Monday, October 20, 2014

Trinity of Sin #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: J.M. DeMatteis
Art By: Yvel Guichet, Jason Gorder
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 15, 2014



The Darkness Is Nigh and It May or May Not Believe In A Thing Called Love


Welcome back to some DC Dark character fun as we take two characters from cancelled books and put them together with the mysterious Question and see how it all works out.  While I was a fan of both Phantom Stranger and Pandora's solo books I don't understand the point to try them again but all together, other than that DC and the writers might have a few more things to say before they can close the door on these characters or maybe they didn't have enough time before their books were cancelled to do a proper crossover.  So we don't know shit about the Question or why this Trinity of Sin were judged by the Council of Eternity at the same time and what their connection might be beyond that.  Hopefully I'm wrong though and we're simply getting a Trinity of Sin book because the characters are awesome and they might be more popular together than apart.  I will miss my Phantom Stranger book though.  Okay let's check out Trinity of Sin and see what this book has in store for us.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with this title's big bad narrating his life about how it was born in darkness and then the light came and how now the darkness is coming back.  Yeah it just seems to like talking about darkness a lot, but I'm guessing that the returning darkness will mean bad news for our trio of would be heroes.

Now that the ominous opening is finished we head over to see what The Question is up to and I'm very surprised to find that when The Question................. isn't questioning, he puts on an assumed face and just lives in a boarding house.  Even though we know quite little of the character in the New 52, I still imagined him being smooth from the neck up in the basement of an abandoned house posing questions like whether or not Superman actually died in the New 52.  So my idea of the character is clearly wrong, but before I could get too disappointed about it, a nightmare creature arrives and kills the woman that runs the boarding house and begins to fight The Question.  Since no one knows anything about The Question so far with the exception that he can disappear into a question mark made of smoke, I have no idea how this fight will turn out.  It is nice/strange to see that The Question seems like he legitimately cares about the dead woman and that's a side of the character we haven't seen yet.

Now we move on to Phantom Stranger who is still palling around with Dr. Thirteen and the two of them have made their way to San Francisco....... not to hit on Cassandra Craft surprisingly, but to take down a gigantic poltergeist force who's power could destroy a part of the city.  It's actually a really moving part to the story, where The Stranger enters the psionic storm and finds that the spirit responsible for the danger is a boy who was raped and murdered thirty years prior and it's anger of not knowing what happened to him has created this ghostly force.  The Stranger calms the tormented spirit and shows it the way to eternal peace and stops the destruction in a very pleasing and moving way.  Then you lean back in your chair and stair up at the ceiling at what a cool character The Phantom Stranger is and even give a little sigh giving recognition to his great victory here.  Then you look back down and Dr. Thirteen is being impaled by a giant fucking flaming sword wielded by a large cobra woman!


WTF!  I let my guard down for a minute and we lose Dr. Thirteen and it's not like The Phantom Stranger can just magic it all better, no because the sword that impaled him is apparently another sword that steals the soul of it's victims and Phantom Stranger has to fight for his own survival now.

Finally we get to Pandora who seems to be having a bit of a vacation since her title ended and is soaking up the sun on the beaches of Southern India.  But the vacation plans are put on hold when the actual water comes to life and threatens to become a tsunami if Pandora doesn't go with it to it's master, who I figure is the one who's obsessed with darkness from the beginning of the book.  Well in my opinion Pandora made the wrong decision by deciding to fight the monster because it wasn't bluffing with it's threats and tsunamied the shit out of the frolicking beach goers.  During this fight, Pandora somehow........ I say somehow because I'm not entirely sure how this works, figures out a spell that connects the Trinity of Sin and empowers them to defeat their individual threats and once that's done the Stranger and Question are transported to Pandora.



In the end the three bicker about how Pandora summoned them and of course the Question tells them all to screw and after Phantom Stranger decides that he must find the sword that holds Dr. Thirteen's soul, Pandora and him decide to go after the one that sent the assassins.  They follow the dark energy back to it's source and meet the enemy head on in outer space.  So some kind of bird faced Cthulhu I'd imagine with the outer space and all the darkness talk.


That's it for this first issue of Trinity of Sin and while I wanted to love this issue right from the get go, you know because of my love for all the main characters, I just couldn't get fully into it.  While the artwork was solid and I loved all the monsters and the way our heroes looked, I found myself getting bored with each of our heroes just coming across a monster and then fighting it.  Hopefully next month I'll be able to get fully into the story because I really want to like this book.  See you then.

Bits and Pieces:

As much as I wanted to like this book, the reason I know I wasn't all that into it was because I actually put it down and came back to it later.  I don't know if it was just because it was overly wordy or what because the book just felt a lot longer than it actually was and most of these characters were already taken away from me with their cancellation, so I need this book to be good.  I still have high hopes for this series, but sadly this first impression wasn't the best.

6.8/10


4 comments:

  1. It's not fair to expect much from a first issue of a book like this. You're knowledgeable about the characters. Other potential buyers may not be. So the writer has to write a story which doesn't scare away potential buyers who do not know the characters, yet still, keep people like you interested. Wait awhile before you pass final judgment.

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  2. I'm definitely going to keep an open mind because I want this book to be great because I love these characters, but coming from the perspective of a first time reader, I wouldn't have been able to get into this book. The fact that I knew the characters I feel actually let me enjoy this story more. How many first time readers are going to know who Dr. Thirteen or Zauriel are? There wasn't much to explain them or even our main characters. If anything the book felt like it was made just for people who were pissed that Pandora and Phantom Stranger were cancelled. Either way I'll be reviewing this book every month until it runs it's course or until it's cancelled and I want to like every book I read.

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  3. I agree. It wasn't the best first issue, but I saw good. I hope this goes well.
    If this series gets cancelled befroe they tell what the Question did, I'll flip all the tables

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  4. Yeah, I want this series to do well because I love Phantom Stranger and Pandora and I waited through all of the Trinity War to find out about the Question! We better find some answers because I need to know what's up with this not-Vic Sage.

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