Blue Beetle aims to win in Convergence Justice League International #2 written by Ron Marz, art by Mike Manley, Joe Rubinstein, Mike Manley and Bret Blevins on inks, Sotocolor on colors, and Tom Napolitano on lettering.
Blue Beetle and the rest of Justice League International find themselves versus Kingdom Come Wonder Woman and a cadre of harder edged heroes. The atmosphere here is pretty grim and not 
unlike all the other Convergence issues: one group has been through hell before and they’re not going to stand losing again. Kingdom Come Blue Beetle is cool and isn’t about it the way Ted is, and when everyone starts delivering the smackdowns on each other they more or less try to remove themselves to figure out how to stop it all and are attacked by Telos robots apparently to keep everyone in order and…uh fighting. It’s a good moment and Ted Kord of course is given decent dialogue.
POSITIVES
I like the Beetle on Beetle quips and nonviolence. Ted is getting a lot of love from Convergence overall with the various versions running around so that’s nice. The issue ends with a sweet moment brought to you by Booster Gold, though he doesn’t appear in person.
NEGATIVES
All of the other characters on the International team here minus Martian Manhunter are more or less noncharacters, the same with Wonder Woman’s group from Kingdom Come (Nightstar, Jade, etc). Many don’t even have a line, it’s all about Ted Kord. Which is fine, it’s just…expected. Art is underwhelming. It ends pretty softly like most, which is better than everyone getting slaughtered but seeing it rinse and repeat in this event it’s getting rather repetitive. I keep wanting people to really push comics to think differently and these definitely feel like filler.
VERDICT
If you love Ted Kord and don’t mind just “okay” art, check this issue out, but ultimately you’re not missing much. Convergence Shazam is making it hard for a lot of issues to look good. A cute ending and two quipping Beetles made this passable but ultimately still bland forgettable fare.
