Trinity #4

In the lead: Superman seems to be not quite as KOed as it appeared last issue. He and Wonder Woman take the fight to Konvikt on the outskirts of town while Batman investigates the vessel that brought Konvikt to Earth.

In the back-up: Tarot has a dream about Despero. Really.

My take: Okay, so the back-up wasn’t that bad. There’s a bunch of gobbledy-gook about Tarot reading her own tarot cards and seeing her destiny but not quite understanding it. If all that was researched and not just pulled from Busiek’s and Nicienza’s asses, I’m pretty impressed.

Scott McDaniel’s art on the Despero “dream” sequence was much better than it was in the debut issue. That probably has something to do with the fact that he didn’t need to draw a human figure. Despero was portrayed as a badass alien conquerer, even going so far as having him devour someone after ripping them in two. That’s certainly needed for readers like myself that have always considered Despero a general non-threat (how many times has the JLA wiped the floor with him?). The story ends with Despero entering the Archway of the Eons, a teleporter that will assumedly send him to Earth to joing up with Enigma and Le Fey. But something may have gone terribly wrong…

The lead this issue was a whole hell of a lot better than it was in the last issue. The JLA is the supporting cast this time, like they should have been last issue. This is just Superman and Wonder Woman wiping the floor with Konkikt for ten pages, which is fun. And how does Batman make himself useful in this situation? By doing what he does best: sneaking around and finding the way to beat the bad guy.

Busiek does yet another “here’s why each of the Trinity are unique” things this issue, which is kind of getting old. There’s a lot more subtle ways of doing this than just saying “Superman represents A, Batman respresents B, Wonder Woman represents C.” Having one of the three comment on how they’d do something differently or just showing one of the three do something clearly differently than the others would be much more effective. It looks like Busiek started to do that here, but then Le Fey and Enigma felt the need to comment.

Those two are serving no purpose in the story right now and would really be better served by leaving them out of the book until they become deirectly involved. The audience understands that they’re constantly watching the Trinity. We don’t need to be reminded every issue.

Things to keep an eye one: “Worldsoul.” Tarot seems to be posessed by something before she falls asleep and dreams about Despero, and “Worldsoul” is what she says when she’s posessed. But Tarot promptly forgets the word, which makes you know it’s very significant to the story. I’m not enough of a DC historian to know if Worldsoul has some established significance, though.