With Trinity #8, our heroes can indulge in a bit more introspection before the action starts up again. So far, I like the rhythm this series has established. It’s a good mix of action and theme-building, with neither part dominating for too long. While Trinity has the freedom to move at its own pace, it hasn’t taken undue advantage of that freedom to get stuck on any one subject.

In this regard I wonder how much it resembles the old World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip, which (from what I understand) had a tour-of-DC aspect similar to the “Justice League” animated series. I get the feeling that those works, like Trinity, wanted to capture the feeling that anything could happen at any time, so that you should expect to get your 22 pages/20 minutes/3-4 panels’ worth from any given installment.

Speaking of which, time’s a-wastin’ — let’s get on with this issue!

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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Late July, and thoughts turn to roving bands of the costumed damned.

Yeah, it’s another cheap shot at Comic-Con, but it’s still funny how the show syncs up with the October solicitations. There’s not that much in this set of solicits, since the big news is waiting to be broken out west. Still, we’ll soldier on here.

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[Yeah, I know the title of this post has almost nothing to do with the movie, but I couldn't resist.]

The Dark Knight is the best Batman film ever made.

That’s not really saying much, mind you — each of the others, including Batman Begins and the animated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, has its own set of flaws. However, The Dark Knight is also among the best superhero films ever made. The only others in its class are Superman* and Spider-Man 2 – and Peter Parker, if not Steve Ditko himself, would recognize the choices made by the principals at movie’s end. Next to the sprawling urban crime drama skillfully executed by director/co-writer Christopher Nolan and a fine ensemble cast, Iron Man (no slouch itself) looks like a toy commercial.

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Still a little talky, but in a good way, Trinity #7 connected a few more plot points and seemed to confirm some aspects of the story already spotted by certain eagle-eyed commenters.

Of course, there were also some things which this particular commenter realized immediately he should have caught already … but I’m getting used to that.

Busiek’s exit interview for issue #6 contains some interesting observations about Nocturna, Hawkman, and other characters. They’re not exactly relevant to Trinity, but interesting still; and as always I recommend it.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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Wow, a Joker post! Who’da thought?

With its 20th anniversary having just passed, The Killing Joke has gotten some renewed attention as the quintessential Joker story. However, unadorned as it may be, I still like the original Joker story (unofficially titled “The Joker”) from Batman #1. Written by Bill Finger, pencilled by Bob Kane, and inked by Kane and Jerry Robinson, it’s a taut twelve-page thriller. Essentially, it casts the Joker as an anonymous sociopath with a basic, almost perfunctory motive and a grim, blackly ironic modus operandi. He dares the authorities to stop him from committing crimes he’s already carried out.

Despite all its reprintings, to my knowledge “The Joker” has been the subject of only two direct homages: 1978’s two-part “Laughing Fish/Sign of the Joker” in Detective Comics; and 2005’s The Man Who Laughs* special. (I didn’t read the recent Michael Green/Denys Cowan Joker origin, but from what I can tell it went in an entirely different direction.)

Let’s look at each of these, shall we?

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(Sorry about the delay in getting this post up. It was all finalized and scheduled, and set to go earlier today; and then … well, I dunno. I lost half of it and the other half was missing all its quotation marks and apostrophes; and when you played it backwards it said “kill your parents.” All better now, I hope.)

There’s a fine line between characters who are self-aware and those who are simply the writer’s mouthpieces. I thought this issue was a good example of the former. Tarot, Wonder Woman, and Superman had a lot of obvious things to say, but the issue flowed together well and the conversation wasn’t terribly expositional. Sometimes it’s good to have the characters pause and sound things out for themselves, even without the benefits of card tables or pastries.

Besides, there were a number of annotation-worthy references, so let’s dive right in!

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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At last, here’s the final full installment (for now) of my look at the increasing presence of miniseries in the DCU line over the past several years.  (See parts 1 and 2 for more.)  Unfortunately, I won’t get quite up-to-date today, because I want to postpone a more complete discussion of 2008 at least until the October solicitations are out.

Thanks once again to Mike’s Amazing World Of DC Comics for compiling data through the end of 2007!

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I thought this was a pretty good wrap-up issue. Plotlines are starting to converge, and pieces are fitting together — although some not as neatly as others. Thanks as always to those who comment, including those who actually produce this fun series. Here’s Kurt Busiek’s Newsarama debriefing for issue #4, which reassured me that Troy Brownfield didn’t recognize those guys either….

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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Here’s the second installment of my look at the prevalence of DCU miniseries in the Dan DiDio era. Part 1 of this little exercise covered the years 2001, 2002, and 2003.

Today those look like transitory years, at least in terms of miniseries. In 2001 the publisher produced 75 issues’ worth of miniseries, compared with 379 issues’ worth of regular series and 21 one-shot/special issues. Thus, miniseries were about 16% of the year’s total DCU output. With just 51 issues of miniseries in 2002 (compared to 400 ongoing-series issues), that percentage decreased to 11%. The difference may be attributed largely to the absence of 2001’s crossover events: Our Worlds At War included 11 special issues (a de facto miniseries) and Joker: The Last Laugh involved 6 issues and a Secret Files.

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One month down, eleven to go — and this week was mostly fight scenes, so not much to annotate! Thanks again to writers Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza for dropping by last week, and belated thanks to Allen Passalaqua for his comments on week one. Here’s Busiek’s debriefing on issue #3, if you missed it.

Anyway, you know the drill by now. SPOILERS FOLLOW.

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Usually I can be distracted simply by the shiny and sparkly, but last week it was an apparently high proportion of miniseries in DC’s September superhero solicitations. Specifically, DC has solicited 20 issues’ worth of DCU miniseries to 29 issues’ worth of ongoing DCU series; which works out to 39% of DC’s new-material superhero output. I didn’t have a lot of data last week to put that in proper context, but I’ve been working on it.

Boy, have I ever….

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It’s time once again for “I Use Google So You Don’t Have To!”

In his weekly interview with Newsarama, Kurt Busiek stated that all the story titles will appear somehow in the stories themselves, at least for the foreseeable future. Personally, I think “KPLOW” is a bit of a stretch, but the story isn’t particularly deep anyway….

As always, SPOILERS FOLLOW.

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Well now, what does DC want to sell me in September?

FINAL CRISIS

Remember Grant Morrison and Howard Porter’s JLA #13, the “Darkseid Is” issue of “Rock Of Ages?” Apparently Final Crisis #4 will be a lot like that, only ONE BILLION TIMES WORSE.

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So here we are again, a week older and 22 pages wiser. Thanks to all who commented last week on the main site, including Kurt Busiek himself! (By the way, I can only remember the old Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-enforcement Division acronym. I just liked how the movie never abbreviated it.)

Just a few words before we get started on issue #2: despite having volunteered for this 52-week project, I don’t think you should need annotations to enjoy any artistic work. I also believe that Trinity stands on its own pretty well, without much need for specialized knowledge of the characters or situations. However, if it ever gets to the point where there are no Easter eggs to find, and Waldo’s come out of hiding, I may just offer some pithy thoughts on (gasp!) the work itself.

Still, we’re not there yet. Beware of SPOILERS.

Onward!

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[ETA:  now with scans!]

There was a time when Raoul Duke loved — in every disturbing sense of the word — the trade magazine The Police Chief. In the June 1970 issue of Scanlan’s Monthly, Duke offered a painful, scathing critique* of what the magazine had become.

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Welcome to the first set of Trinity annotations!

Before we get started, I have to point out that this is the third DC Comics series to use the Trinity name. The first, DC Universe: Trinity, was a 1993 miniseries which crossed over into Green Lantern, The Darkstars, and L.E.G.I.O.N. It aimed to settle the jurisdictions of those cosmic police forces. The second was a 2003 miniseries by Matt Wagner (more properly called Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman: Trinity); and it told the story of the Trinitarians’ first team-up.

Anyway, without further ado…

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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Inspired by the work of Douglas Wolk and Jess Nevins (but under no illlusions that I could do better), I’m taking a stab at weekly Trinity annotations. Naturally, they’ll start with some very basic introductions: “Superman, a/k/a Clark Kent, was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and first appeared in ….”

Thinking about Wonder Woman, though, I wasn’t sure how much to put in her Big-Gulp-level bio. In the wake of Infinite Crisis, Wonder Woman’s history was altered in a way which directly affects her credentials as part of the “trinity.” I have to ask, therefore, whether the alteration matters — either for the character generally, or readers of Trinity specifically.

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Now that I’ve gone through another set of solicitations, it’s time to return to the topic of line-wide events. I’ve already run through an inventory of post-Crisis events, so this week I’ll be looking at how Crisis On Infinite Earths and its antecedents set the stage.

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It’s a good thing that Final Crisis is taking a month off. Otherwise, we’d have solicitations for its first four issues before issue #1 has even hit shops.

Of course, it’s not like FC won’t be represented in August, so let’s see what else is on tap from DC….

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