“Convergence” issues 0 – 2

Written by Dan Jurgens, Jeff King and Scott Lobdell.

Wildstorm Concepts: 

Convergence is a mess. It’s a sequel to various things… “Future’s End”, “Earth 2: World’s End”, “Superman: Doomed”… it’s completely inaccessible. After the pre-Flashpoint Brainiac survived the reboot, he was filled with a desire to become more, so he travelled to the edge of The Source and beyond it, looking into the Multiverse to witness its story. Reaching through the Multiverse – and through time – in an effort to evolve as the Monitors had, he was mutated by the effects of “crisis” events such as the First Crisis and Infinite Crisis before re-emerging transformed into a god-like being. In “Booster Gold: Future’s End” issue 1 Brainiac captured the time travelling hero Booster Gold and tortured him to find out the location of Vanishing Point. Vanishing Point is place that exists during the last possible moment in the universe from where you can access the complete history of the multiverse. He took it upon himself to save a city from each doomed universe, picking them up right before their destruction and collecting them, creating a giant zoo of 40 cities. Among them– the original Wildstorm timeline. To collect them he invaded a planet called Skartaris, the same from Mike Grell’s “The Warlord”, and took over it to create a planet-sized spaceship he called The Blood Moon. He grabbed one of the planet’s inhabitants, Arak, and brainwashed him to think he was actually the planet’s artificial intelligence: Telos.

However, in one venture to collect a city Brainiac was trapped by Future’s End’s heroes, so taking care of his collection of cities falls to Telos. Left on his own, Telos decides to have the captive cities of the Multiverse into fighting each other to deem the one survivor worthy. And so begins the reappearance of classic Wildstorm characters. It’s a basic premise, or at least it should be, but it’s bogged down by how convoluted everything is.

Next: “Convergence: Aquaman” issues 1 – 2, written by Tony Bedard.

 

“Future’s End” issues 31 – 48

Written by Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen.

Wildstorm Concepts:

After the Cadmus island crisis is over, Cole needs to readjust to society. He’s a wanted man, so his new friend Lana Lang offers him to make him a new identity as “Mr. Lang” He is now married! Cole contacts his IT guy, Justin, but just as soon Fifty Sue finds him.

Meanwhile, Voodoo’s team of baddass chicks has gone from “kill Fifty Sue” to “work with Fifty Sue” to “reclaim the DNA vault that sank in the ocean.” As it turns out, when Cadmus Island blew up its DNA bank sank, and all of Cadmus’ men perished with Brother Eye. That means it’s up to Voodoo’s team, along with Cole and Fifty Sue, who know calls herself Sequel in honour of Deathstroke. Cole, Justin and Voodoo reunite after long weeks, and Voodoo is stoked to see Cole alive, what with being his on and off lover and all.

Unexpectedly, Lana lives up to being Fifty Sue’s mother figure and convinces her to stop misusing her powers and calling herself Sequel. Sue agrees to help the mission and simply teleports the vault into the building. Thinking she’s too dangerous, one of Voodoo’s girls, Mercy, goes ahead and kills Sue; Mercy’s touch is mortal. Cole can’t believe Voodoo would accept a hit on a girl just for money, and things get cold between them. However, Sue was simply pretending. She was alive, and teleports Lana, Cole and the vault to the Sahara desert. Cole realizes if Lana’s Sue’s mum, he’s expected to be the dad. He’s not happy about this. While she’s at it, Sue also collects Justin, to act as he loving “older brother”. A happy ending.

As for Voodoo, she gets to live on the countryside acting as Faraday’s bodyguard. He’s scared Brother Eye will take over everything, so he hides in a bunker underground. Voodoo gets to have the house on the surface.

Meanwhile, StormWatch’s leap of faith pays off as they arrive on Earth. Engineer is so happy to see her teammate Hawkman alive that she can’t stop making out with him. Suddenly, the rests of the Carrier are latched on by a tractor beam from the Ant Farm, S.H.A.D.E.’s headquarters. Father Time, S.H.A.D.E.’s leader, says Brainiac is coming, and he’s the worst threat either organization has faced. So they need to borrow Engineer – whether she wants it or not. The two groups begin fighting, but Atom shrinks inside Father Time’s body, and starts fighting with his brain. Father Time reveals he only wants to murder Engineer – Brainiac took his entire race, and he’ll do anything to stop him from doing the same to the human race. He believes Engineer is compromised, that she’s his agent now. Ultimately, Atom stops Father Time and takes control of S.H.A.D.E. Frankenstein says whatever’s coming will be stopped by him and his new teammates – as the new StormWatch.

Soon after, Brainiac arrives on Earth’s proximity. StormWatch warns the Justice League, but right at the same Engineer is taken over by Brainiac again – as Father Time had feared. She takes down her teammates, breaks the Carrier’s hull and heads towards her master. She starts building a giant Brainiac head, while Brainiac heads to Earth and begins trapping New York City in a giant dome. StormWatch and some Justice League members approach the giant head, but when Hawkman touches it he disappears in a flash. Turns out this Brainiac is a god who lives outside of time and space, and all the different versions of Brainiac we have seen through the decades were mere avatars of this big one. He’s been trapping cities from all over the multiverse and storing them in his Blood Moon, including the original Wildstorm reality. And now he wants to do the same to New York.

Atom shrinks down to get inside the machine, where she finds Engineer in the center of all the different realities stored in there. She was the nexus, so Atom cuts down the cables around her and shuts down the machine. No longer able to send a signal to his Moon, Brainiac switches to manual mode, and starts elevating the city towards space. Right at the same time, Brother Eye spreads through the city, promising to protect it. Earth’s heroes make use of this, using Brother Eye’s technology along with The Atom’s powers to shrink down Brainiac until he’s no longer a threat. Afterwards, Superman uses all his strength to catch the falling city.

Once the Brainiac crisis is over, Eye reveals his hand, reveling itself against the heroes and killing Batman Beyond. The rest of the heroes prepare a desperate plan: Tim Drake puts on the Batman Beyond cowl and travels to the past once more. There, he stops Brother Eye from letting passage to the Earth-2 citizens, thereby stopping the Earth-2 War. When he goes back to the future, however, the doomed reality still exists. He failed. Brother Eye still has the control. It’s a very disappointing ending to all these chapters, but I guess they wanted to keep selling Batman Beyond’s adventures. The story will go on in the pages of “Batman Beyond” but it won’t have anything to do with Wildstorm.

Next: “Convergence” issues 1 – 2, written by Jeff King & Scott Lobdell.

 

“Future’s End” issues 0 – 30

Written by Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen.

Wildstorm Concepts:

This is a long, complex story, so I’ll focus on the Wildstorm segments exclusively.

Thirty five years from the present, the artificial intelligence Brother Eye took over the world and assimilated nearly all human life, turning people into mindless killer androids. The remaining superheroes have a desperate plan – to turn off something called the Firestorm Battery, so that Brother Eye won’t be able to continue powering his satellite and controlling Earth’s heroes. Grifter and Amethyst are tasked with it, but their planned distraction goes awry and they’re found. Soon after, an assimilated Green Lantern vaporizes the two of them. With no other options, Batman Beyond (Terry McGinnis) travels to the past to stop that reality from taking place, to murder the man responsible. However, he and his helper A.I. A.L.F.R.E.D. miss the target date and instead of arriving in the present they arrive five years from now, where Brother Eye’s plans are already in play. That’s the premise of the story. Every issue takes place in an alternate timeline, five years in the future and disconnected from the other DC Comics.

Brother Eye is an artificial intelligence built by heroes Batman and Mr. Terrific in 2011. It was first created within the satellite known as Brother I, using Mother Box technology from the alien world of Apokolips. It was originally created to monitor the activities of Metahumans, vigilantes and other superpowered individuals to protect humanity. However, Brother Eye quickly gained sentience and went rogue, prompting the Justice League to shut it down. However, it managed to rise again, only to be shut down, several other times. It was defeated by the organization Checkmate and the Justice League International before jumping to a new satellite. By this point, its Apokoliptan origins drove Eye mad. Its quest to stop humanity’s differences compelled it to attempt to impose a complete, draconian order and uniformity to all humans, an action which led it to believe itself to be a God as well as the Anti-Life Equation.

In this bigger body he learned about alternate Earths, especifically Earth-2, which he kept a lookout for. He witnessed its population losing a war against Apokolips, so he sent a beacon to try and rescue the survivors. The peple from Earth-2 were able to follow the signal and jump to Earth-0, but they were followed by Apokolips’ forces. Some heroes from Earth-2 attempted to self-destruct their ships to let the others escape, so Eye teleported them inside its satellite. Soon after he was boarded by agents of Project Cadmus, led by Slade Wilson. They kidnapped the heroes from Earth-2 and tried to shut down Brother Eye, who transferred its intelligence to the Cadmus shuttle. Going back to Earth with them, Eye landed on Cadmus Island, where Cadmus hid all of the Earth-2 superheroes to experiment on them. Brother Eye hid on the island’s systems, awaiting to act while playing along as Mister Terrific’s AI. Ironically, Batman Beyond is followed when he travels through time by a killer android, and Terrific stumbles upon this robotic corpse, giving him the means to develop the technology which will create the doomed future.

Meanwhile, all the other Earth-2 survivors landed in Earth, followed by the endless Apokolips troops. As Earth started defending itself, what followed was called the Earth-2 war. After the war, the governments of the world responded with hostility to the new interdimensional refugees, and scientists such as Mister Terrific developed new ways to detect who is from Earth or who is, in fact, an Earth 2 alien.

StormWatch in this timeline has a different lineup; they have lost Jenny and the Projectionist and gained Hawkman (Katar Hol) and Mermaid (Nina Mazursky). They were travelling the Bleed in the Carrier when an unknown force pulls them out into the Huron System, in the farthest reaches of known space. They lose control of the Carrier, which starts attacking them, and Engineer is taken over by Brainiac, who speaks through her and says everything StormWatch has done was in preparation for the ultimate threat; he is the storm they were created for. Apollo flies outside to try to find what’s causing all this, but he’s immediately vaporized! The mysterious enemy infiltrates the Carrier and causes it to self-destruct.

Back on Earth, paranormal organization S.H.A.D.E. sends agent Frankenstein, the Atom and Amethyst into the rests of the Carrier to seek out survivors. They find the corpses of everybody but Engineer and Apollo, and it turns out Hawkman isn’t really dead – the Nth metal in his body always brings him back. Suddenly, his StormWatch emergency communicator starts going off – Engineer is alive, and calling for help. All the heroes but Atom track the signal to a nearby planet, but the ship shuts down as they hit the atmosphere. They crash into a technological world and are swarmed by Brainiac’s robots – among them, an assimilated Engineer. She takes the heroes out, and they spend the next few weeks locked in a prison. They are visited by the controlled Engineer, who wishes to take them to her master. She reveals they aren’t in a planet, but rather in Brainiac’s spaceship, the size of a planet: The Blood Moon. Back on the rests of the Carrier, Atom is visited by the Shadow Lords, who name him the new leader of StormWatch; of a new team for a new era.

Back in the Blood Moon, StormWatch is taken in front of Brainiac, who is a giant now, but suddenly Atom shows up, and he brings Black Adam with him. The heroes start fighting Brainiac and his minions. They know they can’t win, so they take Angie by force and escape in the Atom’s ship. They’re chased by many robots, but once they’re far away from the Blood Moon Angie returns to normal. They arrive on the rests of the Carrier with the evil robots behind them. Atom begins giving out orders like a good leader, telling Engineer to reboot what’s left of the Carrier. However, they lost their navigation system, so they can make a jump, but they could end up anywhere. Needing to get rid of all those robots, they make a jump for it…

Meanwhile, Grifter is back in the game of seeking out daemonites and slaughtering them. What’s more, his powers have been developing so now he can spot not only daemonites, but also Martians, Earth-2 doppelgangers, all kinds of undercover life forms. He now works with a guy named Justin; he’s Cole’s tech guy, cataloguing alien types, adapting their technology so that he can use it against them, keeping tabs on those they know about. Cole found him after he was tracking daemonites to Justin’s home; his parents had given up their bodies to daemonites and they were about to do the same thing to Justin. After Cole saved him, they started working together. Presently, Cole brought a living daemonite to Justin, who is experimenting with it and trying to create a dispersible agent to kill them in clusters.

Justin informs Cole he’s being tracked; an agent called King Faraday disguised himself as an FBI Agent and is hoping Grifter gets one tiny scratch in one of his missions so that he can be identified on one of his crime scenes. Unable to get to him through conventional means, King teleports right next to Cole and shoots him in the back. If he wants to heal his spine, he’ll have to agree to King’s request to go work for him. He takes Cole to Cadmus Island, where he’s healed through their superior technology and forced to work alongside Slade Wilson, Deathstroke. They are followed around by Fifty Sue – a nearly omnipotent girl who gets pissed off easily, Cadmus’ first attempt at creating a superhuman. Cole’s job is to use his detecting powers to seek out any hidden superhumans – Cadmus wants to collect them and experiment on them.

After Cole has been gone for a few weeks, Justin does what they had previously agreed in case anything happened to Grifter – to go with Voodoo. She agrees to take him in. In this timeline, Voodoo works for black ops – she did dirty missions for the government that were needed during the Earth 2 war. But now they are sending goons against her, trying to take her out. Voodoo and her girls decide to go straight to the source and confront their old boss: Sargent Rock. He explains he only ever sent “loose end operatives” against them – people he needed to get rid of. He knew the girls were never in any real danger. In fact, he wanted to attract their attention. He reveals he worked for Cadmus all along, and now he needs the girls’ help: He wants to take out Fifty Sue, who is too powerful to be controlled.

Back in the island, Cole is attacked by a mysterious invisible robot – an OMAC, as they call the guards in the island. Investigating, they come across a researcher from Earth 2, Lana Lang, who joins Fifty Sue’s happy family. It seems the island has been experiencing several glitches, like the stealth OMACs or the fact that the chips installed in the Earth-2 captives have been growing in size somehow. Suddenly, all of the captives start being controlled through their chips, and they escape from their cells and take over the island. Having been chipped, Cole is controlled too. Brother Eye has made his move; it knows a group of superheroes are coming to rescue the trapped Earth-2 heroes. Cole is put to sleep and along with Fifty Sue, Lana and Deathstroke they manage to escape. Sue teleports and faces Brother Eye, where they strike a mysterious deal. Stripping Cole from his chip, the team regroups with Faraday and they head to a bunker.

Grifter reveal his power has evolved to the point he can spot superhumans from normal people, and Faraday is one of them. Deathstroke is mad that Cole didn’t tell them, but Cole never agreed to go to the island to start with. Tired of all the danger, Faraday simply uses his powers and teleports away. Fifty Sue doesn’t care – she has an evil computer overlord to beat. However, Brother Eye plays mind games when it shows Sue a recording of Deathstroke agreeing to protect Eye until it can be plugged outside the island, onto the world’s systems. Grifter doesn’t know about this, though. He wants to get out of the island, but all of the boats are fitted with retinal scan security, and Deathstroke’s the only one with access. And he says they’ve stil gotten work to do: the island has a vault filled with DNA samples, and he wants to secure it.

Faraday teleports to Las Vegas, to Sargeant Rock, and Fifty Sue goes after him with a mere thought. She throws him a tantrum because of being betrayed by Deathstroke, saying she wants a new team to take him down. Right at that moment, Voodoo walks in, having the ideal team with her. At the same time, a group of heroes lead by Green Arrow storms the island, and begins battling Brother Eye’s OMACs. Seeing them, Deathstroke shows his true allegiance and attempts to shoot Cole, but he’s killed by Fury, a heroine. Green Arrow hits the failsafe Cadmus has installed. As everybody leaves by boat, including Grifter, the island blows up. What they don’t know is Brother Eye is catching a ride with them, hidden in one of their cell phones.

To be continued…

Next: “Future’s End: Teen Titans” issue 1, written by Will Pfeifer.

“Superman” Vol.3 issues 7 – 8

Plot by Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen; dialogue by Keith Giffen

Wildstorm concepts:  

The story begins after Helspont arrived on Earth on the last issue. He built a series of Seekers, automatons servants; they aren’t held together by any power source but by a series of etched runes. They build a giant fortress for him in the Himalayas.

Helspont felt Superman’s presence as soon as he crashed there, so he dispatches a seeker into metropolis; a robot that starts shooting things up to evaluate Earth’s superhuman population and check if there’s anyone stronger than the Kryptonian. Superman defeats it, so Helspont feels this confirms what he thought and decides he’ll have Superman join his cause to defeat those who imprisoned him. Helspont sends the seeker against Superman once again, and then teleports them to his base in the Himalayas. Superman listens to Helspont as he monologues and reveals some differences between him and his Wildstorm version.

Helspont was in prison for a long time, so he’s outraged to find the world is not yet of daemonite dominion. He’s the one who put agents on Earth, so he feels he must reclaim control over his investment.

Helspont demands Superman to help him get revenge, and in return he’ll cede Earth to him to do with as he pleases. Of course, this leads to a fight scene, and Superman eventually causes Helspont to retreat and hide away. What he doesn’t know is that Helspont was merely containing himself, testing Superman.

Next: Voodoo Vol.2 issues 5 – 12, by Joshua Williamson.