Trashed Trinity

 

Trinity #3

There’s a big battle between the Justice League and Konvikt and Graak, in which the JLA gets its collective clock cleaned. Then Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman show up, and Supes gets knocked out with one punch. Everyone, a big round of applause for the World’s Greatest Superheroes! Meanwhile, in the backup story, a woman named Tarot, who’s discovered that she reads Tarot cards way more accurately than she can believe, gets attacked by a gang and defended by some unseen monster.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Three issues in, and I’m bored silly. Besides pointing up the complete lameness of the current Justice League roster, just about half of the length of this comic is taken up with the backup feature. And the backup is fine, but it definitely doesn’t include any mention of Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. This is an ongoing problem with DC’s books, especially their mini- and maxi-series — they don’t have enough story or plot to fill out six issues or 12 issues or 52 issues, so they pad it with extra, unrelated stuff. If they can’t figure out enough plot, either do shorter series, or don’t waste their readers’ cash. And I’m definitely not wasting my cash on this one anymore.

 

Tiny Titans #5

Well, the Tiny Titans meet up with the Teen Titans East — the more recent, villainous version from the regular comics. Of course, they’re all good friends here, but I couldn’t help getting a little creeped out that they were hanging out with Inertia, who helped kill the last Kid Flash. Anyway, this issue’s activities included Enigma pestering Speedy with knock-knock jokes, Robin — or Nightwing — deciding what name he wanted to use, and Batgirl teaming up with Nightwing and a penguin to impersonate Batman.

Verdict: Other than my squeamishness about having a psycho like Inertia repurposed as a childhood buddy, I’m giving it a thumbs up. This is a great, fun series.

 

Green Lantern Corps #25

After a fairly terrific battle that featured gravity being boosted around the Green Lantern Corps members while they were pelted with thousands of alien corpses, everyone discovers that “Mother Mercy,” the queen bee of the Black Mercy plants, is actually a good guy. We get an origin of the Black Mercies, originally created specifically to bring happiness and contentment throughout the galaxy, even if the plants were sometimes commandeered by Mongul to further his evil schemes. However, the newest version of Mongul has collected a bunch of Black Mercies, re-engineered them to generate pure fear, and distributed them all over the place. Of course, Mongul is still nearby, and he still has some nasty plans…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nothing particularly important going on here, but it’s good readin’.

 

Booster Gold #10

Frankly, it’s all a bit hectic, but the general gist of the whole thing has Booster’s reunited Justice League fighting his dad’s evil Time Stealers. Booster is in danger of fading from the timestream due to his temporal meddling, and it’s revealed that Booster’s dad is actually being mentally controlled by the evil Venusian brainworm Mr. Mind, who Booster fought during the “52” series. And in the end, Ted Kord has to die to fix time, just like we always knew would happen.

Verdict: Ehh, I’m on the fence on this one. It’s a bit too hectic, and a lot of interesting stuff from previous issues gets abandoned. With Superman, Batman, and the Martian Manhunter hanging around, all the bad guys shoulda been toast in about 10 seconds. But I liked Mr. Mind’s return, and I’m looking forward to the next issue, with Booster hanging out in the 853rd century.