Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part LXX: Convergence: Zero Hour, Book 1

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2015)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2017

Convergence: Zero Hour, Book 1

Writers: Justin Gray, Christy Marx, Ron Marz, Frank Tieri, and Fabian Nicieza

Art: Ron Randall, Rags Morales & Claude St-Aubin, Mike Manley & Joe Rubinstein/Bret Blevins, Tom Mandrake, and Karl Moline & Jose Marzan Jr.
Color: Gabe Eltaeb, Nei Ruffino and Sian Mandrake
Letters: Pat Brosseau, Travis Lanham, Tom Napolitano, and Dave Sharpe

The very concept of Convergence is pretty goofy and not in a good way. Why bring these characters back but distort them by having them live in isolated cities for a year? Surely there must have been a more elegant option available. It doesn't help that no one seems to have told the writers of the tie-ins whether there were any rules for how the city battles worked: some characters are sent into each other's cities by Telos, others fly over on their own volition, some combats begin as soon as the domes go down, others have time to prepare, and this volume introduces (in just one story) the idea that the combats take place on a neutral ground.

Not pictured: some very cheesecake-y Jim Balent stylings.
from Convergence: Catwoman #2 (script by Justin Gray, art by Ron Randall)

Still, the best Convergence stories manage to do something worthwhile with the concept, usually by having some kind of emotional substrate to the battle being told. I don't think Zero Hour, Book 1 contains the best Convergence stories thus far, but it is one of the most consistent books, perhaps because the 1990s had characters with more emotional complexity than the 1970s/80s ones featured in earlier volumes. All five stories collected here cover characters from Metropolis around the time of the Zero Hour, though I'm not sure if from before or after the event itself, fighting the characters of Kingdom Come (published just two years after Zero Hour, so nice and era-appropriate).

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part LXVII: Convergence: Crisis, Book 2

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2015)
Borrowed from the library
Read May 2017

Convergence: Crisis, Book 2

Writers: Larry Hama, Len Wein, Fabian Nicieza, Marv Wolfman, and Dan Abnett

Art: Joshua Middleton, Aaron Lopresti & Matt Banning, Kelley Jones, ChrisCross, Nicola Scott & Marc Deering, and Federico Dallocchio
Color: Joshua Middleton, Tanya & Richard Horie, Michelle Madsen, Jeromy Cox, and Veronica Gandini
Lettering: Sal Cipriano, Tom Napolitano, Rob Leigh, and Carlos M. Mangual

This volume of Convergence mostly concerns more pre-Crisis Earth-1 heroes, none of them being characters I particularly care about. Well, with the exception of the greatest DC character of them all, Elongated Man.

The continuity doesn't always add up, and I suspect that the format for Convergence sometimes works against the ideas here. For example, the Wonder Woman of this era was (as far as I know) pretty undistinctive; my guess is that they wanted the 1968-73 powerless version of the character, but since all these characters come from the time of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, that version of the character was long gone and can only be approximated. It does seem a bit contrived that there's a point where all the characters from the first two volumes of this series would be chilling in Gotham. Most of the writers don't even bother to explain it, but when Len Wein does explain it in the Swamp Thing story, it's even more out of place, because he explains that Swamp Thing came to Gotham to ask Batman about the mysterious red skies, meaning these characters weren't just plucked out of time near the original Crisis, but during it-- yet no one other than Swamp Thing brings this up. There are also a lot of differences on how the interurban conflicts start; in some stories people are told who to fight, in some they are teleported to the fight, and in some they just fly to another city and start breaking stuff. For a series that's by design only going to appeal to continuity nerds, there's a weird lack of continuity.

Hang on, does this mean all the cities are going to get put back? Otherwise how could these characters go on to participate in Crisis on Infinite Earths?
from Convergence: Swamp Thing #1 (script by Len Wein, art by Kelley Jones)

Also isn't it kind of weird that in nine stories about something bad happening to Gotham, Batman never does anything of significance? The most he gets up to is having a lunch date with the Flash.

No one draws pretty people (of either gender) quite like Nicola Scott.
from Convergence: New Teen Titans #1 (script by Marv Wolfman, art by Nicola Scott & Marc Deering)

Nothing here is as good as the Legion or Green Lantern stories from book 1. Kelley Jones on Swamp Thing is of course a match made in heaven, and the return of Len Wein to the character he originated is nice too, but the story itself (Swamp Thing vs. vampires) is merely okay. If I had any nostalgia for the New Teen Titans, I'm sure it'd be nice to see Marv Wolfman write for them one last time, but I don't, and so it's not, though Nicola Scott's heroic stylings are a good artistic fit for Wolfman's classic scripting. I feel like she hasn't been up to much post-Birds of Prey, so it's good to see her here. I did like how Dan Abnett wrong-footed me in the Flash story with a seeming anachronistic reference by Barry Allen to the Speed Force.

Maybe the reason this story didn't do it for me is the creepy facial expressions.
from Convergence: Justice League of America #1 (script by Fabian Nicieza, art by ChrisCross)

I wanted to be more excited by the Justice League Detroit tale. Ralph and Sue Dibny have been favorite characters of mine ever since Justice League Europe, but this is only an okay showing for them-- probably because Fabian Nicieza is an okay writer on his best days. There's nothing wrong with it, and it tries to have heart concerning a Justice League team for whom very few people are nostalgic, but this story ultimately didn't do much for me, leaning a little bit too hard on the perception that this version of the League was made up of losers. Just tell a good tale about them, don't tell a story about how you're telling a good tale about them, it comes across as defensive and undermines your point.

Next Week: Power Girl, the Huntress, the Justice Society of America, Infinity Inc., and the Seven Soldiers of Victory battle for their lives in Convergence: Infinite Earths, Book 1!

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Gotham, Part XXIII: Batman: The Cat and the Bat

Comic trade paperback, 124 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008)
Borrowed from the library
Read October 2015

Batman: The Cat and the Bat

Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Kevin Maguire
Letterer: Sal Cipriano

Year Six, Summer
Well, this was a delight. While Batman's away on Justice League business and her father's out of town, Barbara Gordon decides to nick her father's case notebook to see if he has any secret identity suspicions she should be worried about-- only for Catwoman to steal it from her. Despite getting his name in the title, Batman is a minor presence here, as this is a tussle between Batgirl and Catwoman for possession of the notebook.

My only previous familiarity with Fabian Nicieza is from his terrible run on Alpha Flight (though "terrible run" is redundant when it comes to Alpha Flight), so I was surprised how much I liked this. He does a good job with the sometime-overused "dueling narrations" device, as both Batgirl and Catwoman give their perspectives on the unfolding events. This is definitely one of those stories with the structure of a well-told joke, as things just keep escalating and escalating, a structure at once both humorous and suspenseful, as Batgirl makes a series of incremental small choices that soon land her in the situation of battling the Riddler in Arkham Asylum! (As is obligatory for these early Batgirl tales, there's a nod to her future confrontation with the Joker. There's also some nice nods to earlier stories from this readthrough, including Batgirl: Year One and even Catwoman: When in Rome.)

Kevin Maguire is an obvious pairing for Nicieza on this story: no one does facial expressions, comedy, and (tasteful) cheesecake quite as well as he does, except for maybe Amanda Conner. Barbara and Selina's chase through the Gotham nudist club is a hilarious, and Barbara's building frustration through the whole thing is palpable-- but Maguire demonstrates his dramatic chops, too, with the Batgirl-in-Arkham sequence.

One of the facial expressions Kevin Maguire is best at is smirking.
I mean, in his art, I don't know if he personally smirks a lot.
from Batman Confidential #20

Like I said, Batman isn't in this very much... but his appearance is perfectly timed and made me laugh out loud. Like the rest of the book, it is a delight.

Next Week: A more serious set of circumstances for the Gordon family in Night Cries!