Trinity #3 Review

TRINITY #3
Written by Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza
Art by Mark Bagley and Art Thibert, Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens, Tom Derenick and Wayne Faucher and Mike Norton and Jerry Ordway

I was under the impression that Trinity would be about the, well, Trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. As such, I thought it would focus primarily on them with the odd guest star over the course of 52 issues.

What I didn't expect was for the first three issues to be riddled with nothing but guest stars and little to no actual story, as if all they want to do is showcase Mark Bagley's artwork romp through the DCU. If that was all they wanted to do, why didn't they just stick him on JLA and be done with it?

As it is, I decided to give the series a fair shake, after dropping it with issue one, since I had a lot of issues pushed back this week. After picking up both issue two and three, I can still see absolutely nothing has happened. The Trinity still hasn't really confronted or been introduced to the main threat (neither has the reader, for that matter) and the villains have yet to even hint at their master plan and the big, big bad still hasn't been seen outside of random dream visions. If I had to describe this series, it would be with one word - filler.

This issue picked up with the defeat of Green Lantern last issue. No, the Big 3 didn't come save John Stewert. That would be foolish. We need to have Bagley draw the JLA getting their asses handed to them by the worst new villain in years, Konvikt. He's basically the Hulk with a retarded little imp on his shoulder that won't shut up. Oh, and it sounds like he was named by a 12 year old or rapper that thinks its edgy and cool to replace perfectly normal spellings of words with k's.

Regarding the actual fight, Black Canary actually looked like a leader for the JLA, the first time I can say I've noticed that since she, well, became leader back at the start of the new Justice League series. That sounds like a compliment, but it's more a jab at the current treatment of the non-Trinity JLA members. Suffice to say, that newfound comptence didn't last.

After building up the competence of Black Canary, the minute the team is in trouble, the Big 3 show up to save the day and she immediately kowtowing and deferring to people that should be her subordinates. It completely undermined any credibility she had just built up as the "leader" and treated the League like replacement heroes for when the Trinity are unavailable.

However, in an attempt to "sell" his new big bad, Busiek writes Superman like an overly cocky amateur that rushes in, fists flying, and gets knocked out from one punch by Konvikt. I honestly expect the next issue will have him faking this or the "knock out" will be a complete hoax of a cliffhanger to try and lure people back in. Otherwise, it's just bad storytelling and make Superman look like a complete chump. If Konvikt was that strong, he would have killed the base level human and non-Superman strength class JLA members that he was fighting with up until now. As they all survived, I can't see how he magically got strong enough to do something no one has ever done to Superman before.

As for the back up, I tried reading it, but it was so dull and completely pedestrian that I literally ended up just flipping through it hoping something interesting would happen. It appears Tarot, the new young, relatable teenager Busiek tripe that is required in every story he tells (see Jolt in Thunderbolts for one example), received some development and that she either has magically protectors or uncontrollable powers related to her tarot card reading. All I know is a bunch of gangbangers got killed off panel in an alley when they tried to assault her.

Verdict - Avoid It. It's not as bad as Countdown, but the story isn't going anywhere and I'm pretty confident you'll be in for nothing but disappointment if you stick with this hoping for a payoff.

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