Convergence #8

I actually made it to the final issue without anybody spoiling it for me!

The cover must portray the end of the book when Telos delivers all of the heroes to their new worlds in The New 52. Hopefully those new worlds include the entire universe they came from as well. The Multiversity Guidebook listed seven unknown dimensions. Hopefully those will be converted into old DC Universes that will subsequently be ignored for years. Except for the new Earth-2. After what DC did to it, Earth-2 needs a serious reboot. And probably a long shower too.

The issue begins with Doctor Fate speechifying and explicating up a storm. He explains how the death of Deimos has released the powers of all of the time travelers and has turned Planet Brainiac into "a proverbial bullet that will shatter the multiverse." Is this the Doctor Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs Doctor Fate because he's talking Madame Xanaduian nonsense! Nobody listen to Doctor Fate! I've never heard of this proverbial bullet that will shatter the multiverse! What proverb was that in?

The point to be taken from Doctor Barn Owl's words is that they're all going to die now. Everybody thank Uncle Parallax!

Hal Jordan is all, "No, no! Hold on! I wasn't finished yet! You can't critique my work until you've seen it to its end!" Then he quickly writes a script that portrays Starfire as something more than a cosmic cum dumpster and points out how everybody was completely wrong when they criticized him. No wait. That wasn't Hal Jordan! That was Scott Lobdell. Hal Jordan's lie to save face is just that he can stop the planet from becoming this mysterious proverb.

Hal's new plan is to gather up all of the Green Lanterns on the planet so that he can kill them and take their rings. Then he'll say, "Voila!" And nothing will be fixed but Hal will be even more powerful and might even survive the new crisis. But nobody trusts Hal probably because he actually vocalized that ridiculous plan. The Flashes begin to feel the world coming apart and Telos says, "The Countdown to Final Zero Infinite Crisis Point Hour Redux has begun!"

Great, Booster. You just had to bring Waverider into this. Can I get a refund now?

How long will this fight to survive go on before Booster Gold mentions that he comes from a universe that isn't represented by any cities on this planet which probably means that it has never been destroyed in a crisis! I bet he remembers when Waverider screams, "Booster! Only one chance left! You have to suck my cock!"

Waverider tells everybody his plan and then acts on it before anybody can chime in with a "Bad idea!" or a "Are you fucking nuts?" or "Where did Ambush Bug and Cheeks go?" His plan is to bring Mega-Brainiac back to the planet because Mega-Brainiac is the only being that can absorb all of the chronal energy threatening to destroy the multiverse. But the heroes pretend like they didn't hear Waverider's plan because they didn't come up with it, and they attack Brainiac.

You're the asshole who screamed attack, Superman. If this was your stance, why did you provoke him?

Superman's speech reminds Brainiac how he just wanted to be known as the most intelligent person in all of existence. Oh, poor boy! He's just suffering from low self-esteem. I think all he needs are billions and billions of tiny hugs.

Brainiac explains how he's experienced every single version of the DC Universe and survived them all. But the exposure to all of the nonsense left him riddled with Cosmic Time Cancer. Now he just wants to go back to being Brainiac from Colu. And he asks the super heroes for their help.

Meanwhile in The New 52 universe, the heroes have given up hope and gone home to wait for nonexistence to creep in. Superman holds Supergirl's hand and says, "Well, we did our best! We all gathered here by this strange anomaly, watched it for a bit, got hit by exploding chronomatter, and realized we couldn't do anything. Nobody can say we didn't try our hardest to save the universe!"

"Although," begins Kara, "If we really do believe this is the end of everything, shouldn't we have laid down our lives trying to stop it instead of just twiddling our thumbs?" Superman smiles a smile that he'd be surprised to learn made him look exactly like Ma Kent. And he says the last words he figures he'll ever say: "What are you? Dumb?"

Back on Planet Brainiac, Brainiac begins sending everybody back to their cities so he can return them to their original universes. He mentions something about resetting the Multiverse because it's been over three years without a universe changing crisis. But then something goes horribly wrong!

I don't get it.

So Brainiac says if the First Crisis isn't changed, the multiverse will once again collapse into one universe. So he wants the First Crisis to maintain a multiverse instead of it happening and destroying infinite Earths. But then he sends The Flash and Supergirl back in time so that they can die in the Crisis just the way it happened the first time. Wouldn't that result in the First Crisis not being changed and exactly what Brainiac doesn't want to happen to happen?

Maybe he'll explain it better if I keep reading.

Before Mega-Brainiac sends everybody back in time, the heroes form teams and decide to go back to different parts of the past to help defend against the various crises. Parallax wants to go back to Crisis on Infinite Earths to try to save The Flash and Supergirl. That means he won't be around to become The Spectre. I think DC has gone mad! After decades of trying to make their entire library of stories more coherent, they're now on the verge of making them incomprehensible!

I love it! Tear it all down! Blow it all up! DC Comics does like this theme of "52" so this must be their version of playing 52 Pick-up with their universe.

Who wants to be DC Comics does "Crisis On Infinite Earths Redux" with the new ending? Then they'll set up a few comics that continue from that version of the DC Universe. Dan Jurgens can write it since it'll have to take place in 1985.

Mega-Brainiac informs everyone that the heroes were successful. Crisis on Infinite Earths now happened differently! Now they'll have to deal with Zero Hour! Or have all the other crises just been wiped out by the change of the first one?

Apparently it changes everything. All of the worlds that were destroyed by Crisis on Infinite Earths actually survived. They've changed and evolved now because it's thirty years later and we don't want stories about a bunch of planets from 1985. Mega-Brainiac declares he's returning to Earth-0. But first he must cleanse Planet Brainiac. Too bad the Twofers and Telos are still on the surface! If Alan Scott can't save them with his Rainbow Energy power, they'll all be doomed!

Alan Scott converts Planet Brainiac to the new Earth-2 and Telos transports it back to Universe-2 where the survivors of World's End are still looking for a new home. Green Lantern sends out a Green Spectrum Flare for them to follow back to Earth. Hopefully when Dick is reunited with his son, he won't ever ditch him again for his son's own good.

At least the kid had the sense to ditch Barda!

Convergence #8 Rating: -1 Crisis on Infinite Earths out of 1 Crisis on Infinite Earths. Oh, DC Comics! Why can't y'all just be content with the universe as it is. It's not a puzzle that has to be solved. It's just a bunch of stories. This feels like the powers that be got together and asked, "When did our universe get so fucked up?" And what they came up with was that everything started getting screwed up after Crisis on Infinite Earths which was supposed to be their big fix. So what the current people in charge of DC Comics think is that more variety and insanity is good for comics. This was something that DC tried to quash for years. My question is this: how long before a new set of people in charge decide things should be more like the universe after Crisis?

Hopefully this revelation isn't treated as a "fix" of the universe. Hopefully DC has the endurance to run with it and just accept that this is their universe now. Every story is now in continuity. Even the ones that happened after Crisis are in continuity because they had to have happened to have the characters meet on Planet Brainiac so that they could eventually beat back the Anti-Monitor. So are y'all satisfied now? While your favorite characters might not be in a current book, their stories exist. They haven't been rebooted into oblivion. They're just part of a wacky-doodle universe that has never made complete logical sense no matter how much the powers that be wanted it to.

For some reason, this entire thing reminds me of Brandi Carlile's song "I Will."