Recon:Vergence Week Six: Kord Vs Kord; Aquaman Vs Radiators; Waller Vs Everyone

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.

Main Event! Convergence #6

This week the Supermans decide to change the game, turning things into Team Deimos Vs Team Everyone Else. After watching the Teen Titans/Extremists fight from last week’s tie-ins culminate in yet another draw, the Flashes form a relay team and bring together a squad of all the nice characters. Meanwhile, Grayson flirts some more with Telos, who is busy moping around on an abandoned hurdles course.

While the heroes are all busy collecting new teammates, Deimos does some collecting of his own! If only Brainiac were here, he’d love all this collecting going on. Deimos gathers all the mean characters (including, um, some of the characters killed off in the tie-ins, like Flashpoint Aquaman) ready for the final battle!

…which will be next week.

The other notable part of the issue is that the New 52 Universe have finally found out about this whole thing, and watch as the planet Telos attempts to physically break into their world. It’s almost like some kind of… Incursion! Uh-oh, somebody get the lawyers.

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 B sees four worlds go up against one another for the right to move into the next round:

Pre-Zero Hour Metropolis: During the time just before the Zero Hour event, many of DC’s most famous characters were gone. Superman was dead, Batman had been broken by Bane, Hal Jordan had become Parallax, and Aquaman… got his hand eaten off by piranhas. New heroes like Steel, Kyle Rayner and Azrael came in to take their place.

San Diego, California: Home to Wildstorm. A shared-universe publisher created by Jim Lee, this universe includes characters and series like Grifter, Voodoo, The Authority and Gen13. Originally a founding part of Image, Lee sold it off to DC around the time he moved to the company, establishing it as one of their ‘52’ worlds.

Electropolis: A world seen during Crisis on Infinite Earths, ruled by Lady Quark and Lord Volt. It was destroyed during that event, although the Lady escaped and played a role in saving the day.

The Metropolis of Kingdom Come: A four-issue miniseries from Mark Waid and Alex Ross, this Elseworlds storyline saw older versions of the current Justice League attempting to deal with the rise of vigilantes who were inspired by the heroes of old.

Round Two:

Let’s start things off by saying that there is no human way of comprehending what happened in Convergence: Supergirl Matrix. Ambush Bug is involved, Supergirl finally beats up Lex Luthor, and there’s no resolution to her scheduled match against Lady Quark. Keith Giffen’s mind thoroughly worries me. Handily, the Electropolis/Pre-Zero Hour fight continues elsewhere, and Parallax picks up the ball somewhat by completely destroying Electropolis, relegating them from existence. He’ll be advancing on to the semi-finals.

Wildstorm’s planned attack of the Pre-Zero Hour Universe also starts to fall apart, as their careful tactics are blown almost immediately by the fact they’re fighting Batman. The Wetworks Squad manage to corner him and Azrael onto the docks, but are unfortunately unable to sink his battleship. Batman gets them to surrender and team up with him, which is nice to see. Meanwhile, Steel makes a stunning comeback after being hit with a triple bogey, and forces everybody in his comic to draw par. Gen13 decide to ally with him and his family, which is also nice to see.

But seeing how Aquaman repeatedly stabs Deathbolt through the neck with his harpoon hook thing, that all means nothing and the Wildstorm Universe is destroyed forever. See you next reboot!

Pre-Zero Hour and Kingdom Come head in to sudden death. Here’s where things get dirty.  Superboy stands up to Superman for a good ol’ fashioned slugfest, and lasts a surprisingly long time before he decides to throw the fight and take a dive. Superman lamps him with a left, leaving him down and out. Green Arrow and Son also find themselves on the mat after a bout with Dinah Lance and Black Canary, who whistle them into defeat.

Waller and her team head off to try and take out Kingdom Come’s Green Lantern Corps, which results in basically everybody dying. Just when it seems that Lantern has them at checkmate, however, the Queen reveals she’s wearing a bomb and blows herself up. Green Lantern is defeated! What a sterling victory for the Suicide Squa- oh wait they’re all dead now too.

Catwoman rallies the team, however… which results in her getting shot by said team, losing her match against Kingdom Come’s Batman.

The rout is concluded as the Kingdom Come Justice League absolutely trounce the Pre-Zero Hour Justice League International. Off-panel! Captain Ted Kord is so busy chilling out with an alternate version of himself that he takes his eye off the ball and loses sight of the prize. Wonder Woman puts in 110%, and at the end of the day, she’s got to be happy with the way her team performed. Kingdom Come pulls off a surprise victory against the favorites this week, losing only Green Lantern and Lex Luther along the way.

Y’know, this is going to be causing chaos to poor old Pariah. I like to assume he’s standing just off-panel each time one of the Convergence worlds gets destroyed, having a right old panic about the whole thing.

After this week's matches, let's take a look at the standings in the Convergence League Table!

Week Six Standings:

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

RELEGATION ZONE: 

25: Pre-Zero Hour Metropolis
26: Wildstorm
27: Electropolis
28: Brainiac
29: Follywood
30: Kandor
31: Stan Lee’s Just Imagine
32: El Inferno
33: Injustice: Gods Among Us

With the Group B matches concluded, we have a firm champion at the end of the final day. Kingdom Come absolutely stomp all over their opposition, relegating everybody in their group and progressing into the semi-finals. Pre-Zero Hour started off well, eliminating both Wildstorm and Electropolis, but when the final whistle blew it was Kingdom Come standing victorious.

This puts them top of the League Table despite their iffy goal difference – Lex Luthor was a traitor to their team anyway, and nobody will miss Green Lantern – knocking Deimos into second place. The New 52 are still just spectators in the match, as are Darkseid and Nix Uotan, so are not included in the table at this point.

Throughout, Kingdom Come’s characters promise that they will help save the day if their side are victorious, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that they all seem to side with Deimos at the end of Convergence #6. Turncoats! Mark Waid frowns on you all!

Next Week: Atomic Knights, Tangents and Vampires all surge upon Pre-Crisis Earth One! And maybe Kamandi will show up too!