Convergence Week Seven: Swamp Thing Vs Vampires

Welcome to Recon:Vergence, a weekly look at what’s going on throughout DC’s new reality-smooshing event storyline, Convergence.

Every week until the end of the event, every comic DC publishes will be a part of this giant storyline – and it’s a little confusing, especially for new readers. To help out, we’re going to provide a timeline of events, let you know which Universes are still in the fight, and try and keep everything on track.

Carlo Pagulayan

Main Event! Convergence #7

Chaos pulses through the stadium as all the participants turn on one another, with the evil characters typically against the heroic characters – with the exception of Shazam, who seems happy to just beat up everyone in sight. There’s no sign of any law and order, thanks to Deimos, until match official Telos returns and forces a time-out. The pair start sparring, which prompts everybody to stand together and punch the goatee clean off Deimos – and then leads to Huntress, Hawkgirl and Cheetah all being obliterated in a giant green wall of death. For some reason.

Anyway, Hal Jordan saunters in and blows up Deimos – so that’s a relegation for that dude – which means the planet Telos starts breaking up and ‘sploding. It destroys Oracle, the giant stone floaty man created by Scott Lobdell, which I’m going to count as a plus for the New 52. Shouldn’t have sat in the splash zone, rocky!

It appears that reality is now breaking for some reason, so next week expect a load of heroic sacrifices as DC decides once and for which are the most profitable character leftovers from the last few decades.

Convergence Group C

Every Convergence tie-in issue of the week is part of the same overall narrative, so you only get the whole story if you know what happened in every single issue last Wednesday. Group C sees six worlds go up against one another for the right to move into the next round:

Gotham, Pre-Crisis Earth-One: The original home of DC’s characters. The Golden and Silver Age of DC were established here, before being merged together and clattered about as a result of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Central City, Tangent Universe: Created from ideas by Dan Jurgens, the Tangent Universe re-imagines several DC characters in different forms. They retain the same names, but the characters are radically different --- this is a universe where the existence of superheroes has totally affected everything, from economy to politics to Florida (which, uh, got exploded).

Gotham, Red Rain Universe: As featured in a series of stories from Doug Moench and Kelley Jones, this is a world where, to generalize, basically everybody is a vampire now.

New York City, Earth A.D.: Better known as the home of Kamandi, OMAC, and several other beloved Jack Kirby creations. After an event known as ‘The Great Disaster’, humans and animals have swapped places – humans are savage and wild, while the animals, having grown into high intelligence, rule the land.

Durvale: Home to the Atomic Knights, who wear irradiated suits of armor and ride about on giant Dalmatians for reasons best known to themselves.

Metropolis, Pre-Crisis 30^th Century: Far into the future, the Legion of Superheroes is led by one of Clark Kent’s direct descendants, and include a few somewhat familiar names including Lightning Lass and Brainiac 5 amongst the team.

Round Two:

Surprise entrants Metropolis fight to a stalemate against Durvale, which isn’t something that’s meant to happen but has been happening all the time in Convergence. It’s like watching a cricket match for five days only for the whole thing to end up a ruddy draw. Brainiac 5 picks up a date, while Superboy takes the muzzles off those giant Dalmatians, so all’s well that ends well, I guess?

There’s more action over in the fight between Gotham and the Red Rain vampires, where each side get in some strong shots against the other. The vampires take out Etta Candy and Steve Trevor, but Wonder Woman makes a stirring comeback which leads to her crippling a vampire cult group, staking vampiric Poison Ivy and smashing Were-Catwoman with a silver cross. Can this be what Wonder Woman is like every week, please?

She ultimately hurls a javelin straight through Vampire Joker, stealing the victory even though everybody she loves is dead. If only she could have stalled for just a little while longer, because Vampire Batman pulls off a switcheroo and takes out the head of all Gotham’s vampires, reverting everybody back into humans. Then, for no good reason, he condemns all these returned humans to immediate death when he forfeits his match and goes into natural sunlight. Man, how much would it suck to be one of those civilians? Vampire Batman’s even more of a dick than Regular Batman. Red Rain’s Universe is eliminated, and all those rescued humans are presumably hurled into non-existence.

The Tangent Universe look strong to start with, but get copped out in three successive matches. Zatanna sends the Secret Six back home without completing their fight, while the Doom patrol fight to a standstill against the Teen Titans. It looks as though we’re going to hit another no-score-draw, until Tangent Superman psyches himself out of a battle with Barry Allen, and cedes the game. Because he drops out, the Tangent Universe is expunged from existence forever, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Steve Ellis

Finally, New York City of Earth A.D. play a bigger role this week than last time round, as new entrants, including Anti-God, Kamandi and… uh, some rat-mutants all head into the melee. Batman and the Outsiders take out a possessed version of OMAC, while Guy Gardner – in a Man of the Match performance – knocks out a dragon with a baseball bat, beats Hercules in an arm-wrestling contest, and then defeats Anti-God using science. Guy Gardner is a machine, you guys.

Supergirl and Superman team up with Kamandi and Tawky Tawny to defeat a rampant team of gorillas (Marv Wolfman is having a lot of fun this week), before the Hawkpeople round out the match by wiping out all the rat mutant things too. So that means Earth AD are done and dusted, and destroyed. See you next time Grant Morrison decides to return for a DC project, Kamandi!

After this week's matches, let's head over to the Convergence League Table.

1: Telos
2: Kingdom Come (eliminations: Lex Luthor, Green Lantern)
3: Booster Gold
4: Pre-52 Gotham
5: Moscow, Russia
6: Future’s End
7: Atlanta, Georgia
8: Gotham by Gaslight
9: Fawcett City
10: Qward
11: Durvale
12: Metropolis, Pre-Crisis 30^th Century
13: Hub City
14: Pre-Crisis Metropolis
15: Earth X
16: Metropolis, Earth 3 (eliminations: Superwoman)
17: Metropolis, 853^rd Century (eliminations: Superman)
18: Earth 2 (eliminated: Batman)
19: Skartaris (Eliminations: Tara, Machiste, Warlord)
20: Flashpoint (Eliminations: Hawkgirl, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman)
21: Angor (eliminations: Barracuda, Carny, Death Angel, Brute, Meanstreak)
22: Pre-Crisis Earth 2 Metropolis (eliminations: Huntress, Star Spangled Kid, Green Arrow, Speedy, Stripesy)
23: Pre-Crisis Gotham (eliminations: Steve Trevor, Etta Candy,)

RELEGATION ZONE:

24: Deimos
25: New York, Earth AD
26: Tangent Universe
27: Red Rain
28: Pre-Zero Hour Metropolis
29: Wildstorm
30: Electropolis
31: Brainiac
32: Follywood
33: Kandor
34: Stan Lee’s Just Imagine
35: El Inferno
36: Injustice: Gods Among Us

One of the power-players of the tournament crashes and burns (mostly burns, given he got lasered to death) as Parallax/Hal Jordan decides to give Deimos a bit of a killing. Having been on dominant form throughout, despite being a nothing character nobody had heard of before this event started, this comes as a big surprise one issue before the end.

Especially given that, well, the Pre-Zero Hour Universe was relegated last week by Kingdom Come. It’s a case of legal-man syndrome, and unfortunately Earl Hebner isn’t around to clear it up this time round. Hire better referees, Convergence!

Lots of teams are defeated this week, with the vampires, tangents and cavemen all relegated by the time the stories are done. The Pre-Crisis team lorded it over the rest of the teams and knocked them, all for six, leaving theirs the victorious team of Group C.

There’s a weird footnote here, though, as Hawkman and Hawkwoman won their match. However, given that the House Rules dictate that they aren’t ever allowed to survive a crossover, the end of their issue sees them both fly off into a bright white light and abandon their Earth, erasing themselves from existence. Tradition!

Next Week: The whole mess draws to a close, Marie Javins gets to go have a long lie down, and we all get to find out whether any of this mattered!