Writer: Dan Jurgens & Jeff King
Artist: Ethan Van Sciver
Colorist: Marcelo Maiolo
Reviewed by: Brett Israel

You know, It’s weird, but there are few parts of comics that get me more excited than a full fledged, potentially universe changing event. While I wasn’t grooving on Futures End, or much of the major DC continuity, I thought that Convergence had the potential to be fairly interesting, and decided to check it out. I was fairly surprised, in a few cases, and this was pretty much a classic DC 0 issue.

In terms of the overall story, it’s looking like a cool concept. The point of these 0 issues is to set up the event, and in that aspect, this certainly succeeded. The idea is that there’s a Brainiac being, one which trumps all others from other timelines, and it goes to collect a city from a doomed Earth 1, and for some reason never returns. This issue is more or less Superman frantically trying to get back to HIS metropolis while being paraded by all the other timeline Brainiac (like the classic pre crisis one for example), who at the end, for some reason, basically send Superman away. Superman had just spent many pages demanding just that, so it felt a little weird. It just felt like the book had some superfluous panels, but it got us where we need to be for issue one.

One of the aspects of this issue that I liked a lot was the use for Superman. I see a lot of Jurgens in this characterization, as it felt like Superman should, which we don’t always get in the New 52. The downside, however, his costume is still not the greatest, but that really didn’t distract me from the story. Also, the idea that we will be hopping from universe to universe (i.e. Red Son universe and Red Rain universe) is what I’ve been hoping for. The back of the issue lists all the different timelines and their first appearances, which made me really want to go back and read them; so DC definitely did their job there.

Ethan Van Sciver had me a little hesitant on the art, but just like the story, I was fairly surprised. While he maintains his usual style in this issue, it didn’t feel as stiff as his past work. Also, all of his faces looked MUCH more distinct than before, which more or less gave him the pass for me for the rest of the issue. He still has some hyper detail, but it all flows with the story, and his pacing his solid here. The colors by Maiolo go hand in hand with the pencil and inks, giving a classic DC feel and having a nice color palette for the book.

Convergence 0 was a pretty fun read for me, and I definitely want to check out issue 1. While I don’t see why it had to be extra page, and therefore $5, it still was much better than I was expecting.

4 Brainiac slaves out of 5