World's End.......... Continued
Written By: Jeff King
Art By: Carlo Pagulayan, Jason Paz, John Starr, Peter Steigerwald
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 15, 2015
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
Alright, we're back with the second issue of Convergence and man do I hope that we get some actual story going on here because in the last issue it seemed that we were only told things that we already knew, like Telos pitting domed cities against one another to find out which doomed timeline city is the greatest of them all. We also got to see a bunch of our Earth 2 Wonders pops up on the planet after it looked like they were omega beamed to death at the end of World's End, but even that part seemed like the past nonsense we had to deal with from that series, like Yolanda Montez being alive and still having Avatar powers and just like in World's End, it happened just because. So let's see what's going on here and what Telos is going to do with our Earth-2 Wonders since they don't have a city to represent. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our story starts with Dick Grayson narrating from the future about all the things that have happened that led him to this Battle Royal planet and right away I get angry. Even though the terribleness of Earth 2: World's End is over we still get Dick Grayson screwing up his son's name and calling him Tommy! His name is Johnny by the way. Fuck it, I'm calling him Tommy John for now on. Good old Tommy John Grayson. Not only do we see that the name is wrong again, we see that the events in which Dick gave Tommy John to Big Barda are completely different here. In World's End, he gave his son to Barda because one of the last escape ships was only taking women and children and he gave him up so that he could survive. Here, he's not allowed on board because his wife, who because she was a police officer was given a VIP pass to get on for some reason but since she's dead, Dick and Tommy John are turned away.......... and somehow Big Barda is allowed on and asks to take the boy............ None of this retelling makes any sense! It doesn't matter though because we see some new stuff here that we didn't see before, like Tommy John's ship blowing up and Dick believing he was dead......... Even though in the last issue of Convergence, Dick Grayson said that he had lost his wife but didn't say anything about Tommy John......... Okay, one more thing and I'm done with this part because after we finally get out of the World's End story, this actually gets better. Even though we saw our Wonders disappear when zapped with Darkseid's Omega Beams, Dick tells us that he was taken by liquid metal drones of Telos and that's how our Earth-2 Wonders made their way to Convergence. I guess we just have to go with it but it's kind of nonsense since we just read the finale of World's End two weeks ago and none of this was presented.
After Dick gets done telling us about how he got on this planet with the other Wonders, we see Telos still going on about cities fighting one anther until Val-Zod breaks free of his restraints and starts beating Telos about the face. Eventually, everyone breaks free and Green Lantern does something that I'm not really buying. So you know how Alan Scott connects to the Green to get his powers going.......... Well, even though we don't have the Green on this planet, he somehow still connects with it and gets poisoned by some kind of black that is a part of Telos........... but that doesn't stop him from using the power to blast the enemy down and then become useless the rest of the issue because of it. Telos eventually says "fuck it" and leaves our Wonders and Green Lantern tells everyone that when he was connected to the planet he found out some stuff about old Telos and even though he doesn't really understand all of it, he knows that Telos is afraid of something and it's centered around a particular city that they try to go find. Well, all except Batman. Thomas Wayne has other plans and he takes Grayson with him to the Pre-Flashpoint Gotham to get some allies........ that he never ends up getting.
In the end, we have a very fun and emotional moment where Thomas Wayne has a face to face with that city's version of his son and then after receiving a bodysuit for Grayson and the keys to the Batmobile, the two head out to meet the other Wonders at the city they were looking for not actually getting back up like they said they were. At the city itself, I'm left curious of what's going on because Alan Scott finds it destroyed and picks up a Court of The Owls mask and as our issue closes they rescue the evil sorcerer of Skartaris: Deimos from a bunch of Telos' drones and with his gratitude, he tells them that he can get them off the planet.
That's it for this issue of Convergence and even though I really hated the beginning of this book, it really started to get good and by the end, the majority of my anger had dissipated and I was left with a decent feeling about this book. The main story really just feels like a continuation of World's End which would be alright if it could escape the shadow of that awful series and progress on its own without having to make incorrect callbacks to things the writers of that series couldn't even get right. But enough about World's End........... Really, let it be done and let's move on, the rest of this issue was good and I loved the bits with Thomas Wayne going to the Pre-Flashpoint Gotham and having a tender moment with a version of his son and vice versa with Bruce having that moment as well. It was really good and with great art all the way through, I'm starting to think that this series will be really good, It just hit a few speed bumps here with Alan Scott connecting to something that wasn't the Green and pretty much everything with Dick Grayson but hopefully with that behind us we can just cruise on down the road from here on out.
Bits and Pieces:
While this issue has a couple problems dealing with all the inconsistencies that abounded in Earth 2: World's End, it eventually found it's rhythm and turned into a good issue that I'm happy I read. The art was solid and the story moved us forward while using the domed cities to show a really moving scene that will leave people exciting and sad at the same time. The issue is a mixed bag but I believe the good outweighs the bad.
6.5/10
