The latest big crossover event in DC Comics has now well and truly begun, although I’m predictably late getting around to writing about it here at Stevereads. It’s called “Convergence,” and part of the reason I’m late writing about it is that I’m still not entirely clear on what it IS.

DC’s previous really big event was the birth of “The New 52” a few years ago, in which the company underwent a full-spectrum reboot, tearing down decades of continuity and starting all its marquee characters – Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and the rest – with brand-new first issues and entirely re-conceived origin stories. I think the company honchos viewed it as a way to clear out lots of tangled and confusing backstory and re-invent these classic characters in order to attract a wider audience of new readers (and if it simultaneously gave a whole bullpen of creators – writers and artists both – a chance to feel really invigorated about their storytelling, so much the better).

I was enormously skeptical about “The New 52,” as probably goes without saying. And my doubts weren’t exactly allayed by the initial roll-out of first issues and the changes they contained. Everything seemed to skewed for attracting new fans alright – provided all of those new fans were horny 13-year-old boys. Male characters were all grimmer and more humorless than ever (personality-wise, they were all Batman); female characters were all huge-breasted anorexics with self-esteem issues; story lines were bigger and louder but also dumber. It’s true that my beloved Legion of Super-Heroes got two ongoing titles and both those titles were very good – but both were among the first New 52 titles to get cancelled, and all of my other favorites faired little better. Wonder Woman became a one-dimensional “What ho, fellow warriors!”-type sword-slinging lunkhead (sort of like a Conan the Barbarian with even bigger boobies); Superman became first a workboot-wearing football team bully-jock and then a levitating, emotionless Visiting Alien in a Nehru collar; the Justice League became a loose collection of preening egomaniacs, none of whom trusted each other. It’s true that Aquaman got one hell of a good reboot, and of course no reconception can really dim the sheer workability of the Batman titles – but for the most part, I thought “The New 52” was a classic example of fixing something that hadn’t been broken.

Things got better. The reboot was an enormous success with fans; the story lines steadily improved; the creative teams started doing some truly excellent work. Even the Superman titles, for which I’d held out little hope, started becoming really good. Titles came and went, but over all there was a feeling of bubbling creativity that I gradually came to like quite a bit.

Now all of that is up for grabs again; “Convergence” is specifically designed to shake things up, and like I said, I’m not exactly sure why. One veteran comics-watcher snidely pointed out to me that the company can’t exactly go on calling something “new” that’s now a few years old, but that can’t have been much of a reason, since it would sure be easier to simply remove “The New 52” logo from all DC’s issue-covers than to scrap their entire publishing line for two months and foist “Convergence” and all its spin-offs on their readers.

Whatever the reason, after an initial “Issue 0” last week, the whole megilla kicked off officially this week with “Convergence” #1 and a smattering of spinoff issues. The premise, as outline in that first issue, is disarmingly simple: a super-being named Telos has plucked cities from dozens of different eras and continuity-lines in DC’s long publishing history and installed them on a barren planet Telos totally controls. He deprived the super-beings of those worlds of their superpowers that whole time (no explanation as to how he does any of this, of course), but now he wants to try something different: he’ll restore their super-powers and make them fight it out. The victorious reality will get to live, and all the others will be wiped out.

Disarmingly simple, like I said, and also droolingly dumb. Not only do a great many DC superheroes have superpowers you couldn’t just switch off without killing them, but also, if you’ve got a bad guy who’s so powerful he can at any moment idly play games with all of the good guys, what’s the point of telling superhero stories at all? The various DC continuities include wizards, aliens, immortals, and at least one agent of the Christian God Himself – the fact that “Convergence” doesn’t explain how any of these beings, let alone all of them, could become simple playthings for some random super-bad guy is certainly a big, distracting mark against it.

This #1 issue has all kinds of other marks against it. It’s written by Jeff King and Scott Lobdell (and drawn by Carlo Pagulayan), and AS a first issue, it stinks. The action opens in mid-scene, almost in mid-sentence, on some alternate Earth in the middle of some plot that quite obviously culminated in some other comic book. Alternate-world versions of Batman, the Flash, Superman and others are facing off against yet a different version of Superman, this one obviously evil. There’s not so much as a paragraph of exposition to explain any of this, not so much as a sentence of synopsis about whatever the hell preceded this opening page – instead, newcomers are I guess expected to just sink or swim.

There’s a volcanic eruption, a giant stone hand, a red-haired woman who jumps out of the ground (where apparently she’d been eavesdropping without needing to breathe?) and kisses somebody – none of it makes any sense to the newcomer, and then our heroes (at least I think they’re our heroes) are rudely transported to the world Telos has set up in order to pit all his various captured cities against each other. Our heroes are told they won’t be allowed to make common cause with any of the other heroes – instead, it’ll be a multi-part fight-to-the-death, with all of reality as the prize. What you see on the cover of the issue – our heroes preparing to fight Telos – never even comes close to happening inside.

DC put out a few spin-off comics this same week, all of them set in various alternate timelines and continuities, and with a great deal of trepidation, I bought “Convergence: Superman” #1 – mainly on the strength of the cover, which shows Superman kissing Lois Lane as the four-color comics gods intended (not Wonder Woman, his “New 52” love interest, although they don’t seem to know or like each other at all in regular New 52 comics).

The issue is firmly set in the world of “Convergence.” The pre-New 52 Superman (with enormous restraint, I’ll refrain from calling him the real Superman) has been trapped in Gotham City, of all places, with a very pregnant Lois Lane (a nod to the idea that time hasn’t been standing still in any of these continuities while we’ve all been reading the one featured in “The New 52”). His superpowers are gone, but his nature is still the same, so he’s been going out to fight crime dressed in head-to-toe black, with Lois offering commentary via an earpiece. As the issue begins, Clark is trying to foil a drug-running operation when two things happen: first, everybody hears a booming, disembodied voice (it’s Telos, announcing his tournament), and second, one of the bad guys blasts Clark with a flamethrower. Lois, not knowing that Telos’s announcement means he’s magically restored everybody’s powers, is momentarily terrified that her only-human husband has been burned to a crisp.

And when the flames clear, I got a panel I’ve been waiting years for, waiting for ever since “The New 52” began: Superman, the pre-reboot Superman, standing there with his spitcurl and his smile and his bright circus-acrobat costume.

He takes care of the criminals in short order and returns to Lois, and before he heads out to investigate the mysterious booming voice, he and Lois indulge in a little gentle, teasing chat, and it’s exactly the kind of lovely little moment that virtually never happens in “The New 52”:

The issue is written by Dan Jurgens and drawn by a favorite of mine, Lee Weeks, and it ends of a cliffhanger, so I know I get at least one more adventure of this Superman. And a glance at some of the upcoming “Convergence” titles gives me hope that there’ll be other gems I can savor before the whole thing comes to whatever its conclusion will be.

I’m still unclear on the nature of that conclusion, but I think I can tell two things for sure: a) the continuity that results from this event won’t in fact be one single winner of the contest Telos has set up but a blending of elements from several of them, and therefore b) no matter how I might have irrationally hoped for it once upon a time, that new continuity won’t simply be a return to what I consider “normal.” And it took the prospect of seeing all these different continuities jumbling together to make me realize I maybe don’t even hope for that anymore. Against my own expectations, I enjoyed a lot of what “The New 52” offered me. I’m willing to bet I’ll enjoy a lot of whatever arises from “Convergence” as well. I’ll read a bunch next week with that hope in mind.