Pondering Convergence and Events at DC

This Spring, DC Comics is scheduled to move from New York to Los Angeles.  It's a pretty remarkable move  considering the company's offices have been in Manhattan since the mid 1930's, but given the attachment of DC Entertainment to Warner Bros. and the close ties to the West Coast Warner Bros. machine, and the fact that publishing can really be managed from anywhere these days, I guess it makes logical sense.  Even if it's not terribly romantic.

A long while back, DC mentioned they were going on a bit of a hiatus in the comics for two months while the company moved, and not ones to give up money for two months, they cooked up an event.  Known as Convergence, the event is a new sort of Crisis for the DCU where - I think - various versions of the DCU will be trapped in time by a now multi-verse spanning Brainiac and, because it's superhero comics, probably have to fight each other.

Because if Dan Didio likes to try something and watch it fail, he likes to do it even better a second time.

I feel like I'm the only person who remembers this

Arena wasn't all that long ago by my comic reading standards, but it was a lifetime ago for people who got into DC with the New 52.   And even longer ago, another omnipotent despot also kidnapped heroes and made them do battle...

This just makes me sad for 80's Captain Marvel

Which, you know, coming this summer from Marvel Comics...

Which, if you're paying attention to Hickman's work since way, way back in FF, basically boils down to

jump in, kids!  Great starting point for getting into DC Comics!

Look, I am FAR from the first person on the internet to point all this out (although nobody seems to remember Arena at all, which is just one of Didio's more amazing talents.  Nobody ever seems to remember the just awful comics he's been personally responsible for).

I do think this suggests something about mega-narratives at the Big 2 having crawled completely up their own butt when the big plans at the Big 2 for this summer are each other's ideas from 30 years ago.  It's comics being about comics at their worst.  But, you know, if you follow both universes, you know DC, in particular, manages itself very publicly via storylines.  Editorial problems become narrative.  In this case, a hiatus becomes an opportunity to do some fan service for the readers who haven't been particularly thrilled with the New 52, and it can grant new readers a chance to get familiar with the DCU via the Convergence event.

Here's the but...

I'll be straight up with y'all:  I'll probably buy the most DC Comics I've bought since month 2 of the New 52 during Convergence.

Why?  Idiotic sentimentality gives me hope.  And, apparently, I can't learn the important lesson - that, more or less, the Big 2 will set you up for disappointment again and again.

Of course I'd like to let my dollars push the vote and say "hey, DC, some of us like Superman in red shorts and with a continuity that doesn't feel like it was assembled by drunkards".  Some of us would like a Superman that respects not just the publishing history, but pay for comics that provide a Superman that's not the kinda-generic hero DC has been pushing since they released Morrison from Action Comics (hey, remember how exciting Morrison's run was?  Seems so long ago...).

And here's where I get crazily optimistic -

It seems DC has more to lose by not trying to restore some semblance of a DCU Classic than by just going back to New 52 SOP.

I do find it odd DC has been doing a series like Future's End for a year that walks the fanbase through a pretty grim end to the New 52, they've finally out out Morrison's long-in-the-works Multiversity, that they seemingly suddenly don't care about what's happening in Wonder Woman enough that they just handed over the reigns to someone with no writing experience at all, and Superman is getting a yet another all new, more-or-less-equally terrible costume and a new power without all that much fanfare.

I like Romita Jr. and all, but Superman as chimpanzee proportions here

As is usually the deal with a big, line-wide event, Convergence allows DC to be kind of whatever it wants to be once we hit the other side.  If DC wants to say "We did Multiversity, there's a multiverse, here's  a few DCU's to choose from, comic monkeys", I wouldn't be at all surprised.

But, let's be honest, I also wouldn't be all that surprised if they said "Here's more New 52.  We canceled 18 more titles, and so... here's more Batman.  In fact, everything is now Batman except for Harley Quinn".

But I also don't know.  Having stepped away from comics as much as I have, it's also hard to tell what the move to LA really means.  Will the folks who've been running the show stay in place?  Will the folks on the digital side, who seem to be doing well with oddball projects like Batman '66 and Wonder Woman '77 have any influence on the publishing line in general?  No idea.  But they've been in LA since the wing of DCE was created.

It's always a wild ride watching DC as they sort out their editorial business on the page.  What's interesting won't be Convergence.  It's what DC announces is coming after Convergence that will impact a lot for me as a reader, and, I am guessing, if they can recapture a lot of the readers who have fallen off who once were able to support a wider DCU - and, I'd argue, might not be terribly receptive to overtures at this late date.

But, I am paying attention.  It's a real opportunity for DC to surprise everyone rather than to keep going a direction that seemed to be reaching diminishing returns.