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Comic Book / Convergence

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Convergence is a comic-book event published by DC Comics that replaces the "standard" DCU releases for April-May 2015, comprising a nine-issue weekly series telling the main story, and 40 two-issue monthly miniseries exploring what else is happening.

The event sees Brainiac using his access to the Vanishing Point to pluck cities out of three eras of DC history that predate the New 52: the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths era, the pre-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! era, and the pre-Flashpoint era.note  Additionally, he also captured cities from various Alternate Universes from the DC Multiverse, such as the Tangent Comics universe, the WildStorm universe, and the Flashpoint universe. With 40 captive cities in total, Brainiac takes them to the mysterious world of Telos within domes, to observe them. But when Brainiac mysteriously vanishes when attempting to gain yet another city from a doomed timeline, Telos itself releases them to see which world deserves to live amongst them all. The ensuing chaos sees a massive conflict that pits hero against hero and spans decades of continuity.

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    Convergence tie-ins 

The event is notable for bringing back the pre-Flashpoint versions of DCU heroes, as well as bringing an end to the New 52 banner ahead of the then-incoming DC You relaunch (though 25 titles maintained their numbering and continuity).

There were three comic series that spun off from the event:

  • Superman: Lois and Clark, which chronicled the stories of pre-Flashpoint Superman's family (including Lois and their son) on Prime Earth
  • Telos, which visited the title character following the events of Covergence
  • Titans Hunt, which re-integrated a secret Titans history into the post-Flashpoint world.

Tropes in this event include:

    Convergence: Superman 
  • Aborted Arc: Subverted. The series revolves around taking certain arcs that were aborted by the New 52 and giving them completion they didn't originally receive before.
  • Adaptational Wimp:
    • Those unfamiliar with her stint as Batgirl would be forgiven for thinking Cassandra Cain was just a pretty standard Badass Normal instead of someone more skilled than Batman in physical combat. Steph describes her as such, but it's still a case of Show, Don't Tell.
    • The pre-Flashpoint Wally West, the character who vies with any version of Barry Allen for the title of the Fastest Man Alive, has a lot of trouble with Flashpoint Wonder Woman. She keeps pace, but he drops her with a half-lightspeed kick in the end. Wally has previously hit a Superman-level opponent at lightspeed with the concentrated force of a supernova and dropped him in one punch (and his greatest speed feats involve being fast enough to empty cities in picoseconds, as well as outrunning time, death and the universe), can drain the speed from others (making himself faster in the process) and if we assume Wally just stopped caring, can vibrate through people and cause their molecules to explode.
  • Alternate Company Equivalent: This was set to be DC's answer to Secret Wars (2015), though it ended around the time Marvel's comic event starts.
  • Alternate Self: This event features multiple versions of characters from DC's pre-New 52 timelines/universes meeting each other and the people they know.
  • Alternate Universe: Brainiac has been collecting fragments from timelines and universes that have "ended" together on one world — i.e., every DC timeline and AU prior to the New 52 — and Telos decides to let them meet. Featured are:
  • Ambiguous Ending:
    • Convergence: Crime Syndicate #2. While some of the Crime Syndicate is shown in the main Convergence title, the ending of the second issue leaves it unclear as to who won the battle, Superwoman or the Justice Legion's Wonder Woman. For that matter, the fates of the rest of the Justice Legion are left unclear.
    • The ending of Convergence: World's Finest Comics #2. Is the Vigilante dead? Will the Crimson Avenger survive? And what exactly happens to Scribbly and the Shining Knight?
  • Anyone Can Die:
    • The deaths come thick and fast, and surprisingly some A-list characters perish without any more comment than mooks. In Convergence #3, the pre-Flashpoint Joker is killed in as dramatic a fashion as the reader might expect, but only a few pages earlier, the pre-Flashpoint Riddler is blown up with a group of relatively minor Batman villains without any indication he might be more of a 'celebrity' than any of them.
    • Possibly the entire Seven Soldiers of Victory, minus the Star-Spangled Kid in Convergence: World's Finest Comics #2. Green Arrow and Speedy fall to their deaths, and once the dome covers Metropolis, Stripesy dies of pneumonia. The fate of Vigilante and Crimson Avenger is ambiguous, though Vigilante is sure they can't survive the fight with the Qwardians, and both he and Crimson Avenger are in bad shape when last we see them. Shining Knight and Scribbly may or may not be going to their deaths as the issue ends. World's Finest is one of the more downbeat books to come out of the series.
  • The Atoner:
    • Pre-Flashpoint Arsenal in Convergence: Titans is making a better attempt to atone for his actions after he was maimed by Prometheus and his daughter Lian died.
    • Pre-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! Hal Jordan is this as well. Getting depowered by the dome brought Hal back to his senses and he's legitimately regretful for what he did as Parallax. Unfortunately, the minute the dome comes down and his abilities come back, he goes nuts once again.
    • The Vampire Batman in Convergence: Swamp Thing seeks redemption by teaming up with Swamp Thing in banishing the vampires from his Gotham City. After eliminating the queen vampire and thereby turning every vampire back to being human (except for Vampire Batman), Batman allows himself to die under sunlight.
    • Superwoman of the Crime Syndicate has taken her time on death row to reflect on how she's spent her life, and realizes that both herself and the rest of the Syndicate wasted their lives in the pursuit of crime. She fights the Wonder Woman of Justice Legion Alpha for the sake of saving the Metropolis of her world in an attempt to fully atone for her actions and be the hero she now understands she could have been.
  • Awful Wedded Life: In Convergence: Supergirl: Matrix, Lord Quark and Lady Volt do almost nothing but argue and insult one another, although Lady Quark actually does most of the insulting. Matrix seems to think this is because the two of them are actually gay and have been stuck in an Arranged Marriage, although as Matrix puts it it's kind of obvious just by listening to them.
  • Back from the Dead: A few previously dead characters are apparently being revived thanks to this event. Some, like Kole, are brought back only because they've been pulled from their timelines before their canonical deaths, while others, like Lian Harper, seem to be flat out resurrected.
    • The Flashpoint versions of Batman and Captain Thunder are stranger examples, in that they seem to remember actually dying but have somehow been revived with their timeline.
    • Pre-Crisis Supergirl is brought back from before her death, only to learn about her eventual fate.
  • Badass Arm-Fold: In the sixth issue, pre-Crisis Supergirl folds her arms as she stares down at the enemy army◊.
  • Badass Boast: Oracle at the end of Convergence: Nightwing/Oracle #1 regarding how to deal with Flashpoint Hawkman and Hawkgirl and why she didn't go with Nightwing to fight them.
    Oracle: They have eyes everywhere. They're listening to everything we say. I know that technique. I invented that technique. The reason I couldn't go with you to fight in the rocks to the north...? It's because I'm BARBARA FREAKING GORDON. Also known as Oracle. And I started fighting them ten minutes ago.
  • Big Bad: Telos, the Genius Loci on which the story takes place, serves as something of this, having captured the timelines and set them against each other. Until halfway through the series when the Warlord's old enemy Deimos becomes the new Big Bad.
  • Broad Strokes: Despite the fact that the many tie-in books are meant to be set in defunct eras of the DCU, there are some discrepancies over how the characters are presented here compared to the last time they appeared in said timeline.
    • In this interview, Fabian Nicieza stated that the Arsenal seen in Convergence: Titans did not fall as further down from grace as he did when he was in Deathstroke's team.
    • Superboy is from the pre-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! era, but his status quo in the Convergence: Superboy tie-in seems to pick up from his solo series circa the year 2000: he has the name Kon-El, is based at Cadmus Labs with Dubbilex and Dr Serling Roquette, and possesses several Kryptonian abilities that he'd never have developed if he was still locked at age 16. Also, he is flat out stated to be a Kryptonian-human hybrid, while his pre-Teen Titans story was that he was a human clone with Kryptonian engineering.
    • The descriptions and depictions of the different universes after the restoration of the multiverse aren't completely consistent with how the worlds were established in their respective continuities. One example is Batman: In Darkest Knight, which is stated to have other DC hero mash-ups besides Bruce Wayne becoming Green Lantern of Sector 2814 (such as a fusion of Superman and Martian Manhunter as well as one of Aquaman and The Flash), when the only other heroes shown in the original story besides Green Lantern Batman were versions of Superman, Wonder Woman and Barry Allen who also became Green Lantern Corps recruits.
  • Brought Down to Normal: A number of heroes and villains are left powerless after their cities were domed, including pre-Flashpoint Wally West and pre-Zero Hour Kyle Rayner and pre-COIE Wonder Woman. Once the domes are removed, their powers snap back on. Even heroes who relied solely on technology have been depowered, in the sense that their weapons don't work. Pre-Flashpoint Batman and Robin can still use their gadgets, but Arsenal's cybernetic arm stopped working and the Atom's belt could no longer shrink him.

    This is inconsistent — Justice League International has the fully robotic Red Tornado, who clearly has all his powers. Shazam sees Bulletman and Bulletgirl stepping in as Fawcett City's protectors since their gravity regulator helmets still work. And Ray Palmer, though he could not shrink or grow as the Atom, still had a superpower in his book; albeit with only the nigh-useless ability to make one of his hands grow very large. It seems that for some characters, like Red Tornado and Mr. Freeze, their technology and gadgetry was left untouched because they ever need it to survive or it's fundamentally ingrained in them.
  • The Bus Came Back: The series is basically all about this trope, as characters from the pre-Crisis multiverse, the pre-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! universe, the pre-Flashpoint DCU, and the Flashpoint timeline itself meet and fight.

    Perhaps the most notable example of which is the World's Finest tie-in, which focuses on some of the truly forgotten characters. The champion is the Sir Justin a.k.a The Shining Knight, who is usually one of the more overlooked members of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, but its narrative focus is on friggin' Scribbly The Boy Cartoonist, who had previously been completely eclipsed by the original Red Tornado — Ma Hunkle, a housewife who dressed up as a male superhero.
  • Bus Crash: Many of said characters returning from the other DC eras will not survive the event. The Justice Riders are killed at the beginning of the Convergence: Nightwing/Oracle series.
  • Butch Lesbian: Lady Quark in Convergence: Supergirl - Matrix is a lesbian who comes across as butch because of how aggressive she acts.
  • Call-Forward: The Infinity Inc story ends with the founding of the "Justice Society Infinity" — the combined JSA/II team from the post-Infinite Crisis version of Earth-2.
  • Camp Gay: Lord Volt in Convergence: Supergirl - Matrix, Lady Quark's husband, comes across as this but in a subdued way that can be attributed to his eloquent speech.
  • Canon Character All Along: Telos is eventually revealed to be a human transformed into his current state by Brainiac, with his self-titled spinoff miniseries revealing that his true identity is Arak: Son of Thunder.
  • Cerebus Retcon: This event reveals that Brainiac has never been subjected to the retcons that have repeatedly altered the DC Universe. He is a being existing outside of time and space ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths, and just about every version of him seen since his first appearance have been more or less puppet constructs acting out his will.
  • The Chessmaster: In Convergence: Titans #1, Dreamslayer of the Extremists sees himself as one. He recognizes that this whole situation is making pawns out of the heroes and villains, and he'd prefer to be the one manipulating said pawns. True to his word, he pits pre-Flashpoint Arsenal against Troia and Starfire by resurrecting Lian Harper and using her as leverage.
  • Cosmic Retcon: Convergence #8 causes the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths to be rewritten, so the pre-Crisis multiverse comes back with the addition of the worlds added post-Infinite Crisis. However, this doesn't rewrite any of the universes' continuities, and they keep going as they were beforehand, and the incarnations of Earth 2 and the like from the New 52 are kept as "evolved" versions of their prior selves, replacing the earlier versions.
  • Continuity Rebooter: Pre-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! Parallax and Pre-Flashpoint Superman volunteer to be sent to the past in place of the Doomed by Canon Pre-Crisis Supergirl and Pre-Crisis Barry Allen. This results in a dramatic change in the outcome of the first Crisis.
  • Contrived Coincidence: It's amazing how many heroes who aren't normally based in Gotham or Metropolis just happened to be in the city taken by Brainiac at exactly the right time.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Arsenal in Convergence: Titans. Since being trapped in Gotham, he didn't just use the Wayne Foundation money to create Lian's Place and create his own surveillance hub, he also installed weaponry and defense systems throughout Gotham in case of an emergency.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • The Injustice dome is destroyed by Telos, claiming it to be a failed experiment. Superman didn't stand a chance.
    • Electropolis versus Parallax. They get in a hit or two, but basically they have no chance against a man who once destroyed the universe and remade it. He wipes them out.
    • Deimos versus Parallax. Hal kills him in an almost casual manner.
  • Dead Guy Junior: In Convergence: Superman #2, Superman and Lois name their son Jonathan Samuel Kent in honor of their fathers. Jonathan is obviously the name of Clark's adoptive father but the fact that they named their son Samuel after Lois' father, who was responsible for the destruction of New Krypton makes this especially poignant.
  • Disney Death: The first half of the Crime Syndicate tie-in miniseries has the Syndicate appear to fail in their attempt to rescue Superwoman from being electrocuted, but in the second half she appears alive and well to participate in the Crime Syndicate's fight with Justice Legion Alpha, explaining that when everyone's powers were restored, this included her immortality and enabled her to come back to life after she was given the chair.
  • Dumb Blonde: In Convergence: Supergirl - Matrix #1, Matrix Supergirl is very ditzy. At one point in a fit of anger, she hurls away the device Luthor gave her to monitor the domes.
    Matrix: Omigod! The gizmo! It found... whatever! I just threw away my only chance of ever getting off this world!
  • Earn Your Happy Ending:
    • The writers have stated that many of the previous status quos will receive closure. Examples:
    • The series as a whole has an overtly happy ending: the Crisis on Infinite Earths is averted, the original Multiverse is reborn, Telos' prisoners are freed, the Earth 2 survivors find a new planet to call home and Brainiac and Telos attain some measure of redemption.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In Convergence: Green Lantern - Parallax #2, Hal/Parallax is very pissed when the Electropolis' princess and her army attack Kyle.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • In Convergence: Batman and Robin, Poison Ivy of the pre-Flashpoint Gotham has been making sure the city doesn't starve by growing crops for the population. And she's disgusted that the Penguin would try to make a profit off the food she's been making given the situation Gotham's in.
    • Telos of all people pulls one on the pre-flashpoint Joker. After snapping the neck of the clown, Telos proceeds to call him a "vile creature", and a "plague in every timeline".
    • The Pre-Crisis Crime Syndicate see themselves as this. It's clarified that, while they're lawbreakers, they've never intended to actually hurt anyone and were not killers. This actually plays upon their deaths in Crisis on Infinite Earths where they tried to save Earth-Three, and in Animal Man when Ultraman finds himself utterly disgusted by his alternate world counterpart Overman and tries to stop his rampage.
  • Extreme Doormat: In Convergence: Supergirl - Matrix #1, Matrix just seems to roll with whatever insult Lex Luthor throws at her. However, being called an imbecilic mass of shapeshifting protoplasmic goo one too many times eventually causes Matrix to eventually thrash Luthor.
  • Face–Heel Turn: In Convergence #6, Superman and the rest of the heroes from Kingdom Come. While the story they come from arguably ended the Dark Age of Comics and brought back idealistic heroes, these versions agree to serve the openly tyrannical Deimos and fight the heroes of Earth 2 if it means their own city surviving. This is turned back immediately after Parallax murders Deimos, as they had no reason to be evil anymore.
  • Fix Fic: The series undid much of the damage created by Justice League: Cry for Justice, Rise of Arsenal and Titans: Villains for Hire towards Arsenal, Lian Harper, and the fourth Atom Ryan Choi.
    • Convergence: The Atom resurrected Ryan Choi by revealing part of him was trapped in the subatomic universe after his death at the hands of Deathstroke's team. Ray Palmer is able to give Ryan a new body by sacrificing the mass in his hand, and Deathstroke gets the crap kicked out of him after the previous Titans volume ended with him being a Karma Houdini for Ryan's death.
    • Convergence: Titans featured Arsenal trying to atone for his past actions after he became a heroin-abusing knife wielding antihero following his mutilation and the death of his daughter Lian at the hands of Prometheus. Along the way his friendship and good standing with the rest of the Titans is restored, and Lian is revived by way of being pulled out of the timestream by the villain Dreamslayer from just before her death. As an added bonus, Word of God proclaims that Roy's worst actions while on Deathstroke's team had been erased.
  • Forced to Watch: Telos kept the New 52 Earth 2 heroes as his unwilling audience to watch him forcing the denizens of the domes to fight each other to the death. However, the Earth 2 heroes manages to break free when Telos was too occupied in pitting the heroes of Just Imagine against the cyborgs of the Futures End timeline.
  • Forceful Kiss: Flashpoint Aquaman plants a kiss on pre-Flashpoint Mera, who she then slaps him on the mouth. He doesn't actually mind this at all, as she is no different from his Mera.
  • Foreseeing My Death:
    • In Convergence: Adventures of Superman #1, Pre-Crisis Supergirl sees her life and death at the hands of the Anti-Monitor while in the Phantom Zone, and it haunts her for the rest of the story.
    • In Convergence: The Flash #2, Barry Allen learns the circumstances of his death from Tangent Superman.
  • Forgot About His Powers:
    • In Convergence: Speed Force #2, Wally West is drawn into a fight with Flashpoint Wonder Woman and can't get her to stop hitting him or chasing him... except Wally has the ability to drain speed from others, effectively making them statues if he goes all out. And you can't even say this was him before he gained that ability, because his children exist, and he had that power before they were born.
    • In Convergence: Crime Syndicate #2, the Batman of DC One Million is seen rappelling down a bottomless pit, seemingly falling to his death when the rope he was holding onto snapped. Which would all make sense if it weren't for the fact that, as shown in Nightwing #1000000, he can fly.
  • Gladiator Games: What Telos appears to want the event to be: a way to weed out the less-worthy incarnations of each characters to produce a new reality with only the best aspects.
  • Grand Finale: It is essentially the ending to the pre-Flashpoint DC Universe. However, thanks to the ending bringing the multiverse back from the brink of collapse, it has been confirmed the pre-Flashpoint universe still exists, and it's possible we'll see it again.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Brainiac serves as this, as the reason for why Telos is doing what it's doing. Telos even refers to him as "the master", as he is in charge of every other Brainiac.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Jonathan Samuel Kent, Superman and Lois' son in the pre-Flashpoint universe, who is half human and half kryptonian.
  • Happily Married: Post-Crisis Superman and Lois Lane. Katar and Shayera Hol are Happily Married as well, and they also qualify as a Battle Couple.
  • Heel–Face Turn:
    • The pre-Flashpoint Emil Hamilton was last seen under arrest for his actions as Mad Scientist Ruin. Here, he is working on S.T.A.R. Labs project to help pierce the dome surrounding Gotham City. Keep in mind Hamilton has gone through the Heel–Face Revolving Door quite a few times.
    • Also, there is Telos, who after learning of his true past of being an actual person rather than a living planet who was enslaved by Brainiac, decided to help the heroes against Deimos and declaring that all the captive cities should not die.
    • Superwoman in Convergence: Crime Syndicate, after reflecting on much of her life while on death row. And later during her fight with Wonder Woman from DC One Million, where she specifically wishes to save her city as a means of atonement for her criminal deeds and the accidental death of philanthropist Bruno Mannheim.
  • He's Back!: Oracle, who had been retconned away into being a never-crippled Batgirl. Not just in the meta-sense, either. Much of her internal monologue throughout the issue deals with her growing despair and losing the will to fight. Come the end, though, after the Hawks present their ultimatum...
  • Hollywood Pudgy: Power Girl in ''Convergence: Action Comics" has lost her super metabolism with the rest of her powers, combined with Big Eater tendencies this has caused her to gain fifteen pounds in less than a year, having to take up aerobics in a vain attempt to lose it. However, she still looks as lean and fit as she did in flashbacks to her prime.
  • How We Got Here: Convergence: Suicide Squad #1 begins with Amanda Waller, who is badly wounded, with the Kingdom Come Green Lantern (Alan Scott) remorsefully overlooking her until someone, later revealed to be Captain Boomerang, emerges from the shadows, and shoots Waller.
  • I Choose to Stay: At the end of Convergence: Shadow of the Bat #2, Jean-Paul Valley opts to stick around to protect Metropolis while Batman goes and deals with Telos.
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Even though she still loves him, Starfire encourages Nightwing to propose to Barbara Gordon in Convergence: Nightwing/Oracle #1
  • In Spite of a Nail: In Convergence #8, Crisis on Infinite Earths is altered so that all the alternate Earths weren't destroyed. The result of this is... the post-Flashpoint 52 universes exactly as before, only with a greater continuity to the previous versions. (We're shown that, for example, pre-Crisis Earth-2 is the same as the Justice Society Infinity Earth-2 from the multiverse created in 52, which then becomes the post-Flashpoint Earth 2.)
  • Involuntary Battle to the Death: Telos forces this on a wide variety of heroes, who don't want to kill each other. Halfway into the story, this is mostly thrown out.
  • Jerkass: Nearly all the characters from the Flashpoint universe (a Crapsack World to be sure) with the only exception of Superman. Batman and Abin Sur are more Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: In Convergence: The Flash #2, the Tangent Superman willingly chooses to surrender to the Earth-One era Barry Allen after he sees through Barry's future and his impact he has on the Multiverse such as the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which he realizes that if he eliminates Barry then he will doom the Multiverse and all of continuity.
    Tangent Superman: "One city for another? A grim moral choice. One city for ALL creation? For the Multiverse? It is only a matter of scale, but the scale matters."
  • The Leader: Post-Crisis Superman. When all the heroes start to gather on Telos in Convergence #6, everyone defers to him. There's no jockeying for position or assertion of authority. Superman just starts speaking and making suggestions, and everyone else carries them out.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: The premise sees various characters being forced to battle characters from across the Multiverse such as the pre-Flashpoint Justice League of America battling the Flashpoint Aquaman, and the pre-Flashpoint Gotham City Sirens battling Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!.
  • Lighter and Softer: Many incarnations of past characters come across as this compared to how they're portrayed in the New 52.
  • Longest Pregnancy Ever: The pre-Flashpoint Jesse Quick was revealed to be pregnant shortly before her timeline was rebooted. Convergence: Justice League #1 opens with Supergirl bringing her to the hospital and Jesse giving birth to a healthy baby. Keep in mind, the reveal that she was pregnant was four years ago.
  • Loving a Shadow:
    • Because the Flashpoint Mera died before Convergence began, Flashpoint Aquaman is looking at her counterparts to find a suitable replacement. He's settled on the pre-Flashpoint Mera in Convergence: Justice League.
    • The Flashpoint Superman, Subject-One, does the same thing with the pre-Flashpoint Lois Lane. He's convinced she's his version of Lois and wants only to save her.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Brainiac is revealed to be a monstrous alien intellect operating through drones and constructs. This reveal was used in earlier Superman stories to explain the contradicting appearances Brainiac made throughout the DC Universe, only now they're saying that Brainiac has been operating this way ever since his debut in the Silver Age.
  • Mass Teleportation: Brainiac uses the Vanishing Point to capture various cities from various multiverses and timelines and put them on one planet.
  • "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: The Jay Garrick of the Earth 2 continuity jokes that "careful" and "lucky" are his middle names.
  • Mistaken for Gay: In Convergence: The Question #2, Huntress by Batwoman, who is jealous that she lives with her ex, Renee Montoya. After clarifying the misunderstanding, Batwoman admits to being embarrassed.
  • Must Make Amends: Parallax wants to go back and help prevent the destruction of the original Multiverse in order to find some redemption.
  • Mythology Gag: As mentioned above, Batwoman thinks that Huntress and Renee Montoya a.k.a. the Question are a couple. In the Justice League Unlimited cartoon, Huntress dated Renee's male predecessor as the Question, Vic Sage.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • In Convergence: Superman #1, the pre-Flashpoint Superman's attempts to reason with Captain Thunder and the Flashpoint versions of Cyborg and Abin Sur are foiled when the pre-Flashpoint Jimmy Olsen, wanting to help Superman, attacks the Flashpoint heroes with an armed aircraft.
    • In Convergence #7, Parallax kills Deimos but this let loose of all the powers Deimos had drained from the time travellers to BREAK all of reality apart.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In Convergence #8, Superman and his family from the pre-Flashpoint universe, Supergirl and Barry Allen from the Silver Age, and Hal Jordan from the pre-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! universe travel to the past and prevent the Crisis on Infinite Earths from happening in the first place. Their actions are not shown, but their efforts are successful and ensure the rebirth of the multiverse.
  • The One Guy: In the Justice League tie-in, Congorilla is the sole male in an otherwise all-female Justice League team, though he doesn't get to participate in the fight with Flashpoint Aquaman due to staying at home to look after Jesse Quick's infant son.
  • Outside-Context Problem: Deimos to Telos and Brainiac. Largely confined to Skartaris in previous storylines, neither the Convergence villains nor most of the readers have any reason to know who Deimos is. The readers aware of The Warlord, however, got to see what Deimos was like without Travis Morgan in his way.
  • Papa Wolf: In Convergence: Titans. When Lian is brought Back from the Dead by Dreamslayer of the Extremists, Roy is given the ultimatum of choosing between his daughter and the Titans. Roy basically says "Screw that!" and manages to save Lian without betraying his friends. What's more, Roy reveals he outfitted the domed Gotham City with secret gun ports as a line of defense and sends the Extremists running with their tails between their legs. And keep in mind that the Extremists are responsible for destroying whole planets and they're ersatz versions of Doctor Doom, Dormammu, Sabertooth, Magneto, and Doctor Octopus. Roy basically schooled alternate versions of some of the deadliest villains in comic book history because he would not let them use his daughter or his friends as leverage.
  • Power Nullifier: The domes act as this, cutting people off from their power sources for approximately a year (though New 52 Earth 2 is exempt).
  • Pregnant Hostage: Pre-Flashpoint Lois Lane is pregnant with Superman's child (which would normally be impossible), only to be captured by his counterpart from the Flashpoint universe, who's slightly crazy after watching the Lois from his world die.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In Convergence: Speed Force #2, Wally delivers this to Flashpoint Wonder Woman after trying in vain to reason with her. Diana promises that he and his son will die and his daughter will serve in her army. He accuses her of being the worst version of Diana in any universe and that she does not really know what love is. Wally defeats her with help of his kids.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Pre-Flashpoint Mera and Lois Lane to the Flashpoint Aquaman and Superman respectively. Aquaman tries to force Mera into accepting him, and while Superman (Subject-One) comes across as kind of creepy, he really thinks this Lois is his Lois and only wants to protect her.
  • Ret-Canon: In Convergence: Infinity Inc, the Earth-2 version of Obsidian is written as in a Transparent Closet. This doesn't exactly contradict anything in the original Infinity, Inc. (you can just say the closet was less transparent then), but is pretty clearly a backport of the post-Crisis version being Ambiguously Gay in the mid-nineties Gerard Jones run on Justice League America and finally stated as such in the 00s JSA.
  • Retcon: Convergence: Plastic Man and the Freedom Fighters retcons Plastic Man into being one of Earth-X's Freedom Fighters, when he'd never previously been a member note .
  • Rogues Gallery Showcase: A whole slew of pre-Flashpoint Batman villains turn up to fight Thomas Wayne in Convergence #3 including Professor Pyg, Man Bat, Dr Hurt, Una Nemo, Mr. Zsasz, the Joker.
  • Sanity Slippage: In Convergence: The Atom #1, Pre-Flashpoint Ray Palmer has been hearing a voice in his head that may or may not be Ryan Choi's and has been acting considerably loopy ever since he was trapped in Gotham.
  • Secondary Character Title: The main character of Convergence: Adventures of Superman is the Pre-Crisis Supergirl. Superman himself is the Deuteragonist.
  • Series Continuity Error:
    • There are a number of these scattered throughout the tie-in issues, mostly fairly minor, but they do stand out to those familiar with the time period in question.
      • Captain Marvel is referred to as "Shazam" several times, despite the fact that his name was not changed to Shazam until the New 52.
      • Both pre-Crisis Barry Allen and Jay Garrick refer to the Speed Force, something neither of them should have any knowledge of since the concept wasn't created until the post-Crisis Wally West Flash series. Barry's opponent, Tangent Comics Superman, mentions this.
      • 90s hook-handed Aquaman is pining for Mera, but the two of them were separated and not on good terms at all during that time period.
      • Kyle Rayner's ring talks to him and welcomes him back to the Green Lantern Corps, but the Corps was disbanded when he first became a GL (and while he did make some attempts at re-forming the Corps, the Green Lantern Corps wouldn't be successfully restarted until after Hal Jordan was resurrected at the start of Geoff Johns' run), and Kyle's ring rarely spoke to him, if ever. He shouldn't know anything about Qward either, having not encountered the Weaponers that early in his career.
      • Kyle views Hal and Parallax as two separate entities. This is consistent with the Geoff Johns retcon that made Parallax a fear entity that possessed Hal, but before the retcon, Hal was Parallax. Note that the fear entity never appears or is referenced, and Hal's sanity while depowered is consistent with the post-Zero Hour zero issue of Green Lantern, so this may not be a continuity error so much as an attempt to remain mostly consistent with the past while keeping the retcon in mind.
      • The summary of the events of Emerald Twilight is wrong. Hal didn't kill all the other Green Lanterns. He defeated them and took their rings, but he left them enough power to survive. And indeed, most of them turn up later on during the Geoff Johns run and are collectively known as the Lost Lanterns. Similarly, Hal didn't kill the Guardians either. They pooled their power and put everything they had into Ganthet, who created a ring for Kyle. Hal absorbed all the power of the central power battery into himself.
      • In Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders, Commissioner Gordon has red hair. He should have white hair and a white moustache in any pre-Flashpoint appearance, with the exception of stories like Year One that are set in the past.
      • Supergirl is wearing the wrong costume for her death scenes from Crisis on Infinite Earths.
      • Matrix is called Kara by Lex. She also calls herself Kara at one point.
      • While the inconsistency could be excused somewhat by the story aiming for a more humorous and irreverent approach, the Supergirl: Matrix tie-in heavily implies that Lord Volt and Lady Quark are in an Awful Wedded Life due to being gay and forced into an Arranged Marriage by their parents, which is at odds with how Crisis on Infinite Earths consistently depicted Lady Quark as genuinely loving her husband and being upset about his death when she became her reality's lone survivor.
      • The Crime Syndicate tie-in miniseries stars the Pre-Crisis Crime Syndicate, but mistakenly uses elements from later incarnations of the Crime Syndicate. Superwoman of Earth-3 is referred to as Lois Lane by several of her fellow Crime Syndicate members and Owlman is addressed as Thomas. Pre-Crisis Earth-3 Lois Lane was a separate character from Superwoman and was the wife of her world's Lex Luthor and Pre-Crisis Owlman never had his civilian identity revealed, with Superwoman and the Crime Syndicate universe's Lois Lane only being one and the same in the Post-Crisis Antimatter Universe Crime Syndicate that was introduced in JLA: Earth-2, which was also the first incarnation to give Owlman the civilian name of Thomas Wayne, Jr. In addition, Owlman is ragged by Johnny Quick for having no powers (when the Pre-Crisis Owlman actually had mind control abilities and the subsequent versions of Owlman were Badass Normals like Batman) and the story features heroic counterparts to the Flash's Rogues called the Rogue Hunters and mentions that Superwoman is sentenced to execution for the death of a benevolent counterpart to Bruno "Ugly" Mannheim, which contradicts that the Pre-Crisis Earth-3 made it clear that the Crime Syndicate were the only super-powered beings in their universe and their world's Lex Luthor was the only confirmed heroic counterpart to a villain from the standard DC Universe.
      • Pre-Crisis Captain Atom is referred to as Nathaniel Adam — the name of the Post-Crisis Captain Atom — rather than Allen Adam.
      • Parallax focuses his power through a ring when he kills Deimos. Parallax has internalized the power of the Main Power Battery and doesn't use a ring. The tie-in issues depict this correctly, it's just the main series that gets it wrong.
      • The Legion Of Superheroes that battles Earth-4's Charlton heroes seems to be some weird mix of the post-Zero Hour Legion and the pre-Zero Hour temporal duplicates of the original Legion that wore very similar costumes (Batch SW6, who starred in Legionnaires). It includes the characters from Legionnaires who weren't duplicates of existing characters like Computo and Catspaw, neither of whom appeared in the reboot, but it also includes Timber Wolf and Princess Projectra, neither of whom were in Legionnaires (their SW6 selves were killed during the Dominator war) and both of whom look like their reboot selves (particularly obvious in Jeckie's case, since it means she's a giant snake). Characters who were dead/radically altered by the end of the reboot aren't, and everyone with different costumes in the two versions is wearing the SW6 version. Except Element Lad, who's wearing his pre-Zero Hour adult self's costume.
      • The status quo of the West family is that of the final issues of Wally's own series. This changed dramatically in Flash: Rebirth. The idea that pre-Flashpoint Gotham was taken before Barry's return (i.e. three years before Flashpoint) doesn't jibe with any of the other stories.
    • The beginning of Convergence #6 is baffling when it comes to the continuity of the main DCU. You have the Justice League talking to the Justice League United (which formed after Forever Evil (2013)). Okay. Telos, the planet, is being transported into the universe, which has drawn attention of several parties. You have the Oracle being from the Superman books, Nix Uotan from The Multiversity, and Darkseid taking notice. That's all fine. But you have Jediah Caul and K'rot from the short-lived Threshold booknote , the Red Lanternsnote , and the freaking Guardians of the Universenote . And Blue Beetle is there too, still stuck in space apparently. It also might have a continuity hiccup with itself, as the Barry Allen that Earth 2 Jay Garrick meets implies he was grabbed after meeting Psycho-Pirate from Crisis On Infinite Earths, which flies in the face of the Barry Allen from his own tie-in, who was taken when he first left the future to say hi to his friends, before he was set on his death course, and was stuck under a dome for a year.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: With the death of Deimos at the hands of Parallax, all the temporal energies of the time travellers that Deimos had absorbed were loose, and threatened to make the planet Telos into "the bullet that will destroy the multiverse". To fix this, survive and hopefully return to what he used to be, and to undo the destruction of the Convergence worlds, Brainiac tries to give the loosed temporal energies back to the survivors to restore their worlds. However, the Crisis on Infinite Earths event prevents him, so he has to send Barry Allen and the pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El back to their deaths... then Parallax decides he wants to go, that he wants redemption and be a hero and Post-Crisis Superman, Lois Lane and their son join him. The end result? Crisis on Infinite Earths is undone and the multiverse is restored in full.
  • Shout-Out: In World's Finest, Scribbly, who was originally Sheldon Mayer's Author Avatar, reflects on his happy memories, including "Watching kids at play, chattering their baby talk". Mayer was also the creator of Sugar And Spike.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Flashpoint Aquaman is hunting after the pre-Flashpoint Mera to replace his Mera, who was beheaded by the Flashpoint Wonder Woman.
  • Suicide by Cop: In Convergence: Crime Syndicate #2, Owlman allows himself to be killed by the Justice Legion's Wonder Woman. He knows his city will be destroyed if the Crime Syndicate loses their battle, but he's doing it because he believes Metropolis doesn't deserve to live for executing Superwoman. Sadly, he only just realizes Superwoman survived as Wonder Woman breaks his neck.
  • Take That!:
    • The title for the first issue in the Convergence: Titans is "Try For Justice", and its plot seems to aim to fix problems that occurred in the series.
    • One of the cities that were taken was the version of Gotham City from Injustice: Gods Among Us. The whole universe is destroyed easily and quickly, and Telos dismisses it as a failed experiment. The irony of Injustice's popularity and Convergence's irrelevancy makes this Hilarious in Hindsight.
  • Taking You with Me:
    • In Convergence #3, Earth 2 Thomas Wayne blows himself up, killing several of pre-Flashpoint Gotham's villains.
    • Happens twice in Convergence: Suicide Squad #2. First, Star Sapphire to Cyborg Superman to avenge the destruction of Coast City. At the end, Amanda Waller blows herself up to destroy New Oa with Alan Scott and take out Captain Boomerang, who'd turned traitor.
  • That Man Is Dead: In Convergence: The Atom #1, Pre-Flashpoint Deathstroke has been living under a fake name and is trying to make sure his past as Slade Wilson stays dead, but Ray Palmer repeatedly bringing up how Slade mercilessly slaughtered Ryan Choi pisses him off enough he decides to come out of hiding and silence Ray.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: If a dome's champions have failed, then everything and everyone inside it will be obliterated. The buildings and the people fall apart and turn to dust.
  • Thou Shall Not Kill: Our heroes from the mainstream universes keep running with this, incapacitating those they're forced to fight with and getting them to join them in their dome in some capacity.
  • Title Drop: In the Telos speech that makes reference to other events also.
    Telos: Citizens of my world! I have brought this Convergence upon you. Only one city shall survive, only the strong...
  • Took a Level in Badass: In Convergence: Booster Gold #2, Booster Gold was dying due to leaving pieces of himself through time and Rip Hunter had an idea. He took Pre-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! Blue Beetle, Pre-Flashpoint Michelle Carter and New 52 Booster Gold to Vanishing Point in an attempt to save the dying Booster. He had New 52 Booster take the original dying Booster into a secret room and leave him to be merged with the time stream. When he emerged, he was transformed into the new Waverider. Booster, Waverider and Rip Hunter were then instrumental in saving and restoring the multiverse at the conclusion of Convergence.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: The vice-minister and the princess of Electropolis in Convergence: Green Lantern - Parallax #2. Kyle offers his help to stop Hal/Parallax in exchange for them not attacking Metropolis. But they launch the attack anyway, taking advantage of the fighting between Kyle and Hal.
  • Villainous Rescue:
    • In Convergence #3, Earth 2 Dick Grayson is at the mercy of the pre-Flashpoint Joker until he is saved by Telos, who wants Dick alive because he demands to know the whereabouts of his Earth-2 companions.
    • Convergence: Crime Syndicate focuses on Superwoman's teammates rescuing her from death row.
  • Working with the Ex: Pre-Flaspoint Batwoman and Renee Montoya alias The Question in Convergence: The Question #2. Kate was originally introduced as a love interest and past girlfriend of Renee Montoya.
  • Would Harm a Child: In Convergence: Titans, Dreamslayer is more than happy to resurrect and use Lian Harper to force her father into fighting his friends. He keeps his hands on her throat and caresses her cheek to demonstrate he's in control, so he quite literally has her life in his hands.

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