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Mild Mannered Reviews - Specials

Trinity #17

Scheduled to arrive in stores: September 24, 2008

Cover date: September 24, 2008

Main Story: "But so no longer"

Main Story Writer: Kurt Busiek
Main Story Penciller: Mark Bagley
Main Story Inker: Art Thibert

Back-Up Story: "Honor and Justice"

Back-Up Writers: Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza
Back-Up Pencillers: Scott McDaniel
Back-Up Inker: Andy Owens

Cover Art: Jim Lee & Scott Williams

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Bridges with Barry Freiman and Neal Bailey

Click to enlarge

The evil trinity bind the good trinity, and get power from it. The world explodes.

To be continued...

Back-Up Story: "Honor and Justice"

Konvikt is in prison and gets an attorney, and was in prison before and had an attorney before, where they removed his ability to speak so that he could only speak through his attorney, and he was on trial for loving someone he shouldn't have.

He can't speak or understand English but knows when a military rank is not being used, and then smashes some stuff. Graak walks through the snow talking to himself, and somehow sends Konvikt power which he uses to escape.

He goes to a mountaintop to think and the world explodes, there's huge tsunamis and firey footprints in the sky, which Wonder Woman thinks are beautiful. Then an odd-looking Lois who smokes arrives at GBS studios, where she apparently works.

To be continued...

Jeffrey's Review:

Main Story - 1: Techno-altar, ley-weaving, gimcracks, oh my. And all on the first page. And then...

"I call... ON THE EGG!"

And presented as if it's not only monumental, but cool and impressive.

To call an EGG for power.

And then boom, the earth blows up. Or something.

That's it.

This is not a story, this is a sequence of events.

And one where you call an egg for power, at that.

This issue isn't worth writing anything more about.

Main Art - 3: Fine for what little there was to do. Lots of beams of light shooting out of people is... cool, I guess?

Just as cool as a big giant egg!

Back-Up Story - 1: Does anyone care about Konvikt? Do we need MORE about him, followed by lots of nonsense as the world apparently resets as if Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman had never been there?

OH NO, it's made Lois a television reporter and now she smokes and some homeless guy lost an arm to Toyman.

What?

Good lord, this book is beyond ridiculous. It reads like self-important fan-fiction more concerned with the writer saying "look what I did!" than any sort of care or concern for the characters themselves.

Utter nonsense.

Back-Up Art - 2: Remember how I've been saying the art in this book always felt dated to me, as if it was an actual comic from 1994?

Yeah, well bump it back a few more years to get the feel for the art here, especially the pages with CRAZY SMOKING LOIS at the end. Looks like it's right out of 1987.

Cover Art - 5: Mmm, yeah. Check please.

A generic Superman cover doesn't get any better than that.

Barry's Review:

Main Story - 1: The heroes are at the center of a spell. The spell expands over the Earth. We have no more information this issue than we had at the end of last issue. It's completely predictable that the end result is a world without the Trinity so get us there already. This issue's a total waste of time and money - even more so than the 16 issues that preceded it.

Main Art - 2: Anyone seen the movie "Xanadu"? If you haven't, rent it and just watch the first minute of the film, maybe less. Then look at the last page of this story. The only thing missing from the glowing lights circling the world? Olivia Newton-John on roller skates.

Back-Up Story - 2: Konvikt again? Really? Sorry, Kurt, but you've no sense of timing. Perhaps your audience wouldn't have dismissed Konvikt right off had you given some indication of his depth before you had him take on the League. Instead his place in the overall story of "Trinity" seems arbitrary as does the creature's sudden internal monologue at a time when his place in the overall story is still a complete mystery. I think it would have been much stronger to see Konvikt's real role - let the readers see, that is; keeping it from the Trinity themselves would be fine. Then your readers wouldn't have dismissed yet another giant hulking brute as just another giant hulking brute.

The only thing preventing this story from a ranking of 1/5 is the last page. What can I say? I'm a sucker for alternate timelines.

Back-Up Art - 2: There is no scarier image than a giant purple skinned monster with blonde hair. Unless you count the image in my head of how torturous it's going to be to review 35 more of these.

The artist seems bored with most of the story. At a minimum, it's clear he'd rather draw people than purple behemoths. The strongest art, like the strongest part of the story, is that last page.

Cover Art - 3: Didn't we see this pose already? These triptych covers are getting so predictably dull - particularly in the case of the Man of Steel. It isn't a bad image. It's just got a 'been there, done that' feel to it, which is unfortunate given we're only up to issue 17.

Neal's Review:

Main Story - 2: Most of this was psycho magic mumbo jumbo crap, for the most part, and as a culmination, it's something that didn't need, I dunno, half the pages it took, but in the end, it culminated in something that at least looks like it has some sort of real peril to it, which is enjoyable. But since I don't know the nature of said threat, it's hard to get enthusiastic. Given the future knowledge the backup provides, it seems another alternate Earth story, which has potential written well. Written awfully, it could be quite derivative.

I expect one of the two. Guess.

But beyond that, this was a nine page affair. It was cut short, and why?

For more Konvikt. It's unfair to slam this story with that which follows it, but at the same time, why cut this story, with something semi-interesting going on, for the life story of a D-list piece of purple crap?

Main Art - 5: Awesome, and the only reason I gave an extra point to the story. The scope was made larger by what I saw here, and this is probably my second favorite after the first issue from Bagley.

Back-Up Story - 1: The origin of Konvikt reads like Tek Jansen. Only Tek Jansen, for all of its hokiness, is enthralling. This is... this is just a giant purple character that, even after ten pages of attempts to inspire sympathy, still only annoys me more.

Lois Lane with a cigarette, though... that's edgy. Edgy like Phil Collins when he takes his hat off and gives you THE LOOK. Edgy like when congress sternly admonishes the president in press releases. Edgy like... Mister Rogers.

Back-Up Art - 3: This has obviously been shuffled, I now realize, studying it. Some of Bagley's was thrown in here, the story changed around, and so Scott's work and Bagley's end up in the same story.

Bagley's stuff is top-notch, but the Daniels/Owens stuff suffers for the first time from a really, really crappy subject, I think. Konvikt. It's near-impossible to make him compelling, so I don't blame them for failing, but I can't stand looking at the guy without not liking the art.

The story is conveyed, and well, so take that for what it is, but Konvikt as a subject just... gah, he gets me. Makes me cringe.

Cover Art - 3: The Superman image is awesome, but it's cut off by that aweful logo, and he's under Batman. It distracts me and makes the image suffer, it really does. It just doesn't work for me.

It's compounded by the fact that I saw the unmolested image and it's poster-worthy.

Mild Mannered Reviews

2008

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Mild Mannered Reviews - Specials

Trinity #17

Mild Mannered Reviews

2008

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