let another Wayne be harmed again.  Batman detonates a massive explosion, killing himself and most of the villains.

Dick is freed from the Man-Bat as a result of this explosion, and crashes on the ground.  Grayson looks over Batman’s remains, reflecting that Thomas was a good father, and did everything he could to protect his family.  Grayson vows to do the same, and he will do anything to get his son back.  Suddenly, Grayson is shot by the Joker.  This isn’t Batman, but there’s something about Dick that the clown prince of crime likes.  The Joker mocks him, and says that Batman’s sacrifice will mean nothing once he shoots Grayson dead.  However, Telos appears behind him, and snaps the villains neck.  The being comments that the Joker is a vile creature.  A plague in every time line.  Grayson assumes that Telos is here to kill him, but actually, the being has only one question – where are his friends?

Convergence #3 Review

Hello and welcome to Comic Island!  My name is Arden and this is my recap and review for Convergence #3.

So… where do I begin.  Well, this wasn’t a bad issue.  Some really, really cool stuff happened here.  I’ve got to show some love for Telos just wiping out Kandor, or Batman’s final stand against a full rogues gallery of villains.  Both were really cool and really great moments within the comic.  In fact, pretty much everything that happened here was really cool.

Skartaris was also an interesting development.  For those unaware of this place, think of it as DC’s rough equivalent to the Savage Land.  It’s neat they’re bringing in some obscure stuff and the related characters into this story, and it seems to fit in with ongoing plot in a reasonable way, but once again I feel like this crossover is completely inaccessible to those not intimately familiar with DC comics.

[Related: Complete Convergence Reading Order Checklist]

So that’s kind of lousy.  But it isn’t that big a deal, because it’s not like you need to know a lot about Skartaris to understand what’s going on here.  If that were my only problem with issue three, I’d probably recommend this comic.  No, what really bugs me about this issue is how sloppy it is.  Look at these two panels, both depicting the Batmobile in the exact same way.  This first image looks like it was put here by mistake, because it implies that Telos is speaking within the Batmobile, which makes absolutely no sense.  That makes this part of the comic super confusing, and pretty unprofessional.

There’s also at least one spelling mistake in the dialogue, where Telos’ name is spelt wrong.  Considering how this character was written specifically for this event, it seems like quite the goof that they can’t even spell his name consistently.  Now I’d be willing to let things like this slide normally, but for a $5, major event comic, it seems pretty silly for DC to make such obvious mistakes.  It increases the evidence for what a lot of our viewer’s have been saying – that DC threw this event together in an attempt to compete with Marvel’s Secret Wars, because from what I’ve seen in Convergence so far, it really feels put together at the last minute.

And the worst thing about it has to be that I actually like a lot of this comic.  As I said, we saw some really cool stuff, and I was, on the whole, impressed with the art in this comic, but it’s so hard to make a recommendation when I feel that a lot of people won’t understand this comic and I think it wasn’t put together all that well relative to the average publication.  Plus, while it was cool to see things like the final stand of Batman or the destruction of Kandor, I still was hoping for more.  This focus on Earth 2 heroes has pushed aside some characters and stories I’d hope to see more of out of Convergence, like Red Son Superman or some characters from Kingdom Come.  So while I enjoyed this comic well enough, and you might too, I can’t in good faith recommend what I feel is yet another unpolished issue of Convergence.  I want to like this event.  I really do.  I think it’s a great idea for a cool story, just not one that, thus far, has been executed all that well.

But, whatever, Joey will be handling the next issue, and hopefully things will turn around a bit more by the time I do issue #5.  Let me know what you think in the comments section below.  Is Convergence living up to your expectations, or are you… annoyed like me?  If you’re finding this event confusing, you should definitely check out Joey’s list of the Top 10 things you need to know before reading Convergence, because he does a good job at explaining a lot of what is going on here.