Trinity: Third Act
We finally reached the third and final act of this story. It also ends Busiek's DC run in general so it is kinda important all things considered. So how did it end, with a bang or a whimper?
It ends with a... neither of those two? It certainly was not a slam dunk, but it wasn't some disaster either, it is more of the same. And well, if you liked first two acts then not much happens in final act that could change your mind.
All the positives are still there: lots of characters, good visuals and strong characterizations. What really prevents this from being a slam dunk is that negatives are still there as well. Biggest of them being padding. I mentioned in previous posts that it doesn't look like Busiek had story for 52 issues and to me the ending is where it is felt the most. Some fights and betrayals feel like they are there only to fill the pages and don't really serve any narrative purpose.
In one of the interviews after the series ended Busiek mentions that DC's editors didn't restrict him much. But there was one exception - Metron. He was rather busy due to Final Crisis related storylines and editors decided that he should stay out of Trinity. On one hand it is a shame since his role in JLA/Avengers and Syndicate Rules wasn't very positive so I would have liked if he got hit in the face, once or twice. On the other hand we got some big DC cosmology reveals and he missed all of it. So maybe that is good enough punishment for Metron?
Anyway, main reason why I decided to write about this series is Busiek's usage of CSA so it is probably a good time to see what was done with them and sone related characters.
I was a bit surprised that CSA, being an evil version of our Trinity, didn't play a bigger role in this story. In first act there are few issues that serve as a pseudo sequel to Syndicate Rules, but after that? They are gone for many issues and in the end play more of a supporting role. I think that I liked all their pages, but there certainly could have been more of them.
Void Hound was an evil AI that Busiek introduced in Syndicate Rules. It gets about as many pages as CSA in this story, but in the end he plays a more important role and gets some major development. One negative is that Void Hound's story gets interesting only in the third act. I don't know, maybe if John Stewart (Hound's host for those early appearances) actually did something in this story then it would have flown better.
I'd probably argue that Enigma is the main character in this series. Technically he appeared in like one Syndicate Rules panel, but really, his journey starts and ends in this series. It is a good journey and probably the main reason why I enjoy this series despite some of its flaws.
So thats that, next time we will look at what happened after Trinity. And the last batch of Tom Bondurant's annotations:
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