Trinity has been a delightful surprise issue after issue. Even if you don’t know that character x is a reference to a story from ten years ago, it doesn’t matter; the story works even if you don’t know all the jokes.

This is, I think, the second or so (maybe much more – correction anyone?) time we’ve seen the main and backup stories swap places in both position and page length. It just drives home the point that they are equally important parts of the narrative. Sometimes a backup character becomes a more important part of a story, so here does the secondary plot points require primary coverage. It’s a neat storytelling process, and a very successful one.

It amazes me that Kurt and Fabian are not far more respected and appreciated writers than they are. Their talent at weaving a dense story, steeped in continuity while still remaining accessible to new readers is impressive.

That’s okay. Trinity just wasn’t for me. I wanted a book with The Big 3, and something that put WW on par with the other two. Trinity’s been a lot of things, but I don’t think it’s been what I wanted. A book about the 3, but the 3 get “benched”? Not what I wanted. And I’ve never read Busiek’s JLA stuff. So, I move on.

Here’s an interesting, mostly negative review that sums up a lot of what I felt about Trinity. I just hadn’t put in these words (Scroll down a bit to see it):

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38986

That said, I’m a recent DC convert and find this series totally approachable. I think it does a fine job of telling the reader all he needs to know; the various backstories we see here in Annotations are there for those who want them but IMO aren’t necessary to enjoy the story.

I have been pleasantly surprised that so many different characters have been woven into the series,even minor ones such as Gangbuster.

I was fearful it would be an overload of how great and perfect the “Trinity” are but it`s come off as more of an ensemble piece with different characters playing many different roles and all of them trying to help each other.

Oh,and Batman was wrong for once! How great is that!? lol

And i happen to like Hawkman.

Trinity is the first comic I ever regularly bought– and while I’ve enjoyed coming here and finding out all the background detail, my standard pop-culture knowledge of the heroes has usually been enough. Moreover, I’m really happy that this story hasn’t been tied down with continuity– I tried getting into Batman at the same time, and he was wearing purple. This was not what I wanted. Bats in Trinity (at least as long as he existed) was classic Batman, and I got to see him do Batman-like things.

I mean, I look at Trinity almost like a DC Universe Sampler. I’ve gotten into Superman based off this book, dabbled with Wonder Woman and JLA, I want to go back and read some Firestorm, and the moment Primat shows up in Nightwing, I’m there.

So yeah, it’s a great comic for a new reader. I’m loving it.

“Is it good? fun to read? enjoyable?”

it’s good to work on and fun to read, thus enjoyable to me

I do have some questions around Hawkman’s origin(s), especially in light of the Rann/ Thanagar Holy War series.

****Spoilers****

Not sure how Hawkman’s past lives work into his overall story, considering in the Hawkman Special, this portion of his background was said to be false. This, however, could have simply been a ploy to create confusion by Synnar. Or, is could be another example of DC editorial snafu’s (e.g. the apparent diconnect between Death of the New Gods and the ending of Countdown).

If anything, the most important thing to have read is Busiek’s JLA/Avengers and his JLA followup story with the Crime Syndicate.

Um, is this another “I don’t get allusions” complaint?

You do have to know the basics of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and their immediate friends and families, but I don’t think it requires any more of a learning curve than the average episode of “Justice League” did. Now, that said, Trinity does take full advantage of DC’s characters and history, and there have been some fairly obscure references (I may give out awards at the end), but those are more like Easter eggs than anything else. Let me be clear: ideally, you shouldn’t t need me to understand the book. I’m basically trying to see if I should be reading anything between the lines, and I still struck out with the Void Hound subplot.

Naturally, if you don’t like Hawkman (and I’m on record as not being the world’s greatest Hawkman fan) or if you’re looking for something which does tie into “New Krypton” and “R.I.P.” explicitly, then I can understand your frustration. The book did start rather slowly, with the Trinitarians saying what probably seemed like very obvious things about themselves. Still, I’ve seen many readers say that it picked up with the Crime Syndicate storyline, and I am enjoying the Trinity-less Act 2 so far.

I understand that the cost to get completely up to speed is around $66.00 retail. However, Act 2 started in earnest with issue #18, and that’s only five issues (six including next week’s). If you’re interested in jumping back on, that’s not a bad place to start.

“Inside Baseball” is a great way to describe Trinity. Tom’s annotations were helpful at first, but even those lost me after awhile simply because I had little to no context to most of the references that were being made. More and more characters show up, and from what I can tell The Big 3 are AWOL? Didn’t that already happen in 52? From what I can tell, the book is more about Hawkman (whom I can’t stand) than it is about the supposed trinity.

So, “Is it good? fun to read? enjoyable?” Not for me, but I’m sure for some readers it is. I think it’s every bit as convoluted as the previous DC weeklies, and just like those books I’m not seeing the payoff with this one. But I guess it depends on what you want from the book. I’m just happy to save the $3 for something else each week.

Yes.

If only for the realization that Batman is the reason why Ollie Queen is a social liberal.

Is it good? fun to read? enjoyable?