The Return of the Trinity?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Trinity wrap-up, but let me make up for four weeks of issues I missed: the good and bad arcanas try to claim territory for themselves while Alfred’s Six slowly learn what happened to the Trinity after they were banished. Very slowly. Mind-numbingly slowly.

I really raved about Kurt Busiek’s pacing in the first arc of this series, but he really dropped the ball with Act 2. He spent way too much time setting up this world (which isn’t going exist in a few issues) and started the plot with Alfred recruiting people important to the Trinity way too late.

Things actually started out okay in Trinity’s second act. Issue #18 with Lois Lane’s “Fastlane” introduction to the universe was nicely done, and the early reveal that Kanjar Ro had been impersonating Despero made it seem like the second arc was going to keep pace with the first. And then Ro met up with Despero, and they met up with John Stewart, and then Krona showed up and all sorts of craziness was going on. In issue #24, Krona kidnapped Stewart and Ro & Despero found the counter-Trinity, but none of them have shown up since. Instead, it’s been weeks and weeks of Hawkman being a dick and Tarot acting irrational. Now it’s issue after issue of Hawkman’s Justice Arcana playing Call of Duty 4 Headquarters with Morgaine Le Fey’s Dark Arcana.

Everything would have worked out a lot better if Busiek had just started Alfred’s quest immediately instead of waiting until he was done with the outer space business. The story of the Holy Trinity has only been a pain to get through because it’s stapled to a crappy story about the Justice Arcana. Start that story seven issues sooner and you don’t need seven issues of filler with the monotonous JSI.

But I’ve got good news, everyone! Issue #36 featured the quasi-return of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. It’s them in their god-forms, so Batman looks weird, but it’s the first time those three have had dialogue together since issue #17. And for a comic called Trinity, they’ve been sorely missed. And next issue seems like it might be an all-out brawl between the Holy Trinity. Holy crap.

And then Krona and John Stewart and Despero and Kanjar Ro are all going to come back and cause a ruckus. And then maybe I’ll be interested enough to start doing these weekly again.