Trinity #12


12In the lead: Superman tries to take on the CSA all by himself, but ends up getting a little assistance from the Justice League. Superman gets mad and flies off in a huff for the second consecutive issue. Meanwhile, Red Tornado, Green Lantern and Firestorm sneak onto the CSA’s satellite HQ and plant a device of some kind. While under attack from the automated defenses, GL goes full binary.

In the back-up: The Riddler gets hired by a museum curator named Dick Grayson (yay, continuity!) to figure out who stole the tarot objects. After some investigating, the Riddler determines that only he himself could be responsible, so he sets off to prove his own innocence.

My take: Well that didn’t take very long. The mystery of Enigma’s identity is that he’s the Riddler, but not our Riddler. Assumedly Enigma is the E. Nigma of Counter-Earth, because he totally freaks out when Morgaine Le Feyand Despero contemplate taking over Counter-Earth instead of New Eart. But shouldn’t the Riddler from Counter-Earth be a good guy? Not so, because Counter-Earth seems to change based on changes on New Earth, and since our Riddler recently became good, their Riddler would have become recently bad.

Back when Trinity #1 hit, I wrote “I could have easily accepted Ra’s al Ghul (he did just break out of Arkham) or Deathstroke as a guy who could outfight Batman, or maybe even the “reformed” Riddler as someone who could outwit him, but not some guy I’ve never heard of in a stupid half-helmet thing.” Well, we ending up getting the Riddler, but the alternate universe thing sort of feels like a cop out. Enigma being from Counter-Earth also makes me worry that the CSA story is part of the evil guys’ plans, which is disappointing. Also, that “stupid half-helmet thing” I complained about earlier? It’s clearly in the shape of a question mark, but I never even noticed until now.

The JLA/CSA fight was pretty disappointing. I wanted to see a very angry Superman giving the CSA a run for their money on his own, but barely a punch is thrown before the JLA shows up. Lame. And then Superman runs away, and Wonder Woman and Batman follow him. Lamer. Plus, the rest of the JLA will probably get their asses kicked by the CSA. Way to act lie a team, Trinity.

Things to keep an eye on: The Riddler is off to prove that he didn’t organize the theft of the tarot objects. Knowing Eddie, that’ll probably lead him straight to the evil Trinity.

By the end of the issue, Green Lantern has been completely taken over by the mysterious binary thing that’s making his powers go out of whack. Judging by the pace of this book, we’ll probably be finding out exactly what’s going on next issue.