Well,
DC has apparently decided that a year-long weekly series is going to be a
permanent fixture in their publishing plans.
Trinity will follow in the footsteps of
52 and
Countdown, featuring one long story about
Batman,
Superman, and
Wonder Woman.
In a big break from tradition that might
avoid some of the
pitfalls of those other two series, there will be
one creative team--
Kurt Busiek and
Mark Bagley, doing the front 12 pages of
EVERY issue. The the plans for the remaining ten pages sound a
bit more nebulous, but will be by Busiek and
Fabian Nicieza with art by various artists, and will sometimes be one-shot stuff and sometimes a continuing story.
Now, to me, it sounds like maybe,
just maybe, they might be getting the formula right, by combining a weekly with an anthology. It sounds like it could avoid the pitfalls of the
too many cooks approaches of 52 and Countdown, where both the quality and content veered wildly from week to week, depending on which team was up.
I've always thought there was room for
more anthology titles on the market...but DC and
Marvel usually mucked it up by making them
monthly.
Showcase '9x and the current
Marvel Comics Presents show the perils of doing so...it's hard to keep momentum going for
6 pages at a time when you don't pick up the story again for
4-5 weeks. It's tough for the reader to remember, and it's tough on the creator to pace it so you have a natural story break/cliffhanger every six pages.
But by being weekly and having longer stories, I hope Trinity will be able to avoid that. The original run of Marvel Comic Presents was
bi-weekly, and eventually settled on
Wolverine as the permanent lead feature.
But I'm most reminded of
2 decades ago, when, for about a one year period,
Action Comics became
Action Comics Weekly--a
weekly giant-size anthology title. Each week, 48 pages for $1.50, continuing stories and one-shots. And lots of stories and characters that weren't getting any attention elsewhere in the DC Universe:
Mike Baron's wonderful
Deadman stories, the
Secret Six, the
Phantom Stranger...
It
wasn't perfect...the decision to relegate
Superman to a 2 page "newspaper" style appearance every week was
incredibly dumb. And of course, a fair amount of lame stories made it through.
But it did the anthology idea right: it allowed stories and characters that weren't going to be seen elsewhere, and it kept the fans coming to the feeder pellet button every week, when the last week's stories were still fresh in their minds.
So I hope Trinity works better as a weekly series than its predecessors (although I despair now of ever seeing
Astro City again...). And I hope DC and Marvel move back to
more frequent anthologies, using them as a guide to their wondrous universes. It's always seemed to me to be a great way to develop new talent and showcase your less well-known characters.
Oh, and Marvel? Get
BETTER stories than the crap now appearing in Marvel Comics Presents.
Yuck.
Now, when you're as powerful as Parallax is at this point, there's really only one response: hit Guy with an asteroid...
...and then up the sound effects ante while debating political philosophy:
And remember, kids: it's not Hal Jordan sounding completely unhinged here...it's the color yellow!
And since throwing a small planet at Guy wasn't enough, well, let's throw Guy at a planet!!
The finisher: the sucker punch from behind!
So much for Warrior...Good thing we ret-conned away 100% of Hal Jordan's responsibility for all this. Hey, maybe next we can reveal that Peter Parker was possessed by an ancient entity when he let the thief escape, so he's really not at all responsible for Uncle Ben's death!!
