What is this?
I’m not quite sure there is all that much to say about Convergence #3 “Time Bomb”. It is a bridging issue to the next roughly 3 issues as Green Lantern, Superman, Yolanda, and The Flash journey to the depths of Telos(the planet) with Deimos to Skartais, in search of the artifact that will help them vanquish Telos (the Planet Incarnate). Meanwhile Batman and Dick Grayson stay above ground to buy them sometimes. A lot “happens” but the repercussions and import of this issues actions aren’t all that clear in this issue. On top of various technical issues, "Time Bomb" is a surprisingly bright failure on multiple levels.
Even if this main book hasn’t been the best, Convergence as an “event” has actually been pretty fun. It has been a chance to read old versions of characters and see how they mix with other versions. Batman and Dick Grayson battle the gritty camp rogues gallery of Grant Morrison’s Batman run. Deimos, introduced last issue, and his much sought after city of Skartais are introduced. I’ve never read any of the Warlord comics the character hails from but he is from a sword and sorcery titles (a genre I’m partial towards) and is mixing it up with these sci-fi characters. The item Deimos and the Wonders of Earth 2 they seek appears to be all the time travelers of the Multiverse captured by Shakira. That seems interesting but nothing really note worthy has happened yet.
From a dialog standpoint, Jeff King thankfully pulls back on the internal monologue of Dick Grayson. There is still some here but it makes sense and isn’t too involved. It continues to have an irreverent silver age quality to it. The overall make up of the book though is odd verging on incompetent. I buy my comics through Comixology and the splash page for Page 6 is both presented out order and reused several pages later where the art actually makes sense. On Page 5, Val-Zod is captured by Telos drones and dragged away. Page 6 has Telos talking about the (formerly) bottled planet of Kandor, off screen, as the Batwing comes in blowing the drones up. Page 7 shows up Telos talking to Kandor’s people. But Page 8 has The Flash reacting to Val-Zod being dragged away as a missile from the Batwing destroys the netting. Page 9 is the same art of Page 6 but relettered with the same art, in a call back to the Millennium Falcon saving the day in Star Wars. Why was art on Page 6 placed there? How did an editor not catch this, and a couple of spelling issues when referring to Telos as Tellos?
Thomas Wayne was never going to make it too Earth 2: Society, I didn’t expect him to make it too Convergence. Thomas Wayne was always an interesting addition to the cast of Earth 2; he was a reiteration of the Flashpoint: Batman miniseries and what kind of man is formed after the death of his son. But his time comes to an end in “Time Bomb”, blowing himself and Grant Morrison’s Rogues up with him in an effort to buy his comrades time. Dick Grayson, telling the audience what Wayne had done in the lead up to his death makes sense some of these things happened in other books. But for the meeting in the last issue, it isn’t imbued with or activated to create more dramatic weight. It was a shocking moment and that was it.
And then there is Joker doing the Killing Joke on Dick Grayson instead of Barbra. On one level you could read this action as further indicating how useless Dick Grayson is. It isn’t even a fun meta moment of constants and variables, Grant Morrison would’ve made this moment better. As it stands these two final moments are just shocking with no real weight to them.
I am Michael Mazzacane and you can find on Twitter @MaZZM and at comicweek.com and weekntv.com