Sean Parsons

I don't want to be an armchair editor here or anything, but you'd think that if you're doing a story where Batman crosses the dimensional barrier from Gotham City to hang out in New York --- specifically the NYC that's home to the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles --- you'd have to take a page or two for him to ask questions, right? "Where are all the abandoned warehouses," he asks, scowling, "And why isn't there a single Playing Card And Chemical Factory on the entire island of Manhattan? And why are your sewers so... livable?!"

A more appropriate name for DC Comics' Convergence event, at least the miniseries that will accompany the main series for two months next spring, may be "Nostalgia Trip." DC has been rolling out titles and creative teams for the 40 planned series week by week. The first batch focused on the publisher's pre-New 52 continuity. The second focused on the 1990s (including WildStorm), and the third seemed to center on the 1980s. The fourth and final group of miniseries, which DC announced Tuesday, covers a much wider time period: All of DC's pre-Crisis On Infinite Earths continuity. And there's another twist: They all take place on defined and listed alternate Earths which existed before the company's last line-wide reboot in the 1980s.