Buy Now!

Mild Mannered Reviews - Specials

Trinity #29

Trinity #29

Scheduled to arrive in stores: December 17, 2008

Cover date: December 17, 2008

Main Story: "It's All in the Cards"

Main Writers: Kurt Busiek
Main Pencillers: Mark Bagley
Main Inker: Art Thibert

Back-Up Story: "Not on My Watch"

Back-Up Story Writer: Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza
Back-Up Story Penciller: Tom Derenick and Wayne Faucher
Back-Up Story Inker: Allen Passalaqua

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Bridges with Barry Freiman and Neal Bailey

Click to enlarge



Donna Troy, who shouldn't exist without a Wonder Woman to be a mirror of, somehow flies and stops two warring tribes of purple people from attacking each other, and they then invite Alfred and his group to go pay tribute to their gods, who are stand-ins for the Trinity.

Tarot says the Trinity is about to get help but they're in danger and have to make a decision of some kind, and then the backup story bleeds in.

To be continued...



Back-Up Story: "Not on My Watch"

Luthor debates the JSI over the best course of action. Tomorrow Woman is somehow still alive and parts of her are in different realities. Green Arrow and some others attack some villains near Alcatraz, where Prometheus is breaking Brainiac out.

Then Hawkman decides they can't lose Metropolis, despite Lex's protests to discover what's really going on, and the JSI and the League are teleported to Metropolis where Tomorrow Woman somehow pulls her consciousness back from all those alternate realities which pulls her body back together, and then she thinks she can control the rift and is able to close it. Then news comes in of new rifts opening in cities all over the world.

Tarot, meanwhile, turns herself in to the Dreambound as that's somehow better than having the JSI protect her when they're already stretched thin.

And then we're back to the purple people, wherever they are, and they're off with Alfred and the others to see their gods.

To be continued...



Jeffrey's Review:

1Main Story & Back-Up Story - 1: This was nothing like a main and a backup story, this was just one story. And I will rate it as such.

Harbor-folk. Of course. Why not? They live by the harbor, you see. What ELSE could they possible be called?

And look, there's TWO moons. You know what makes sense? You remove Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman from history and then there's purple people in warring tribes and another moon in the sky.

ISN'T THAT LOGICAL?

Frankly folks, I have to tell you, I am literally sick of this nonsense. Hawkman, Tomorrow Woman and Tarot are the only trinity Busiek seems to actually care about.

This book has had nothing at all to do with the Trinity for so long that even putting their logos on the cover has become a joke.

There's no character, and thus no arc or development, and there's no real story at all. The Trinity is gone and so weird crap happens for months on end.

Doesn't that sound like it's worth buying, folks?

3Main Art & Back-Up Art - 3: Tomorrow Woman, Tarot, Hawkman.

Don't care, don't care, don't care.

Rendered capably enough, but...

Don't care.

2Cover Art - 2: I liked this cover... last month. This month is the exact same thing with some slightly different people.

How creative!

Barry's Review:

1Main Story - 1: It's nice to see Supergirl being Supergirl for a change even if she is Interceptor. Beyond that, I'm totally lost. Happy Harbor one minute. The next: the land of the purple-skinned primitives who pray to AtMahn, Kellel, and Dinanna.

It's almost ironic that the names assigned to Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman sound like the names a baby would use while learning to speak. (I'm told that, as a toddler, I referred to Batman as "Natnan"). The story reads like it's written by an infant - at least an infant of a writer, which Busiek allegedly isn't though you can't prove it by "Trinity" or much of his other recent work for DC ("Superman", "Aquaman").

Meanwhile, Tarot and Charity talk and talk and talk.

4Main Art - 4: The story title should have been "Purple". Purple skinned aliens. Tarot and Charity in similar purple (more or less) outfits.

It's an odd choice to put two similar looking characters like Tarot and Charity in similar colored outfits. Both are brunettes and fair skinned. Yet Bagley pulls off the distinctions between the two characters's looks well. Charity has a certain confidence drawn into her face while Tarot still has the face, and even the stance, of a young girl.

1Back-Up Story - 1: I got to the end of the book this week and didn't realize I'd read two different stories. At first, I thought DC actually deviated from the two-story-per-issue "Trinity" (shouldn't it be three stories per issue if it's called "Trinity" anyway?). Then I realized that the issue read like one big story because the last three pages really belong to the lead story.

The remainder of the story is more nonsense. Geoff Johns should tell the JSI that isn't Brainiac, it's merely one of his scouts. We've seen the new real Brainiac and that isn't him. And, just as Luthor wouldn't be power-suit Luthor without Superman, there'd be no Joker without Batman dropping a would-be thief into a vat of chemicals. Not to mention there'd be no Legion of Superheroes without Superman and so Booster Gold couldn't steal a Legion flight ring or time bubble to come back to our time. No logic, no cohesion, no story.

4Back-Up Art - 4: The artwork is really strong this time out. Even knowing Tomorrow Woman is an android, the rendition of a woman undone is rendered really creepily.

With all the heroes in the story, it's a splash of different colors - greens, golds, purples, blue-blacks, crimsons to name a few. I still love the variant Green Lantern and Flash costumes and wouldn't mind seeing them brought into continuity over in "Justice Society of America".

1Cover Art - 1: What do we want? Equal rights for supporting characters. When do we want it? Now!

Neal's Review:

1Main Story - 1: There are two plots here. One, purple people talking about the fact that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman once existed and should exist. Silly sounding purple people. Who say "Dinana" to mean Diana. And "Ahtman" to mean Batman.

They confront people who should theoretically have no knowledge of the three, who are suddenly recalling the three despite no catalyst to promote such beyond the memories they lack.

Lame.

The other story is Tarot, the "worldsoul," getting a tarot reading that says things could or could not happen in a way that is not a way that may be good or may be bad. Which is pretty much the annoying part of tarot cards, the lack of specificity. When you add practical application to it, THERE is a story, THERE is incentive, THERE is something neat. That doesn't happen here.

And then the story abruptly ends and shifts to the other narrative, ending later in the book, where we see them get in a covered wagon despite having the power of flight to go... to see the gods that don't exist in statue form?

2Main Art - 2: The purple people and the similarity between Tarot and the other character who is so hard to enjoy I can't even recall her name and can't be bothered to seek it weigh Bagley's otherwise usually magnificent art down. Here's hoping things pick up soon.

1Back-Up Story - 1: No real interest for me here. Tomorrow's "peril" is wiped away in Trek gibberish, most of the characters talk about the problem more than we attempt to visually understand it in a visual medium. Much time is spent with the wow that is Brainiac, only it's not a wow, because he looks like a Silver Age reject in an amalgamation of all that was bad in a Silver Age universe. And he's released by a sexist female gorilla's cadre of post-90s reject concepts.

Not entertained, here.

2Back-Up Art - 2: It sucks, because this isn't badly drawn. The problem is, if you simply flip through these pages, it looks like you're reading something from 1985.

The screwy part about that is that the artist isn't the one who called for these concepts. I can't say with any certainty whether Kurt and Fabian said, "Yeah! Give Luthor the high collar!" but I can say that most of the characters and their Silver Age feel detract from me taking the story seriously in any real way.

1Cover Art - 1: More blue people who were not in the issue doing the strange parade with three characters who ARE in the issue, but don't really have any symbolic seeming bearing in this image. At least for me.


Mild Mannered Reviews

2009

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

January 2009

February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009

Back to the Mild Mannered Reviews contents page.

Check out the Comic Index Lists for the complete list of Superman-related comics published in 2009.