The Book of Hsssh

Trinity is one of those series that looks big and important on paper, but it is mostly forgotten today. But did it lead to some new things back when it just wrapped up? After the series ended Bagley went to draw Robinson's JLA and one of their story arcs, Omega, featured CSA so that feels like a good place to start. And oh boy, it is real bad. At one point Robinson even mixes up Earth-3 with Anti-matter universe. I wouldn't be surprised if later this story was used as an argument for why going forward DC should use only Earth-3's CSA. It also has lazy plot device of another Earth getting destroyed to make the threat look big and then randomly restored at the end because who cares. Krona was later used by Geoff Johns in his GL epic, but it didn't really have anything to do with Trinity. As everything else in this saga he was revealed to be connected to emotional spectrum. Sadly at this point Johns was already going on fumes and it is all very forgettable. DC tried to cre...

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 ...

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 ...

Trinity is a big series so I'm not going to cover it all in one post, but I'm going to divide it into three parts just like the collected editions are divided. At the same time I'm going to cover some things that happen in other parts if they are relevant for what was going in this particular part. Yes, it might get a bit confusing. Lets start with the structure. In theory each issue is divided into two parts, one main story drawn by Bagley and a backup drawn by one of the collaborators. In practice you can't really say that one part of the book is more important than another, they are equally important and you can't ignore them like you could with "traditional" backups in other books. Bagley simply isn't a robot and couldn't draw 52 issues in a year + however long the lead-in time was. Trinity, as the name suggests, appear a lot in the first part of this series, but you can already see that Busiek and Bagley are going to play with lots and lots of...

No, this is not going to be about that terrible mini by Wagner nor misguided and irrelevant series during Rebirth initiative. This series of posts is going to be about something way more interesting and better - Busiek's weekly Trinity series. In the first post we'll be covering some key earlier works by Busiek that led to Trinity and how it relates to Morrison's work. It all starts with wonderful JLA: Earth 2 story where Morrison and Quitely created a new version of CSA existing in anti-matter universe since at the time DC was operating under "no alternate universes" direction. And in JLA/Avengers crossover by Busiek and Perez we have Krona destroying alternative universes in Marvel and DC. So obviously since DC technically doesn't have alternate universes... anti-matter universe gets hit instead. This is important bit that is revisited later. Another important bit is that Krona is put into the egg at the end of the story. Other than that it is also a wonderf...