Part II. Writer Jeff King took on mission impossible revisiting highlights in DC Comics multiverse for the event series “Convergence”
Tasked with marking the 30th Anniversary of DC Comic’s milestone, the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths writer Jeff King had several years of the publishing giant’s history to comb through, but it would all begin with its most iconic champion. At the core of King’s epic is none other than the Man of Steel. Superman is caught in a game of wills with his arch nemesis Brainiac…and the winner takes all!
But what’s at stake? Only the fate of the multiverse. It started with “FlashPoint” — the events that followed reshaped the DC Universe, “The New 52” relaunched every major character in the DC pantheon. The contemporary Superman, after finding himself cured of a Doomsday virus, is whisked away to a null space in time and confronts a version of Brainiac he has never faced before.
Brainiac subjugates the Man of Steel easily. The contemporary version of Superman is still very young and inexperienced in using his superpowers, but that does not mean that he’s not still a formidable force. Buying time to learn everything he can about Brainiac’s plan, Superman learns how throughout the multiverse every version of himself is purposefully linked to a “crisis” event.
In essence, Brainiac has been gathering bits of “history” throughout the multiverse and incapsulating “moments”. Each one an effort to learn more properly find a weakness in the Man of Steel, but each time he fails. Brainiac’s efforts, a generation’s worth of work, is killing him — causing a cancer that is ripping him apart all throughout the multiverse.
Seeking the information he needs to guarantee his survival, Brainiac has harvested doomed civilizations from throughout the timeline and brought them to a planet…a living planet named Telos. There was no question to series writer King, the scope and magnitude of the work he was about to undertake. “The stories we are doing in Convergence come from everybody who’s contributed to the stories that have come from [DC Comics] Crisis on Infinite Earths to Zero Hour to Kingdom Come — all of those events,” said King, adding: “I’m working with a laths of characters, and we’re going to be answering some very important questions.”
By the time King came to Convergence many of the thematic details had been graphed for him. “A lot of the groundwork had already been laid,” King revealed. “I inherited a lot of the work.” Events within the then established DC continuity were also in upheaval due to the weekly series Future’s End which placed our favorite characters five-years into a future that appeared particularly hopeless. How would our heroes prevail?
“The beauty of it all is that it will culminate in a big change for all of them.” King promised that by the end of his Convergence the heroes would all be irrevocably altered, and the DC multiverse would also be forever changed. On the planet “Telos” the heroes (and villains) found themselves in a bizarre “contest of champions” with the fate of their cities hanging in the balance.
At the end of Convergence, in order to save the entirety of the timeline, Flash, Supergirl and Hal Jordan — all casualties of previous “crisis” events must travel to pivotal points in history — specifically the collapse of the multiverse. Again they face sacrificing themselves to save all of existence!
Convergence written by Jeff King is now collected in a single hardcover edition that includes Issues #0 – #8 of the now classic event.