Trinity #29

In the lead: Alfred’s Six spy on those sorta alien guys from last issue, and Donna Troy interjects when violence ensues. Surprise! She has her Wonder Girl powers! Then Alfred talks to the alien dudes and they decide to make a pilgrimage to the Trinity-inspired holy site. Meanwhile, Tarot freaks out a little bit and Charity reads her tarot cards.

In the back-up: The League tries to stop a jailbreak at Alcatraz, but gets ported away to Metropolis for a big fight with TVM and company. Tomorrow Woman manages to literally pull herself back together, but the bad guys get away. And Prometheus breaks Braniac out of prison.

Back in the lead: Tarot is kidnapped once again by the Dreambound, and Alfred’s Six start on their pilgrimage.

My take: Trinity has only deviated from the 12-page/10-page story formula a few times so far, in issues #17, #22 and this one, and it always seems to make the issue better. The back-up often seems completely unimportant, but by inserting it into the middle of the issue, it really seems like a 22-page story instead of two shorter ones.

Unfortunately, the back-up still sucked. I said last time that everything with the JSI is boring me, and it still is. I guess you need a good guy army to fight the bad guy army, but they’re not going to win the day. Alfred’s Six will be saving the day, probably with a little assist from Tarot or maybe some inadvertent help from Despero and Kanjar Ro.

Right now I’m just waiting for the Trinity to come back. This series has gone way downhill since Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman left its pages. It was good for a little bit, with a few random people remembering the way things used to be, but then it just got over-complicated.

Things to keep an eye on: If one-third of the way through issue #17 is the end of the first arc, then two-thirds of the way through issue #34 should be the end of the second arc. And the Trinity should be back by then, thankfully. So only five more issues of this crap to go.

What the hell’s been going on with John Stewart and Firestorm lately? Those two were very important supporting characters in the first arc that sort of fell by the wayside in the second one. What’s Krona doing with the Green Lantern? What’s Firestorm doing on this Earth now that he’s not being held captive?