The Top Five Reasons Why I Will Be Reading Trinity and Not Whining About It:
1. Kurt Busiek: There are very few writers I trust more than Busiek to deliver entertaining and dependable comics. He is the squishy Italian bread with the little sesame seeds on top in the bread aisle of comic writers. There's never a time when I'm not in the mood for Busiek. I know when I read a comic written by him that I am going to come away feeling pleased with my purchase and vindicated in my utter adoration for superheroes and superhero comics. I feel better about the world after reading Busiek's take on a fictional realm where people fly around in ridiculous outfits. So knowing that I will be able to walk into my comic shop and purchase a Busiek comic every week for the next year is cause for excitement.
2. Fabian Nicieza: While Nicieza is more hit-and-miss for me in the grand scheme of his writing, whenever he is paired with Kurt Busiek (or whenever he follows Busiek on a title) I always enjoy his work. He has a fabulous talent with humorous dialogue and plot, as well as the necessary gravitas to keep the characters grounded and dimensional. Additionally, his past work has proven how well he can drum up interest in minor characters. As his role in Trinity will be fleshing out Busiek's Big Three story with satellite characters and plots from the rest of the DCU, I've no doubt he'll succeed in making the backups just as exciting as the front story. Already, the first issue is tapping into unfamiliar territory for me in the DCU and I love it.
3. Mark Bagley: I have the entire collection of his run on Ultimate Spider-Man (judge me all you want!) and while I always appreciated and respected his art , I noticed in the last two arcs of the title that his style had begun to soften in a way that marked a great improvement. No longer do his teenage girls all have the figures of bodybuilders! This is already evident in Trinity. Bagley's Wonder Woman is muscular but not ridiculously so. Same for his Batman and Superman. Also, and I don't know how much this is due to inkers, his line work is not so sharp anymore that I feel like I'll poke an eye out if I look too long. But his greatest strength, and the one that Trinity is riding on, is how productive of an artist he is. He produced 110 issues (and covers) of a monthly comic series without fill-ins or delays. That immediately grants someone godlike status in today's artistic climate for Big Two books. And you know what else? He draws a hot Wally West. Who knew blue could be such a good color for Wally!
4. Consistent writing team: Countdown had almost as strong a figure as Kurt Busiek guiding the title: Paul Dini. Unfortunately, all the other less-skilled creators working on the book made it so you couldn't count on Dini to make the thing work. I don't know how they organized the writing shift or, well, anything behind Countdown but it all unraveled into utter crap. Utter crap with about one or two good moments that were undone to make way for further crap before the title ended. Trinity is going to have two writers who have previously worked together (at Marvel and DC) and in this weekly they're going to be on the same page--and both writers are quality guys. And while I've seen the entire internet clamoring to share their universal opinion on Trinity defying the previous point of DC weeklies with its focus on central characters rather than minor characters, I've got to say--that's a good thing. We know who Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman are and we know we're going to get consistent and established takes on them. This is a good thing. It really is. I'd much rather read about characters I'm very familiar with acting the way I expect them to act than read about characters I either know well or don't and watch them characterized haphazardly so...what? People get exposed to them? What Kyle Rayner fan wants anyone new to the character to have them get to know the Countdown version? This Kyle fan sure as hell does NOT.
5. Consistent art team: This was one of the most widespread complaints about Countdown and for good reason. The layouts, the costumes, the settings, the character base models were all inconsistent from week to week. People still don't know what the hell a Monitor's really supposed to look like. (Though J.G. Jones is working on that, apparently. Thanks!) With Trinity's split, we're getting the same artist and inker every week for main story and so far the solicits support the hope that Nicieza's backups will have the same rotating artists working together. Now, the backups could dissolve into a similar mess that plagued Countdown but I'm optimistic they won't. I know and enjoy most of the artists listed and hopefully none of the X-factor artists have the same blob style that one or two of the Countdown artists exhibited. ("Blob style" = why I try not to talk about comic art very often. I just remember a lot of the Countdown art being ill-defined and floaty and blobbish in a way that all jumbled together in my memory to haunt my worst nightmares.)
So until Bagley's replaced by Ed Benes or Eclipso and the Spectre take over the backups, make mine Trinity!
From Young Avengers Presents #6
