Trinity #14
In the lead: The JLA realizes that the Trinity isn’t acting like themselves (or rather, they’re acting like each other) and decide those three need to head home and cool off while the JLA deals with Counter-Earth. Green Lantern, Firestorm, Red Tornado, Ray Palmer and the All-New Atom build a machine that will send everyone back to their normal universe, but Enigma shows up unexpectedly and activates it. Everyone gets zapped back to New Earth, but not before Despero’s thugs brand Superman with a tarot symbol.
In the back-up: The heroes fight Sun-Chained-In-Ink, who didn’t so much explode last issue as he did not explode. After a while he does explode (this time in outer space), Swashbuckler and Primat get taken into custody, and TVM gets away with Maxwell Lord’s skull.
My take: I’ve noticed that you can judge how much I’m enjoying this series by how early in the comic week this review gets posted. So obviously I wasn’t too impressed by issue #14.
Nothing really happened this issue. The JLA knows the Trinity is acting kind of funny, but readers have known that since issue #10. The satellite team built a machine to send everyone home. The non-JLAers had a boring fight with a boring character that only debuted a few weeks ago. Strangely enough, this back-up seems to be as insignificant as issue #12’s lead was, because we’re at the same point now as we were at the end of last issue: Sun-Chained-In-Ink went boom.
Two somewhat major things were buried in the meaningless story, though. Superman got branded just like Wonder Woman was way back in issue #5, leaving only Batman unmarked. And Enigma was seen for the very first time by a good guy, although none of them should have any idea who he is or that he’s related to the Trinity stuff. That’s certainly not enough to base a 12-page story on, let alone fill a 10-page back-up.
There were a couple of visual elements that impressed me this issue. Ray Palmer appears this issue via satellite from a different dimension, so naturally his words aren’t coming in crystal clear. Letterer Pat Brosseau emphasizes that by having Palmer’s speech bubbles slightly static-y. Initially I thought the printing was just sub-par, but then I noticed that everyone else’s speech bubbles where perfect. Very subtle, but very cool. Also, Superman wears his cape the way Batman does this issue, with it hanging over his shoulders (covering his arms) instead of behind him like it usually hangs. I can’t ever say that I’ve thought about how different characters wear their capes, but when they wear it differently it really makes them look different. That would have worked a lot better as a subtle clue before it became blatantly obvious that the Trinity were displaying each others’ personalities, but it’s still welcome now.
Things to keep an eye on: Green Lantern seems to have complete control over his binary powers now, although he still hasn’t informed anyone what the hell is going on.
Right before Sun-Chained-In-Ink explodes (again), he says “Yes!! I am begun! See us, mother sun! See my brother and me reborn! See your children released from the womb!” So apparently SCII isn’t dead or anything, and in fact he’s multiplying. My money’s still on the return of Krona.