After a disappointing second issue, DC's main Convergence book has a lot to prove. Thus far DC's reboot event simply hasn't delivered the drama, spectacle or action one would expect from placing the various DC multiverses against one another in a battle to the death.
Issue three then is a slight improvement over last week's issue. Or at least it would be if not for one glaring flaw we will get to in a minute. This issue features a little more action, some actual plot development and we get to see what happens when a city refuses to fight in Telos' battle royale.
The short answer for when a city doesn't cooperate with Telos' wishes? He wipes the city off the map. But this isn't any old city - this is Kandor, capital of Superman's homeworld of Krypton. The men and women of the Kandor refuse to take up arms and participate in Telos' sick game, so he simply destroys them, city and all.
If Telos is powerful enough to defeat thousands of Kryptonians with the wave of a hand, how exactly he hasn't already eliminated the heroes of Earth-2 seems a question worth asking.
Instead of doing it himself, Telos sends utterly generic robotic minions to attack Earth-2's heroes. The robots fare just as poorly as you expect them to.
Which leads us to this issue's biggest, and most baffling, problem. During the battle with the bots there are a series of panels, or a duplication of panels, I should say, which defy all logic. Superman is captured by the robotic drones in a special net and are seen flying away with him. Turn the page and we are given a spread of an unknown flying vehicle swooping in to aid the heroes in their fight. Despite never showing Superman being freed from the web of the robots, he can be seen happily smashing robots left and right, as Telos talks over them.
We then cut to the events in Kandor before returning to the heroes of Earth-2. It's here we see Superman being freed from capture, followed by the exact same spread from several pages earlier featuring an aircraft blowing bots to bits, only this time with different dialogue from the heroes themselves rather than Telos.
The same art. Same layout. Different captions with different words, not to mention that the spread when used earlier in the book doesn't even make sense, as Superman has yet to be freed. What? To call it confusing is an understatement. I read over these series of pages over and over again, trying to find something I was missing, some logical reason for why this was done this way. I couldn't find any. It is so distracting that you don't even care about a major character's death which comes soon after.
If it wasn't obvious before, it is now: this core Convergence series is an absolute mess. Check out the various tie-in issues. Those are worth reading and are perfect for longtime fans to enjoy. This main even comic? Stay away. The New 52 wasn't perfect, but it didn't deserve to go out like this.
Story
★★☆☆☆
Art
★★☆☆☆
Overall
★★☆☆☆
More Comic Book Reviews:
Mortal Kombat #16
Batman: Arkham Knight #7
Batman #39
Convergence #2
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