Broken Frontier

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Justice League keep fighting the mysterious Konvikt while Morgan le Fey and Enigma watch on.

Trinity hits the month mark this week. Problem is, four issues in, we have gotten 64 pages of story and to be honest we are not any further along than we were in issue number one. We have DC’s biggest players on the board and there is some space dream affecting them and then they are fighting some random alien who can knock Superman out. The characterization of the big three was nice in the first issue but has been non-existent since that issue. The only characterization here is Morgan le Fey boiling their essences down to “Superman, clearly, fills the role of savior. Wonder Woman inspires others to achieve on their own. And Batman… scares the hell out of people?” This is, of course, said to explain to us readers what role they were filling in the town when saving the victims of the violence going on.

Even that is questionable though. Wonder Woman puts the survivors in danger instead of asking for help. Batman makes a suggestion to some people and they scream and run, like it is a town of Amish people who never turned on the news. Superman catches a building, filling his assigned role, but only after he tells Wonder Woman not to worry about the threat that just knocked him out, he’s got it. This action is answered by Black Canary dispatching Firestorm, Vixen and John Stewart to relieve the obviously out matched Superman? The inconsistent rookies and the third string Lantern are supposed to be an answer for Kal-El?

There are wild leaps of logic like this all over the place. At one point Batman inexplicably leaves the rescue and fight to pursue another mission. The story is choppy and poorly paced. There are panels where the reader literally has no idea what is happening. This is serial graphic narration at its worse - disjointed, super decompressed, and thus far with no semblance of a point.

Any other book four issues in and this bad would be dropped in mass droves, but this book has two factors keeping it alive. First, it’s Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, it could almost be nothing but them sitting around playing poker and it would sell, see Meltzer’s Justice League of America for proof of that. Secondly, it is a weekly. This means that readers will be more forgiving of the inherent flaws in the story and execution. To be honest, I am on the fence, but will probably give it the month of July to impress me.

Then there is Bagley’s art. When it is on, it is on and nice, crisp, and effective. However, the pressure of getting out 32 pages every two weeks is getting even to the most efficient artist of the era. There are inconsistencies abounding from depiction of the characters to wildly impossible poses. There is one page where Black Canary is leading from on top a crumbling pillar. She is just standing there, pointing and directing like Quentin Tarantino trying to get the best of his actors, when she should be falling on her face.

Then there is the back up story… the girl from last issue does a Tarot reading for herself, falls asleep, dreams of something happening to Despero, and wakes up to her savior from the previous chapter wanting to talk shop about the gangs in the area. The first two issues at least gave us back ups that related to the main story and I am sure this one will eventually as well, but it is a mystery at this point that I am unsure as to why I should care. The art is much more consistent here given the strength of the artists and I am sure the shorter page count as well as doubled art team helped with that.

Trinity should be the showcase story of the DC Universe. It is the franchises all together in one place. Unfortunately, thus far it has proved to be kind of dull and not at all compelling. I hope it turns around. I would hate to think that each successive weekly series will just get worse.