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.
Oy.
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”.
And with that I am done with DC Comics.
@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.
@Jason – why? Why not just take a couple of months off if this is not your cup of tea?
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.
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.
@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.
@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.