Decoding Convergence With Jeff King: Part Three

Today’s issue of Convergence saw the action really pick up, as the roles of Deimos and The Warlord started to come into some kind of focus.

And with it? Lots more action. As we head into the meat of the story, how does this impact the world trapped nearby under domes?

Writer Jeff King joined us to discuss the issue and how it fits into the overall series.

If you aren’t caught up on our previous installments yet, covering Convergence #1 and #1, check them out here, and here.

Brother Eye is out there, but is not going to figure prominently into Convergence.

The Earth-2 Batplane sure looks like the headquarters for the Legion of Doom.

[Laughs] No, not yet.

Jay Garrick’s comment about Green Lantern kind of makes me feel like he’s talking faster than he can think. Is that a side effect of the speed powers that we’ve just never seen before?

You know, I think what’s charming about the character is he’ll just say how he feels; he’s a pure emotion character and maybe being speedy is making him that way but he’s your best friend who’s always going to say what’ on his mind unfiltered and he’s got a weird way of saying he loves you. That was a jay way of trying to commiserate, and he does recognize how that can be hurtful.

Basically Telos is doing Brainiac one better. He’s been the keeper of cities while Brainiac has been tinkering and experimenting slowly and deliberately over time and Telos’ instinct is to hell with that — let’s put all the domes down at once and speed things up. The determining of which city is truly worthy, Brainiac has been taking way too long to do it. I can do it all at once and get the results faster than him.

It’s like the first time that mom and dad are away and you’ve got the house all to yourself. It’s that instinct. But what’s underneath it is there’s also the kind of resentment of somebody who’s been treated like a kid when they feel like they’re ready to be an adult.

There’s a slow arc of Telos’ personality from the #0 where he truly is bound and doesn’t know how to be in a conversation with somebody who isn’t either under his thumb or holding a thumb that he’s under, and he’s learning how to do that by pushing back against the rules he’s been bound by and coming in contact with humanity is a new thing for him.

That’s part of what’s happening certainly as we go into 4 is part of what he’s doing is he’s learning from Dick, just as Dick is learning from him.

You know, I think he would be. What the thing may be to keep an eye on is that Telos has no remorse at the end of that. I think you’re seeing a progression. Had he broken that in #0 or #1, he would be incredibly fearful of Brainiac retribution for having made a mistake but now he’s going with is gut and conveniently blaming Kandor which on the one hand is a very immature thing to do.

I saw a write-up of Convergence — and I’m genuinely sorry I can’t remember where — where they talked about the idea of these bottle cities preserving worlds to be seen but not to have any more stories as essentially like people slabbing their old comics rather than reading them. Was that an intentional parallel or just a kind of happy accident?

It’s interesting. I don’t know. The intention always was to go back and revisit worlds and doomed timelines that had come out of the DCU. So in a way, that’s kind of a cool metaphor but it’s also kind of pragmatically what the domes did was, it turned the situation of those characters on their head from the start which was they’re depowered when we meet them.

For most of those characters, when their stories ended they might have been doomed or dying but they hadn’t existed or experienced where they are now. I love the fact that people are thinking enough about it to see that metaphor in it.

What’s interesting is I’ve been hearing anecdotally that people are buying a lot of physical comic books; while digital is big and popular, buying the comic book at your local shop is still pretty strong because I think if you grew up reading comics, you grew up buying them at your local and having the physical book so maybe there’s a meta-parallel in there somewhere too where if they like the story and like the book they’re buying the physical copies.

That’s the fun thing about Deimos is right away alarm bells go off for some readers but D has pretty good game and he has the incredible good fortune of taking a disadvantage and turning it to his adv. and it plays into the need that our Earth-2 heroes have which is to find a way to defeat Telos and Brainiac and get off the planet. So perfect timing Deimos, 10 pts Slytherin!

Funny thing about the batch of Morrison Bat-villains here: I thought Stan Lee’s Superman was Ultraa Comics and that last time, the Just Imagine… stuff was Multiversity. Turns out Grant Morrison was going to be represented here, he just hadn’t yet.

Keeping the players straight in an event like this is challenging.

That was a love letter to Stan Lee. However anybody reads it or feels like it’s coming across, that’s meant in fun.

I always knew that it was important that Grayson experience a noble sacrifice like what happens in 3. So that was how that happened and with whom it happened was a matter of story-breaking but once D and TW go on that path, it seemed almost inevitable that Telos would find himself in that position once he runs out of Miraclo.

When Telos takes out The Joker, I can’t help but feel like it’s reminiscent of when the Joker realized how much he hated Red Skull for being a Nazi.

You know, I feel like the Joker is such a powerful and understood trope of a character that even Telos would recognize that in him. At the same time, Telos also has something that he needs which is the information that Grayson’s got and it just the Joker’s bad luck that Telos arrives at that moment and it’s Dick’s good luck that it’s better for Telos than the Joker which is saying something.