After months of speculation, where this project was given the nickname “The DC Band-Aid” or “Blood Moon”, DC Comics has gone and made it official today, announcing a new two month mega-event starting April 1st 2015 called Convergence. This nine-part event series will bring DC’s regular publishing schedule for all of its superhero/New 52 books to a halt for two months, as it brings back characters from DC’s pre-New 52 (and even even pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths) past into its current universe.
Convergence also marks the end of both of the currently running weekly series The New 52: Futures End and Earth 2: World’s End, both of which finish things up just as Convergence launches. Long time television writer Jeff King (White Collar) is writing the main series, while long time DC creator Dan Jurgens will co-write issue #0. Art duties are being handled by Carlo Pagulayan and Stephen Segovia. In addition to the main series, DC will also publish 40 two-part tie-in series exploring the various corners of the different worlds within the main series.
According to a story in USA Today,  the villain who sets the whole story in motion is none other than Brainiac, who has “trapped cities from various timelines and planets that have ended, brought them in domes to a planet outside of time and space, and is now opening them for a great experiment to see what happens when all these folks meet.†(Note: this sounds a lot like Marvel’s original Secret Wars mini-series from 1984.) The series’ other “Big Bad” aside from Brainiac is Telos, a new villain created just for Convergence, named after the Greek philosophical term for ”end” or ”goal”, he is created by Brainiac and this mysterious planet, and even begins taking on traits of that world “but becomes a character unto himself,” according to DC’s Dan DiDio.
In the same article, DC’s Jim Lee said  “What we’re really addressing is they all exist and have existed and exist within the framework of the New 52. Convergence is in many ways the most meta epic event we’ve done.†So all you older DC fanboys and fangirls out there, DC is throwing you a bone, saying that all those versions of characters that we love are still out there. Specifically named dropped were characters missing from the New 52 like Donna Troy, the Justice Society and the original Blue Beetle. So what does this mean for the New 52 DC Universe? Will it come back the same as before when it returns in June 2015? Or will we get an amalgam of the old continuity and the new one? Only time will tell.
And for those wondering, the teaser image features the ’90s-era JLA, the pre-Crisis Justice Society of America, the pre-Crisis Blue Beetle, and the other Charlton heroes from Earth-4, The characters from the Flashpoint Earth, the original Earth-3 Crime Syndicate, the vampire Gothamites from the Batman Red Rain Elseworlds series, the old west Justice Riders (also an Elseworlds) the original Wildstorm Gen-13, and the heroes from DC’s 1997 crossover event called Tangent Comics. And I’m sure there will be a lot more than just  those.
Are you excited about the return of all these classic DC Universe characters, or do you think they should have all been left in the past? Let us know in the comments below.
[HT:Â USA Today]
Image: DC Comics
Nothing is more confusing than the DC multiverse. I am a die hard DC fan and I am getting sick of the multiverse. Pick a verse and stick with it.
Crisis on Infinite Earths was supposed to fix all of this. Every time they multiverse crossover us up like this it cheapens their whole line. Just shut up and come up with decent ideas. Why is it that Marvel’s properties seem inspired and interesting and DCs’, outside the archaeotypes of bats and supes, seems like they took a black and white pic of a naked person, drew random lines on them and colored them by numbers and slapped on one of like, two or three dozen go to origins and powers? I’m so sick of hearing about DC’s movies and now their comics line I honestly hope people start forgetting how to read so they’ll have fewer people to sell to. Hail MARDUK! the sun god that dwells inside of us.
This is exactly why I gave up on DC when they first went to the “New 52.” It’s one thing to bring back every DC character that ever existed for your “Countdown” series, if that’s what it takes to preserve all those copyrights [but seriously, you include “Brother Power, the Geek” but not the “Inferior 5”?], and it’s a whole ‘nother thing when you regurgitate it all over again within just a couple of years. It’s like your saying, that’s it, I’m all out of ideas. Really, Dan DiDio? That’s the best you got? Julius Schwartz would have thrown you out of his office. Yeah, I’m that old.