Parallax is back in 'Convergence' tie-in

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

The time is right for a return to Zero Hour, and Tony Bedard is focusing on two of Earth's legendary Green Lanterns, though neither of them are in the greatest of emotional states.

Convergence: Green Lantern/Parallax, the two-issue tie-in to DC Comics' main Convergence event written by Bedard and illustrated by Ron Wagner, features Kyle Rayner as a rookie and Hal Jordan as a guilt-ridden jailed hero.

Convergence brings cities from important timelines and stories throughout DC's long history to the living planet Telos in order to pit them against one another and see who survives. And the crossover tracks the history of Bedard's experience first as a reader going back to Crisis on Infinite Earths in the 1980s and on through current day.

"I've been through all these moments where they rebooted the universe and experienced all of these versions of the DC Universe," the writer says. "Just for me personally, it's neat seeing them all thrown together on the same battlefield."

As a Green Lantern fan who's written Green Lantern Corps and Green Lantern: New Guardians in recent years, the story surrounding Zero Hour was always a favorite. The 1994 crossover centered on Jordan, who lost his sanity after stealing all the power of the Green Lantern Corps following the destruction of Coast City, turned into Parallax, murdered his fellow cosmic cops and the Guardians of Oa, and was determined to remake the entire DCU.

The Metropolis seen in Bedard's Convergence series (debuting Wednesday) is plucked away before Zero Hour goes down, and due to the dome that's put up around it, everyone's superhuman powers are gone. For Jordan, that means realizing the death he's caused, although Rayner, who's been visiting the greatest of all Green Lanterns for a good year in prison, tries to convince him that he was under an evil influence at the time.

"It's a different setup for their friendship," Bedard says. "For a long time, Kyle was basically just defined by feeling like he couldn't fill Hal's shoes. I remember as an editor on JLA (in the late '90s), we struggled with that, getting him past that moment and letting him shine on his own merits."

Convergence also revisits these characters at two controversial moments in their lives in '94 when Ron Marz was writing Green Lantern.

Hal's Parallax transformation split the fan base, Bedard recalls. "Some of them felt like it really violated the character, others felt like it made him interesting for the first time in a long time."

At the same time, Kyle was still hurting from the murder of his girlfriend Alex DeWitt, brutally killed by Major Force and stuffed in a refrigerator. (The incident became infamous in comic circles later as the first instance of the "Women in Refrigerators" trope, where a female character's death is used to further the plot of a male hero.)

"It got very real for Kyle suddenly and that worked in the right way for me — I actually was surprised that it rubbed people the wrong way that it did," Bedard says. "I've always looked at it as an important moment for that character and something that I thought was an honest moment of drama and not just a cheap shock-value type thing."

Both heroes face a new threat in Convergence when the dome comes down and they're forced to face Electropolis, a city from an alternate Earth seen briefly in Crisis back in the day where England won the Revolutionary War and the monarchy is ruled by superpowered royalty.

While Lady Quark and Lord Volt appear in this week's Convergence: Supergirl: Matrix tie-in, their daughter Princess Fern battles Hal and Kyle. What seems like a mismatch turns out to be a pretty good fight, according to Bedard: Fern has Swamp Thing-y powers and she comes with a military contingent armed with lightning cannons.

"If you hit somebody with an electric blast, it scrambles their thoughts, and Green Lanterns really need their focus in order to make their rings work," says Bedard.

Adding to the drama is the fact that when folks get their abilities back, Parallax returns, too, and Hal begins to be blinded again with sheer power.

"The friendship that Kyle has stuck up with him is really the only hope that Kyle has of reaching Hal," Bedard says. "Hal is somewhere inside that guy and he has to appeal to him. That's the big question the story turns around on: Can he appeal to this guy and bring it back to who he is before he goes and loses his soul?"

Hal might be the biggest name in Green Lantern history, but Kyle is the point-of-view character and anchor to Bedard's story.

"He would never have as much willpower as Hal or be as fierce as Atrocitus," he says, "but he could do things that none of them could do. I just love that guy. He's my favorite Lantern as it all turns out."