Trinity: Second Act
First act has rather good breaking point, ritual is completed and we are left to wonder what actually happened. Second act ends with us finally seeing a version of Trinity again, but it is not as clear of a cut. From what I have seen one the main criticism for this series is that it is called Trinity but Trinity is gone for the most of the second third of the series. But lets look closer at that.
When you take into account that this series was initially pitched more as a DC Universe than Trinity then Trinity's absence makes sense, but well, that is not what it ended up being called. And their faces were used on the covers to sell this series. An argument could be made that the point of this act was to show what their absence means to DC Universe so in a way it is actually about them, just not directly.
So, what happens after first act is that Trinity are banished from this universe and reality gets rewritten. We see DC Universe where Trinity never existed. Things are different and for me it is a bit of a mixed bag. Busiek understandably doesn't spend entire act explaining how lack of Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman led to this or that change. We might get a line here or there and it is fine for someone like Dick Grayson or Supergirl but for vast majority of the characters it is not clear at all.
And well, if it is not clear why Lois is now acting like amoral, ratings chasing late night TV hack then it is hard to care or understand why Superman's absence is important. Some things are changed before they even were born and I guess Busiek was being a bit meta here with Superman being the first regardless of what current sliding timeline says, but it just makes things more abstract. Look, Trinity not being around means that world is worse, ok? So to me just like Busiek didn't really manage to sell me on Wonder Woman being part of Trinity in first act, this one fails to sell me their overall importance as well.
With Trinity being gone for most of this act (and I'd argue that they are not really there for most of the third act either) some people naturally ask who is actually the main character of this series? And asides of Morgaine and Enigma as antagonists, closest that we get to main character is... Hawkman. He isn't really a lead character, but he is probably only good guy who gets consistent appearances thru the entire series. Unfortunately he couldn't really capitalize on it since at the same time he was being rebooted again by Starlin, then he was dying-but-not-really in Final Crisis only to finally die for real in Blackest Night and get resurrected. As if the confused origins weren't a big enough problem for the guy.
But other than that series continues being an entertaining romp thru the DC Universe even if it is not the one we recognize here. Some of the ideas like character remembering that he is supposed to be dead, but is alive for some reason are great. Would you fight for a world where you are not alive? Would you try to find out what your life is in the "real universe"? And while Morgaine is a bit one note, Busiek does great job developing Enigma's character, maybe actually he was the protagonist of this story?
There is also the bit with Tarot cards that I guess will work for some people and won't for others. In first act magical ritual was based on Tarot cards and second act has big war with various characters getting "assigned" to certain Tarot cards to form their own trinities. I'm not aware of any other superhero comics really doing this and I could see certain people not liking it due to Busiek doing rather simplistic take on them. Me? I liked it, it is a silly thing and being an excuse to pair up certain characters or highlight their certain characteristics is probably only good use for the thing.
Tom Bondurant annotations for the second act:
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