Convergence: Blue Beetle #1 (DC)

writer: Scott Lobdell

artist: Yishan Li

Seriously, though, folks: Scott Lobdell.  The guy can't seem to catch a break with the fans, but he's a genius, he really is.  That excerpt from one panel in this issue helps prove it all over again.

Across multiple Convergence spin-offs fans have seen characters breaking or attempting to break the rules of Battleworld Telos (he's a planet, too!).  Finally (maybe it's occurred in some of the titles I haven't read, but I suspect not), Lobdell hits on the obvious, a literary technique that probably doesn't get mentioned in comics a lot: the unreliable narrator.  As in, you don't have to believe everything he says.

It takes the Question to say it.  Of course it does.  The title says Blue Beetle but it's actually a whole Charlton reunion, featuring Question and Captain Atom as well (the nucleus of the characters Alan Moore borrowed for Watchmen, and borrowed back by Grant Morrison for Pax Americana), plus referencing others.

Lobdell knocks the whole issue out of the park.  Usually his comics shine best in narration, so he would certainly be the one to know all about the rules of the storytelling device.  This one doesn't have narration, but it does have yet another novelty (again, in my personal Convergence experience) in showing Telos himself as his explanation for the dome experience is once again repeated, as it is in each Convergence spin-off.  Usually it's featured as it was in Convergence itself, as disembodied words in the air.  Lobdell and Yishan Li play by their own rules.  And thank goodness.