Saturday, April 11, 2020

Convergence: Blue Beetle #1 (2015) Review

Down and Out In The Dome

Written By: Scott Lobdell
Art By: Yishan Li, Dave McCaig
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 29, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Continuing with the trend this week of Convergence, we're heading to another world in the Multiverse and this time it's Hub City from the Charlton world of Earth-4.  The world where Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Peacemaker and Question inhabit........ Not to mention a shit ton more but I'm not in the listing superhero game, no I'm in the reviewing game and even with that a lot of people would cry foul.... Why is everyone so mean?  Anyway, my feelings aside, let's do what we've done all month and dive into a dome scenario and see how our heroes of Earth-4 are handling their powerlessness.  Let's check it out.


Explain It!:

Our issue begins with one of the darkest dilemmas that I've seen during Convergence so far.  A bunch of people......they happen to be pretty fucking crazy people but people nonetheless - well, they're protesting all the lack of freedom that Hub City has been treated to since the dome has taken over their lives and to back up their protests, they've also got a shit load of guns....... Just not as many as the National Guard that's been called together to shut them down.  Captain Nathaniel Adam is leading the guard and after the protesters open fire on him and his men, he gives the order to fire back........ and it's a freaking bloodbath.  After the smoke had cleared and everyone went back to their lives, The Question comes out of the shadows to express his disdain for the former Captain Atom.  After a brief argument about what is right now that they're living under the dome, The Question tells Nathaniel that Ted Kord would like to see him.


We head over to Kord Industries, where Ted has been working on a new science project that will hopefully free everyone from the dome and he asked Captain Atom over so that he can oversee and give sanction to his experiment.........which he kind of does even though Ted seriously called him out on the massacre he just came from.  So get this, here's another first for the Convergence "rules", Ted's attempt to bring down the dome, while technically a failure, did manage to somehow give Captain Atom his powers back......... which I don't fully understand but hey, we'll go with it.  So Captain Atom is back up and running and after witnessing a cascade of colors in the sky, he comes across Dr. Spectro, who has gotten his powers back as well.  Before any real fistacuffs can be thrown, they're interrupted by the "unstuck in time" Booster Gold, who gets a bit of a beating from Captain Atom....... just before he vanishes....... If you're confused, go read Convergence: Booster Gold....... which will probably get you a little more confused.


In the end, after Booster fades away, somehow the powers that Captain Atom and Dr. Spectro had regained faded with him........ which also leads to one of the weirdest versions of Telos' grand speech about survival of the fittest, where the dome comes down and I guess Captain Atom and the rest of the super powered folks of Hub City will regain their powers.  It's just weird that they had them again only to have them taken away right before they get them back.......... Yes, very odd indeed.  I hope Blue Beetle didn't screw something up so that Captain Atom doesn't get to have his powers back next issue......... because Earth-4's Hub City would be seriously screwed.


That's it for Convergence: Blue Beetle and while I enjoyed it for the atmosphere and setting of Earth-4, it was an odd issue.  It might have worked better if we were given a correlation between Booster Gold arriving and vanishing to Captain Atom regaining his powers and then losing them.  It just comes off as odd and I don't know if I'm supposed to believe that any of this was due to Beetle's experiment or solely due to Booster being unstuck in time.  The most interesting part of the story for me was seeing the new status quo of Hub City after it's time under the dome and how people are dealing with their freedoms being taken away and I wish we could have seen more of that....... I know we only have a limited amount of time to get the Convergence story going but the rest just seemed like nonsense and then some more nonsense to get Booster Gold thrown in.  I dug the art though so this issue was really a mixed bag for me.

Bits and Pieces:

I loved the world and I loved the characters, but this issue doesn't do much to make me interested in what Hub City is up to during Convergence.  We've had some strange things happen for what I like to call "the rules" of Convergence during this event, but this one has to be one of the strangest and I don't know if it was just because the creators needed this to tie-in to the Convergence: Booster Gold issue or what, I just know that it left me scratching my head.  Hopefully, we get some answers in the next issue.

6.2/10

2 comments:

  1. I enjoyed this issue. I think the temporary restoration of powers was a way to explain why the characters had their powers, under the dome, when Booster appeared in his FUTURES END issue (it is the same scene in both issues, after all).

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  2. Stupid question. Isn't this the wrong Beetle to know Booster. I might be wrong but Booster didn't exist in Charleton world. Should the Beetle to recognize Booster be JLI Beetle?

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