The Four Color Media Monitor

USA Today wrote one of their predictably uncritical looks at DC's plans for a crossover this coming year:

For 2015's annual "big event,'' DC Comics is mashing up stories and characters from 80 years of comic-book history while also introducing a big bad villain.

Not that anyone cares anymore. Villains of the costumed variety alone do not an exciting story make.

The company is putting its line of superhero comic books on hiatus for two months for Convergence, a nine-week miniseries kicking off with a zero issue April 1. The story line will spill into 40 two-part miniseries in April and May featuring a variety of writers and artists examining the worlds of the DC Universe over the decades, as well as the heroes and villains contained within.

And no doubt, they're hoping as many unwitting people as possible will buy all 40 of them, amounting to little more than taking advantage of the consumers over something that Dan DiDio and company have proven they have no ability to make genuinely worthy. On that note, they proceed to quote him boasting, not a very good way to prove he knows what he's doing:

"It captures the full essence and scope of DC's incredible history and storytelling," says co-publisher Dan DiDio.

"There is a story and a character for every generation of DC Comics fan."

Yes there is, but it's not bound to be in this "event". Only in past output. His word alone does not prove the crossover stays true to anything. Certainly not past characterization.

Convergence spins out of the April 1 finales of the Earth 2: World's End and The New 52: Futures End weekly series. The alien supervillain Brainiac has trapped cities from various timelines and planets that have ended, brought them in domes to a planet outside of time and space, and is now opening them for a great experiment to see what happens when all these folks meet.

"We're picking up at points of their lives where we left them and finding out what's gone on with them since then," says DiDio.

Sure, I'll bet they intend to tell us. But past experience and logic suggest this'll all turn out to be a big April Fool's joke.

Since DC rebooted its entire superhero line as part of "The New 52" relaunch in 2011, fans have wondered if certain key moments in DC lore — the death of Superman, Bane breaking Batman's back, etc. — still "counted" in continuity, says co-publisher Jim Lee.

And there's the fact that people have also queried them about what happened to certain favorite characters and teams such as Donna Troy, Blue Beetle and the Justice Society of America, and why they haven't been reintroduced while others have.

Actually, Ted Kord was reintroduced as a younger guy, but it's too late to matter. And I think Superman's momentary death in 1992 was also confirmed as still canon recently...but not his marriage to Lois Lane. As for Donna Troy, didn't they kill her off prior to Flashpoint? Some of the characters who haven't been reintroduced include Sue Dibny, Jean Loring, and even the recurring cast George Perez featured in his 1987 Wonder Woman reboot.

"What we're really addressing is they all exist and have existed and exist within the framework of the New 52," Lee explains. "Convergence is in many ways the most meta epic event we've done."

Wrong. Whatever versions they feature here, it's already clear they're not the ones from better days.

"Because this involved so much deep lore and fiction from DC Comics, 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 and accessible to all fans," DiDio says. "Not just the people who have been reading DC throughout the years."

Again, such dishonesty. The slate they've introduced isn't a very clean one, and very few new readers have tried it out, or found it even remotely accessible. Old readers have come away feeling like much has been lost.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dc comics, dreadful writers, msm propaganda