Acknowledging that moving cross country and restaffing an editorial department might be distracting for its staff, DC officially announced it’s two month fill-in event today, CONVERGENCE. The event will replace the New 52 line-up for two months, April and May of 2015, with a framing 9-issue mini-series, starting with a zero issue, and spinning into 40 two part mini series. Promo art by Carlos Paguayan and Jose Marzan Jr.

The event has been rumored for quite a while, and I’m told it was hatched back in the spring as a way to ease the transition as DC personnel make the move from NYC to Burbank in April 2015. The event was originally run by Tom DeFalco but he moved on and was replaced by ex-Marvel/Teshkeel editor Marie Javins, who worked closely with Dan Didio on the event.

The event was announced this morning in USA Today. The whole event is being overseen by TV’s Jeff King, (White Collar, Continuum, Stargate SG-1) with Carlo Pagulayan and Stephen Segovia on art on the framing mini, and Dan Jurgens and Scott Lobdell helping oversee things. The 40 two-issues minis will feature a wide variety of writers and artists.

The story itself will not feature the NEW 52 characters, but spins out of two weekly series which both end in April, Earth 2: World’s End and The New 52: Futures End. These both involved Braniac messing with various realities, and new villain, Telos will create more mischief. Just like Pandora did and we all know how well that worked out.

The series will probably deal with all the messy extra earths that DC has floating around that got papered over by the New 52, with characters such as as
Donna Troy, Blue Beetle and the Justice Society of America possibly reemerging.

“What we’re really addressing is they all exist and have existed and exist within the framework of the New 52,” Jim Lee told USA Today. “Convergence is in many ways the most meta epic event we’ve done.”

“It captures the full essence and scope of DC’s incredible history and storytelling, ” Dan DiDio said.”There is a story and a character for every generation of DC Comics fan. But then in a shocking turn, he added that Jeff King was brought on to have “a fresh set of eyes to look at it and make sure that it’s as open and accessible to all fans. Not just the people who have been reading DC throughout the years.”

According to DC’s own piece about Convergence,

If you’ve been reading THE NEW 52: FUTURES END and EARTH 2: WORLD’S END, now is the moment you’ve been waiting for. All things converge as readers get to experience the DC multiverse like never before—hundreds of heroes, hundreds of villains, numerous worlds, and universe altering events all in one place, one time.

Taking place outside of time and space—on the question mark, just below Earth 29 and above Chaos, on the Map of the Multiverse—and introducing the new villain—Telos, this massive event will be published throughout April and May.

Hm with Marvel bringing back Secret Wars and DC going multiversal on us again it’s going to be one busy summer.

As for what happens AFTER Convergence?

That…is still developing.

27 COMMENTS

  1. June is the biggest question of this — will an audience trained on serialization be happy with a two-month gap? At least with the September stunts they at least we’re notionally part of continuity.

    Two issue mini-series are pretty much the most difficult thing to ever order non-returnably — and we have FORTY of them to deal with? Sounds kind of insane.

  2. So 40 x 2 issues= 80 comics? 80 x $4= $320.
    I am not sophisticated enough for this, nor well off, so think I’ll pass on this Multitude of Magnificence…

  3. So … how is this going to tie in with the Multiversity? Which should be ending right around then (or shortly afterwards if deadline drift hits it).

  4. This is going to be a great success for DC and a terrible disaster for retailers who have no idea how to order this crap but go bigger than normal “just to be safe”.

  5. @Jer – it will not be, for two reasons.

    In-story, because what Convergence is presenting is past timelines that were wiped out (but where Brainiac saved bits of them) – that is disconnected to the Multiverse.

    Out-of-story, because Morrison wrote all of Mulitversity a long time ago and they are just adjusting it a bit as needed to work with what little they’ve established about the post-relaunch Multiverse.

    At the end of the day, I don’t think either project is going to have a major influence on DC’s comics moving forward.

  6. Probably won’t get the main series, or any story written by the longtime DC writers. That still probably leaves a decent chunk of room for new talent and a few surprises to pop up and enjoy them.

  7. Oh boy. Whelp, looks like I have a second Retailer’s View to write for this week – but briefly: there IS a way DC could turn this into a huge win. I just… don’t trust them to do it, starting from the announcement of the main series writer who – while probably talented – should really be a “get”. But more on all that later.

  8. @Al@: Why are you assuming that the books will be $4. DC has more $3 books than anybody else.
    Hopefullly the books are made returnable so the burden is lifted from the retailers. Then again, I don’t know how helpful returnability really is.

  9. @CagedLeo730, good point, the comics might have $3 price points. Which would total $240. As always, I like to look at the product before I buy, and that puts me at risk of not getting to see some of the issues. I’m just not a Big Event kind of person, but this 2 issue multi-tital detour could find success among collectors.

  10. Out-of-story, because Morrison wrote all of Mulitversity a long time ago and they are just adjusting it a bit as needed to work with what little they’ve established about the post-relaunch Multiverse.

    But that’s exactly my point – Multiversity is basically done and should be incorporated into something like this. It sounds like they’re at least acknowledging the map of the multiverse that they developed for/alongside Multiversity at least.

    At the end of the day, I don’t think either project is going to have a major influence on DC’s comics moving forward.

    I suspect you’re right about Multiversity – because it always takes about 5 years for DC to catch up to what Morrison writes and realize that in every book he writes he seeds a hundred ideas that he doesn’t intend to use but just leave there for other people to work with.

    Convergence – who knows? It probably depends on the fan reaction to it.

    But I imagine the biggest impact in coming years will mostly be the multiverse map.

  11. Why do you have to buy the entire thing, or nothing at all? There’s any number of ways you could approach this, but the all or nothing one seems to be the least efficient in terms of enjoyment.

  12. It would have really been cool if when the new 52 started up, each hero got their own Earth to play in all by themselves, and when they came together to form the Justice League it would be a Crisis on 52 Earths.

  13. Wow, as a retailer I cannot express properly how excited I am about losing sales on every DC comic that won’t be published for two months. If Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, Oni and the rest don’t jump on this I will be amazed at the lost opportunity to take market share from DC.

    I for one, don’t look forward to telling DC fans their favorite books won’t be around for TWO WHOLE MONTHS! Maybe the books will be readable. But with the sales on Septembers Future Past fresh on retailers minds, they better put together a fantastic list of writers and artists to get people to pick these up. If DC wants us to take a risky chance on these, they’d best offer returnability.

  14. So DC is doing to Morrison’s Multiversity what Morrison’s Final Crisis did to Death of the New Gods?

    It’s not that difficult to not screw things up so much.

    silly but True

  15. I’ll be waiting to see the actual creative teams before I decide on which books I’m going to buy. Not crazy about the concept though.

  16. @Bob – this is what is happening, as I understand it:

    Once upon a time, there was a multiverse of infinite Earths. Then there was a big Crisis that wiped most of them out and merged them into a single universe. Right before that happened, this Uber Brainiac snagged a bunch of the Earths (or possibly just cities from those Earths) and saved them. Then an Infinite Crisis happened and divided the single universe into a Multiverse again, this time with just 52 universes. Then Flashpoint happened, and the previous 52 universes were wiped out and replaced with 52 new universes. Before those 52 universes could be changed, however, the Uber Brainiac grabbed some Earths/cities and saved them as well. So now he has this big bundle of pre-Crisis worlds and pre-Flashpoint worlds to play with. All of which is separate from the CURRENT 52-Earth Multiverse.

  17. @Glenn: Thank you so much for that excellent summary.

    Modifying the lyrics to one of my favorite songs: “And you may find yourself, living in a new multiverse. And you may find yourself, with a new origin. And you may find yourself with an edgy, new costume. And you may find yourself with a new convoluted storyline. And a new convoluted continuity. And you may ask yourself, “How did I get here?”

    Sing it to the classic:

    http://youtu.be/98AJUj-qxHI

    You have to buy 40 books for the whole story? Is that a typo? Good grief, that’s almost a car note! : )

    “Same as it ever was” Indeed.

    Cheers!

  18. Why not ditch the charade. DC should have an event called Age of Apokolips, presuming Darkseid continued winning after the day evil won. Then DC can introduce a bunch of new palette-swapped versions of our beloved heroes, and they desperately continue the fight from the day evil won, to the week evil won, to the year evil won. It could be 54 issues, one daily to kickoff, then the next issue the next week. Then the next issue for 52 more weeks. And with each week, they can release a different version of the cover in hologram-projecting carpet-cleaning madness that shows the original version of the character taking group selfies of his various suits including Golden Age, Silver Age, Age of Apokolips, Flashpoint; each cover rotates the version of the suit taking the photo. The series can begin in the middle and alternate issues working forward and backwards through the story to bridge the original universe to the New52. And at the very end, is a hidden coded message from DC spread throughout all of the individual issues and covers of the event.
    And then when it’s all complete, realize the damn thing doesn’t make any sense at all, so have a 3-D one-shot of Mandraak a bleed vampire drinking a warm cup of the bleed, that includes the special decoder:
    “B- s-re to d-r-nk M-re -val-t-ne.”

    Silly but True.

  19. Only the completionist have to buy all 40 tie-in minis. They’ve only announced the main weekly so that’s the main title to follow. Everything else is up to extra fluff to maintain market share.

  20. Hahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahaha. At this point I refuse to blame or criticize DC for any decision they make. I instead decide to put all responsibility on the readers and buyers who support and enable such ridiculous endeavors. And to think! It takes a “creative summit” to come up with THIS.

    Also I wonder if I’m in the minority of comic fans who enjoy the sense of escapism, adventure, wonder, and fun in their comic books. I never need to hear the word “meta” when considering super-hero fare. It’s ridiculous. There’s really quite a number of much better mini-comics and underground publications with a meta edge who certainly do it better than DC will with *this*.

  21. I am not a huge DC reader anymore. They pretty much lost me after the New 52 reboot. It wasn’t that I am adamantly against the reboot, it just seemed to me that some of the books afterwards were just ill thought out and a bit shoddy. Also DC essentially lost any brand loyalty I had when they changed their product. I still buy the odd tpb, but only the occassional one.
    Convergence seems like a fairly easy pass for me. It seems like DC wants to have product on the shelves for those months, but can’t plan around it any other way (whatever happened to inventory issues btw?).
    At this stage the only thing I have heard about this that interests me is Tom Peyer writing The Atom. Tom Peyer is one of the most underrated guys in comics, and someone who I would read anything by ever since I bought Hourman back in the day. Other than that…well I won’t say I’ll pass. I’ll see what’s out there, but at this point nothing is really floating my boat.

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