Kingdom Comes for these Zero Hour heroes, in a tale of parents and their offspring that spans the Multiverse.
Writer: Christy Marx
Artists: Rags Morales, Jean-Claude St. Aubin, Nei Ruffino
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Publisher: DC Comics
Rating: 7.5/10
As the massive sandbox that is Convergence rolled into its sixth week, the overarching plot changed tack, with the threat of Telos replaced with something else. Yet it still provided a terrific impetus for writers and artists to play with versions of characters that would otherwise remain firmly separated in time, and CONVERGENCE: GREEN ARROW brought together the unlikely mid-1990s heroes of the Zero Hour event and the Elseworlds Kingdom Come mini-series. In the first issue of this two-parter, we got an alternate history of Oliver Queen meeting his son Connor Hawke for the first time. Rather than dying in a plane over Metropolis, Ollie has to deal with the consequences immediately.
After Zero Hour‘s Ollie and Connor meet Kingdom Come‘s Dinah Lance and Olivia Queen (Black Canary), things don’t continue with a smackdown but rather a curious series of conversations. Ollie puts it best when he remarks, “This feels like the Twilight Zone version of Family Feud.” In fact, that description could apply quite readily to many of the Convergence titles, being the ultimate mash-up of eras. Their initial refusal to fight is met with a stern threat of destruction from Telos, forcing father and son to face off against their Earth-22 mother and daughter counterparts.
The ensuing fight reassures us that Dinah is the master of hand-to-hand combat on any Earth, and writer Christy Marx demonstrates an incredible awareness of the characters she is playing with. There are also some nice references to Ollie’s origins, including a conversation that happens on the corner of Weisinger Ave and Papp Street (a nod to creators Mort Weisinger and George Papp). Using her background in television and gaming, Marx stages a tight conclusion to this mini-series, with an emphasis on action in the back half of the book, but remains true to the characters.
The artwork on these two issues has been superb, with Rag Morales no stranger to the character. He comfortably switches between the Zero Hour and Kingdom Come eras, staying true to the character designs that Jim Aparo and Alex Ross had respectively crafted in the 1990s while also creating something fresh. GIven that the first half of the issue is choosing various angles on a conversation between four people, Morales finds a way of making it dynamic and engaging.
LIke many of the second issues in these Convergence runs, CONVERGENCE GREEN ARROW lacks any real sense of resolution. The father-son angst that was set up in the first issue never really pays off, nor is it given any more attention other than a throwaway line in the final panel. This is disappointing, as Marx’s set-up really makes us want to spend a bit more time with this group of unlikely characters, or at the very least explore the “what if” relationship between Ollie and Connor. As we’ve already had a taste of the future of Green Arrow with the post-Convergence Green Arrow #41, this may still be the last time we see the bearded Ollie outside of the back-issues.
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