Convergence: The Return of the Repressed

Sigmund Freud isn’t a very popular or respected figure in many quarters.  Still, many of his theories remain incredibly influential, particularly the idea of the subconscious, that level of thought below ordinary awareness into which emotion and memory can be repressed, and from which those mental images can return given an appropriate stimulus.  One suspects that the cigar-smoking Viennese sage would have regarded DC’s Convergence with great amusement and no little amount of satisfaction.  It is true that companies are not people, and that the policies and activities of an editorial group are not precisely the same as human thought.  Still, some analogies are too obvious to disregard.

But before exploring the events and meaning of Convergence, we need to think for a moment about the nature of DC’s recent weekly series.  The model for such a publication comes from a decade ago with 52, the epic that chronicled the year following Infinite Crisis.  This series established the expectation that such a book would shape the nature of the DC universe, since 52 not only laid the foundation for the future relationships among the world’s heroes, but also revealed the existence of a new multiverse of fifty-two worlds.  Many would argue that the impact of 52 was more illusory than real, as much of the new status quo in the DCU did not rely on the series and the new multiverse was honored largely in being ignored over the next several years.  Nevertheless, the expectations had been set.

The three weekly series that have spanned the last twelve months in the DC universe failed to live up to this example.  Rather than establishing new, wide-reaching status-quos, these books told largely self-contained stories that led into very specifically focused follow-up comics.  Batman Eternal was by most measures the most successful of the weekly series, but its story did little to affect the rest of the Batman world, much less the DCU generally.  Indeed, many major plot developments within the realm of the Bat Family did not receive attention in its pages.  The main follow-up was Gotham by Midnight, as series that continued from only one of Batman Eternal’s many subplots.

The New 52: Futures End was sweeping in theory, but as it dealt with a future timeline the impact on the main DCU was essentially nil.  Meanwhile, its main publishing effect was to establish the premise for the new Batman Beyond series.  Earth 2: World’s End, which majority opinion holds as the least successful of the weeklies, led directly into Convergence.  One function of Convergence, like it’s fellow recent weeklies, was to set up a specific successor series.  In this case, Convergence featured the heroes of Earth 2, coming from the events of Earth 2: World’s End.  The story of Convergence laid the foundation for the new Earth 2: Society.  So, in one way, the weekly was only a publishing corridor funneling the characters from one series to another.

However, Convergence and its tie-ins, in an eminently Freudian manner, featured the return of characters and stories that had long been repressed deep in the subconscious of the DC universe, characters and stories from many different eras.  One notable aspect of the return of repressed memories or thoughts is that they tend to be fragmentary, dreamlike, and incredibly difficult to interpret.  I suppose one might consider the various tie-ins as memory fragments, although the analogy becomes forced at that point.  But the main series was certainly dreamlike and contradictory, and it was most definitely difficult to understand in terms of its effects.

The result of the series, in terms of the wider DCU, was to alter the timeline and change the outcome of Crisis on Infinite Earths.  But how?  We know what characters were involved: Superman and his family, Supergirl, Barry Allen, and Parallax.  But what exactly did they do?  How did they accomplish changing one of the most pivotal events in the history of the DC universe?  That is hidden, suppressed as surely as subconscious thought.

The final outcome in the present, illustrated in a few cryptic remarks and a pair of splash pages, seems to contradict statements made by author Jeff King and co-publisher Dan Didio, or at the very least to not fit clearly with those statements. Does everything in the history of DC now reside in a restored infinity?  What is the nature of that infinity?  How does that infinite multiverse relate to the main continuity? Like the fragmentary and puzzling traces of repressed memories coming to light, the end of Convergence confuses more than it informs.