TV scribe is King of 'Convergence' event
It's a good thing Jeff King has been a lifelong comics fan since his debut in the medium pulls from 75 years of history.
So, no pressure or anything.
The DC Comics event Convergence would be a doozy for any writer, and even DC co-publisher Dan DiDio apologized for throwing him "into the deep end so quickly," says King.
"Had I known how massive the undertaking would truly be, I'd have probably run for my life. But lucky for me, I didn't."
The nine-week epic begins with a zero issue out Wednesday, co-written by Dan Jurgens and illustrated by Ethan Van Sciver, that puts Superman at the heart of a struggle across the Multiverse. The Man of Steel finds himself transported to a planet where the evil Brainiac has selected cities and doomed timelines from across more than 75 years of the DC Universe.
His grand plan: to pit the characters in these places against each other in experiments to weigh their worthiness, determine strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately return one or more locales back into the DCU.
The zero issue also introduces readers to Telos, King's main villain who is the herald of Brainiac "but has his own agenda, and that's going to be revealed in the balance of the issues," says the writer.
The opening chapter of Convergence takes place in Superman's missing hours from the recent Doomed story line in Action Comics, where Brainiac tells the hero that through all timelines, the Man of Steel is the one guy who deserves his attention.
"There's something about Superman's hope, resilience and resolve that is so legendary and so unique to the character and so all-encompassing in every iteration of him that he is ultimately the hero Brainiac has failed to conquer," King says.
One splash page features all the deaths of Superman, various stories laid out though the history of the DCU, the writer adds. "There is a reason why Brainiac is coming up against Superman and it's going to tie into the resolution of the final issue."
Convergence crosses over into a host of two-issue books in April and May that showcase heroes coming together from the timelines of huge DC events such as Kingdom Come, Zero Hour and Crisis on Infinite Earths — a Justice League arc by Dan Abnett features a last hero quest of a group of aging do-gooders, and a Superman tale by Jurgens features the birth of Superman and Lois Lane's child, "which is something that's going to be pretty remarkable and special to the story," says King.
His weekly Convergence series will be the spine of everything, though, and beginning with next week's No. 1 issue, the title will feature the Earth-2 team of Val-Zod, Jay Garrick (that world's Flash), Alan Scott (aka Green Lantern), the alternate-universe Batman Thomas Wayne and Dick Grayson, plus a sixth surprise person in the group.
After being ripped out of the end of the world in Earth 2: World's End, they're "strangers in a strange land" when taken to Brainiac's planet, King says. "They're the grain of sand in the clam — they're going to be the pearl, the difference maker, because their arrival is one unexpected random element."
King himself was thrown into Convergence after the groundwork had been crafted by fellow writers Jurgens, Scott Lobdell, Scott Snyder and Brian Azzarello. But what he brings to the table is experience in TV writers' rooms, to take something with a big mythology and "thousands of layers of details, and focus down on a small group of heroes or a hero with a common cause or a story to follow," says King, an executive producer on White Collar and Continuum.
"What my role is going to be is to fight for the lives of my six characters, and that resonated with (DC) because that was important to the spine story, too, that it stand on its own."
King has been a comics fan since he was a kid growing up in Canada. Though he started out more keen on Marvel heroes, he fell in love with Jack Kirby's DC characters such as the Forever People, Etrigan the Demon and the Metal Men.
In prepping for Convergence and working in the Multiverse, he started from the beginning with the "Flash of Two Worlds" (in 1961's The Flash No. 123) and read through Superman: Red Son, Gotham by Gaslight, Infinite Crisis, Brightest Day, Blackest Night, Flashpoint and other seminal comics in DC lore.
What fans of those will find in the new crossover is a reminder of how beautiful and timeless they are, King says. "Especially because (Crisis on Infinite Earths) blew everything up, Convergence is bringing everything back together — everything that was continuity or canon will exist again, and it'll be a resource for every writer who follows us in Convergence to use and go back to if they want to tell those characters' stories."