Not to be shown up by Marvel’s paltry attempts at uniting several disparate continuities into one in Secret Wars, DC has been working on its own universe-wide semi-reboot, putting all of their titles on hold for a two month period while they combine several cities from various disparate continuities into one in the Convergence.
Lest this sound too familiar, though, longtime DC fans may be thoroughly excited at DC’s take on the company-wide maneuver as a number of continuities thought forever lost to the sands of reboot time will be making appearances throughout the event!
Check out DC’s slowly expanding Convergence page here, as well as a preview guide featuring all of the cities hosted here by Newsarama — and io9 previously showed us some of the impacts and storylines we’ll be seeing from the various Convergence series.
For some of the highlight "cities" from the upcoming event, hit the jump.
Legion of Super Heroes, Legionnaires
Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, Lighting Lad — and the Superboy of the 20th Century, Clark Kent! This was one of my favorites growing up, and though the Legion has been through many a reboot and change over the years, I’m excited to see the originals make a comeback here. Along for the ride are their young clone counterparts from a later reboot — a chance to “de-age” the Legion to the teenagers that had made them interesting and relevant in the past, and revisit issues that the then-grown-up Legion no longer faced themselves.
Tangent Central City
The Tangent Universe never quite got off the ground, featuring a variety of different heroes — a female Flash and Green Lantern with very different, more mystical origins, a Superman-styled Atom, and many others, though it still holds a niche place among interesting DC spinoffs.
Earth-A, Earth-3, Angor, Injustice
Based on the Lawless League, the Crime Syndicate, the Extremists from the 90s Justice League Europe run, and the recent Mortal Kombat-produced fighting game, each of these four worlds features a twisted form of DC’s heroes: one corrupted, one left without morality, one evil set of Marvel villain analogues, and one of parallel, evil counterparts like Ultra-Man and Owlman. In addition to the Flashpoint universe, the evil villains of these worlds could well serve as foils and story hooks for several books when the domes amongst the cities drop. (It’s worth mentioning that this could also mean seeing the Champions of Angor — an analogue of the Avengers — in other Convergence stories. One can hope.)
Earth-S, Earth-Four, Earth-X, San Diego
Many of the comic companies that once stood on their own now find their own homes in the Convergence after being swallowed up by DC. Earth-S brings us a world where Captain Marvel, aka SHAZAM!, is the first in the First Family of its Fawcett heroes; Earth-Four holds the adventures of old Charlton characters like Blue Beetle and Captain Atom; Earth-X bears the original Silver Age Freedom Fighters, including Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady, and the Human Bomb; and San Diego serves as the center point for the original WildStorm universe, including Gen13 and the WildC.A.T.S.
Gotham City
At least nine variations of Gotham have made their way into the Convergence, including Pre-Crisis Earth-One, Pre-Flashpoint, Flashpoint Gotham, Batman Beyond Gotham, Gotham by Gaslight, Injustice Gotham, Stan Lee’s Just Imagine Gotham, the modern post-Flashpoint Gotham, and the vampire-inspired Red Rain Gotham City. Just in case you thought that the often Gotham-and-Batman-heavy modern iteration of DC would be at all upset by the transition in the Convergence event. (In fairness, I’m pretty excited to see some crossovers with the Batman Beyond line, and Pre-Crisis Batman always had a little bit of zany to him.)
Also situated here are some great pre-reboot stories, including Stephanie Brown as Batgirl, Dick Grayson and Babs Gordon as Nightwing and Oracle, and an all-female Justice League!
Metropolis
Not to be outdone, Metropolis has at least nine incarnations of its own: Pre-Crisis Earth-Two, Pre-Zero Hour, Earth-Three, Kingdom Come, Generations, and the “Imaginary” Superman Red/Blue — as well as the time-shifted 30th Century Legion, 31st Century Legion, and the 853rd Century Justice League A of *DC One Million*. Elseworld’s Finest, a gender-reversed Earth-One, may also feature either Metropolis or Gotham, as well, and has been listed as another entry into DC’s Convergence. No word on whether the 2012 re-imaginings of Power Girl and the Huntress as Earth-2 characters stranded on the new Earth-1 will be making an appearance, though.
El Inferno, Earth-2, Moscow, Darkest Knight, Dreamworld, New Frontier
From the Western heroes of Justice Riders to the Darkseid-conquered Earth-2, from the Russian-raised Superman of Red Son to Gotham’s Green Lantern to the 60’s-inspired Dreamworld, several Elseworlds-style re-imaginings of the DC heroes have been brought into this new event and universe. Of these, Howard Chaykin’s 50’s-inspired DC: The New Frontier re-imagining receives a well-deserved place in the Convergence after receiving an animated movie and an Eisner Award, among others.
Many other worlds will appear as part of Brainiac’s collection of domed cities, including the original post-apocalyptic Jonah Hex; Kamandi, Last Boy on Earth; Skartaris, home of the Warlord; Cap’s Hobby Shop; and the forward-thinking, science-fiction Twilight.
Of these, which am I most excited to see, you ask (besides the return of Ryan Choi as the Atom not a minute too soon)?
Earth C-Minus
That’s right — it’s the return of CAPTAIN CARROT and the JLA (Justa Lotta Animals)! This series was a particular favorite of mine as a kid, and maybe more so to revisit as an adult — not only because it was still willing to address the themes other comics did with a self-aware, light-hearted air, but because the characters that started as pastiches of the Justice League (Fastback, the super-speed turtle, or Alley Kat Abra, the feline Zatanna) grew to have their own storylines, characters, and their own engaging tales, no pun intended.
Will this allow DC to finally create new ongoing stories in the world of Captain Carrot, or any of these other myriad worlds?
As you can hear in our last Geekly Roundup, reboots sometimes are the hardest because they take away not only the versions of the characters that you have come to love, but sometimes nullify the journeys those characters undertook to become those versions, leaving it as though they’d never existed.
Through Secret Wars’ Battleworld and the upcoming Convergence, both DC and Marvel have taken a couple months to celebrate, revive, and continue storylines both old and new, and while company-wide events can be frustrating, these offer us an opportunity to celebrate the things we loved most about these worlds past and, if not to receive some closure, to at least see just a small part of how that journey continued after we’d thought they were lost.
At least, until they all start killing each other.
But what’s a good company-wide event without that, I guess?
Ben Fried-Lee is a blogger, podcaster, baseball fan, and avid comic book reader based in the Bay Area. When he has time, he still reads comic books on the iPad you dropped and broke last week. Don’t cut your finger.
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