Convergence #2 (DC)

writer: Jeff King

artist: Carlo Pagulayan

Oh, this is becoming quite good.  And as the first issue to be written solo by Jeff King, it speaks to King's ability to write a good comic book, too, and that's very good to see.

The one thing that seemed to garner universal praise for Flashpoint was when Batman, who was in the altered reality Thomas Wayne, gave the Flash a note to give to the Batman from the reset reality, which is to say Bruce Wayne.  As we all should know, Thomas Wayne is Bruce Wayne's father.  In the Flashpoint altered reality, Bruce is the one who died in Crime Alley, whereas it is much more common for it to have been Thomas.  Which is to say, having either aware of the other's existence creates instant poignancy.

King doesn't go for poignancy when he has Thomas and Bruce meet.  He deliberately avoids the exchange between them.  But the impact is still there.  It's there when Dick Grayson of one reality realizes the wife he has lost in his own is still alive in another.  This is common alternate reality material, but it's the first time a mainstream alternate reality story in DC, famously home to many alternate realities, has sanctioned such a possibility.  Thomas Wayne as Batman is walking around in Convergence, too, but the one from Earth 2, not Flashpoint.  That's where Dick Grayson comes from, and he's the lead character in the issue.  Without King having to point it out, there will be plenty of fans who find this to be ironic, because ever since Infinite Crisis this is a character who has been walking around on borrowed time.  DC had toyed with the idea of killing him off.  This was the subtext of his fate in Forever Evil.  And now in Convergence there's at least one issue where Dick is directly aware of the transience of fate.

King masterfully navigates such storytelling, with the kind of finesse not seen in a big event comic book since Identity Crisis.  If Convergence never receives a similar reputation, it will be because Convergence is far more linked to the more outlandish things comic books can do.  But the quality, certainly in this issue as we follow Dick Grayson and two Waynes, is the same.  In some ways, by allowing the reader inside the veil, which is what makes narrative captioning so powerful, perhaps even better.  On the page depicted in this review, it speaks for itself.