Reviewed at No Flying, No Tights. ( )

Convergence
Author: Jeff King, Scott Lobdell, Dan Jurgens, Carlo Pagulayan, Stephen Segovia, Andy Kubert, Ethan Van Sciver
Publisher: DC Comics
Published In: Burbank, CA
Date: 2015
Pgs: 320
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Brainiac has stolen cities from throughout time, space, and the multiverse and placed them on a sentient, godlike planet of his design. A battle for existence, survival of the fittest between the heroes and villains of the purloined cities. The heroes of slain worlds must unite to end the threat to the Multiverse before reality itself is doomed.
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Genre:
Aliens
Comics and graphic novels
Disaster
End of the World
Fiction
Multiverse
Superheroes

Why this book:
Many superheroes battling outsized threats with the universe/multiverse hanging in the balance.
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Favorite Character:
Love the image of the giant Brainiac tormenting/testing the New 52 Superman. And classic Brainiac in the pink shirt and white boots. Though they start to seem to be aspects of the same Brainiac, or subservient program parts of the whole. Hmmm. Telos.

Least Favorite Character:
Never trust a guy with a devil derivative name in storytelling. Deimos. Was he an alternate universe version of Deimos or was he from the Skartaris of Earth-1...0...37? I love a good multiversal story, but Deimos feels like filler and his whole story doesn’t ring.

Favorite Scene / Quote:
When the aforementioned giant Brainiac traps and torments the New 52 Superman.

When Silver/Bronze Age Superman gives Grayson the pep talk and leaves him with the “if you are anything like the Dick Grayson I know.” Love that. First real one of “those” moments.

Loved the image of the heroes going back to face the original Crisis.

Loved the two Earth-2 Jay Garricks standing side-by-side.

Pacing:
Too much filler spent building up Deimos. Too many pages padding out the length of the story, pages lost in the Skartaris-Deimos-Warlord pastiche.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
For all his svelty voiced coercion in the early parts of the story, Deimos’s braggadocio when he made his power play pretty much insured that the good good guys weren’t going to side with him. The evil guys will. The anti-heroes might...might not. The villain with a heart might not.

After he kills Machiste and the rest of Warlord’s crew and turns on the heroes of New 52 Earth-2, why does he keep Yolanda Montez around. The motivation doesn’t synch for me.

Hmm Moments:
When the New 52 Superman escapes into the world desert, only to find the classic Brainiac there. The way this Brainiac acts and the things he says lead us to the conclusion that he is either an aspect, a subroutine, a child program of the overall Brainiac. Though whether the giant from the first of the story is THE Brainiac or just another aspect of something else remains to be seen.

Lots of images that aren’t part of the story, but could have happened offscreen. Love, love, love the image of up-armored Lex Luthor vs Superman-Red and Superman-Blue.

Parallax siding with the angels. But, of course, Parallax was biding his time. The scene where Talos puts him in his place. And Wonder Woman calling Jordan out for not being trustworthy, instead of it coming from a dimensional counterpart of Bruce Wayne is cool.

WTF Moments:
The place, itself, has a consciousness. That’s a cool twist.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
Having Skartaris play a central role in the early parts of the story when they’ve got the whole multiverse to play with seems odd...and limiting.
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Last Page Sound:
I was prepared to be disappointed, which, unfortunately, is how I read comics these days. This surprised me. The filler Deimos sections were disillusioning. But, then, the short run into the climax and the climax gave me that “I love comics” feeling.

Author Assessment:
A big thank you to the storytellers for finishing strong.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
it’s alright

Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library
South Campus
Irving, TX

Dewey Decimal System:
741.5973
KIN

Would recommend to:
genre fans
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I received this from Edelweiss and DC Comics in exchange for an honest review.

This book has the honor of rating lowest for me in 2015. I don't think anything else I'll read this year will be this bad.

.5 stars, barely.

Wow, this was all over the place, without any sort of clear direction or heading. I'm not entirely sure I can even explain what happened coherently enough to even recommend it to anyone.

Bad, really bad. I liked the direction DC was taking with the New 52, but this massive goose egg does not bode well for the entire company. ( )

So begins the realignment of the DC Universe. Again. (Not to say that Marvel doesn’t realign here and there too, retconning seems to be liked more and more and more these days by both major comic companies). Except, I guess this time it’s sort of the realignment of previous realignments (the allusions to those reboots weren’t subtle).

All the heroes from fifty doomed cities that have been collected by Brainiac are being pitted against each other on a planet outside of time to decide who survives and who doesn’t. And then someone who seems worse comes into the picture. And if you also add a dose of Brainiac into that, most of the TPB was utter chaos.

And that was one of the things that I didn’t totally like about the TPB, the story telling sometimes seemed all over the place. On the other hand, keeping the characters straight was much easier than I thought it would be. Overall it was a good TPB, and I look forward to what comes next in the DC Universe.

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of DC Entertainment ( )