For two months in Spring 2015, DC Entertainment’s “New 52” line of superhero titles — which includes the monthly Batman, Superman and Justice League titles — will disappear from shelves as the publisher moves from New York City to Burbank, Ca. In its absence, DC has announced Convergence, a nine-week event that spans a weekly series of that title and no less than 40 additional two-part storylines.
Spinning out of the Apr. 1 conclusion of both the New 52: Futures End and Earth 2: World’s End weekly series, Convergence will focus on alternate versions of the familiar DC characters meeting as the result of machinations of longtime Superman villain Brainiac. The event “captures the full essence and scope of DC’s incredible history and storytelling,” DC co-publisher Dan DiDio told USA Today, while his fellow co-publisher Jim Lee described it as “in many ways the most meta epic event we’ve ever done.”
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The main nine-part Convergence series will be the comic book writing debut of Jeff King, best known as the head writer of USA’s White Collar. DiDio praised King’s work on the series, saying that “it was great to have someone come in with a fresh set of eyes to look at it and make sure that it’s as open as accessible to all fans… not just the people who have been reading DC throughout the years.”
Promotional artwork released to accompany Monday’s announcement features multiple recognizable versions of characters from DC’s “multiverse” of parallel Earths throughout the last seven decades. Alongside the 1990s “main universe” version of Aquaman, Batman, Green Lantern (as Parallax) and Steel, the 1980s Earth-2 teams Justice Society and Infinity Inc. are 1960s Earth-3 Crime Syndicate are represented, as are the original incarnation of characters DC purchased from publishers Charlton Comics and Wildstorm. Also visible: characters from DC’s Tangent imprint, the parallel-world Justice Riders and Red Rain series, and 2011’s Flashpoint miniseries.
Convergence begins with a special “zero issue,” written by King and Dan Jurgens (one of the writers of New 52: Futures End) with art by Ethan Van Sciver, to be released Apr. 1 2015.
