Trinity (and a great many topics it touches on)

 Let's talk about How Bad An Idea This Is and In What Ways.

I have a feeling we won't be the only people.

This... creature, in case you do not already know. is the (theoretical) daughter of Wonder Woman. Or, as the Crimes Against Comics Division calls her, "Tom King's rap sheet, page #74."

Tom King is DC"s current exemplar of the Hot Young Auteur From The Outside World. It's one of DC's real-world tropes.  Such a person: 

has some sort of outside credentials the company thinks brings gravitas; 

is imagined by DC to have a following of readers independent of the characters they are writing; 

is give near carte-blanche to upset the applecart and take characters in New (unwise) Directions; 

usually has a distinct style that they adapt characters to, rather than the other way around.  

He's not the first and you can probably list them better than I. As the song lyrics go, "Such as —Wwhat d'ye call him, Thing'em-bob, and likewise—Never-mind;  and 'St,'st, 'st, and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who; but the task of filling up the blanks, I'd rather leave to you."

So, aa a dear friend of mine once said, "Let's start with your clothes."

I can only assume her civilian job is as a yoga teacher.

Judges...?

Thank you, Judges. Expertly put.

I only wish Blockade Boy were still with us to give his reaction to this monstrosity. Tom King mentioned in an interview that he used his 12-year-old daughter's interest in Wonder Woman as a reference point (just about the only positive thing he did say). Well, it sure looks like a 12-year-old designed that costume. "Y'know what's even COOLER than a magic lasso? THREE magic lassos!" 

After all, a girl can never have too many ropes.

Yeah, no; she LITERALLY has three magic lassos. What could be more practical in battle? One for the left hand, one for the right hand, and one for, um.... Let's play it safe and say "one for dragging".

I'm just going to assume her inevitable death by Isadora Duncan ia a future Fixed Point in time.

I'll leave aside the stupidity of that, which needs no belaboring. I will take a moment to linger on her hilarious (and surely dangerously sharply-pointed) heart-shaped breast-plate (which will CERTAINLY be lamp-shaded as such at SOME point,

"She wears her heart on her sleeve.
Well, maybe not her sleeve, exactly...."
< panel of her torso in chiaroscuro>
See, I can write bad comic book dialog just like the pros.

Trinity = Love, you see. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, did I forget to mention her name? It's TRINITY.  You know, like in Christianity's creakily literal interpretation of Genesis 18-19 (et sim.)

Obviously, we have Augustine to blame for this, 
Aristotle would have slapped him silly had he been there to do so.

It is stunningly tone-deaf that (even) Tom King would have Greek Olypmianist Diana give her daughter a name (1) that's an English abstract noun and (2) so inextricably associated with an incompatible (and historically hostile) religion. Even a comic book geek should realize that's the primary evocation of the word "trinity".

Maybe there simply isn't any "Christianity" per se in the DCU. But there is always Christmas, right, so doesn't there have to be Christianity? Otherwise, how would machine gunners lure Wonder Woman onto roottops?

But in using the name King is trying, of course, to evoke the "DC Trinity" (i.e., Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman).  Which, well, I hate to have to resort to such an over-used and trite modernism as "cringe". But.. it's cringe.  Cringe-y? Let's go old school and call it "mortifying awkward to outsiders " (which I suppose is why people coined the term "cringey").  

The use of "trinity" to describe DC's three tip-top-tier heroes has always been tacky, due to its religious associations. But I've usually turned a blind eye to it for several reasons.  

First, there are so many people who don't know any better and don't think anything of it. I don't actually encourage the dominance of the shadow of historical Christianity over modern culture and thought, and it's an example of people kind of forgetting what 'trinity' originally meant, well... so be it, I guess.  I don't consider its usage "sacrilegious"; it's just tacky.  

Second, call me old-fashioned, but I'm still conscious of how artificial a construct DC's "trinity" is.  Real world references to it are one thing but any in-universe references are painfully forced.  The "trinity", remember is entirely a post-Crisis concept, in which DC decided to elevate a re-launched Wonder Woman into a tier which previously included only Superman and Batman (and by extension Robin). I am not saying this was a bad idea, per se, but it comes with challenges.  Much of post-Crisis disappointment in what's been done with Wonder Woman stems from how the bar has been raised for the character, perhaps beyond a point the concept can reach.  

Besides, DC blew its chance to do the obvious in a post-Superfriends era: create a QUATERNITY, with both Wonder Woman and Aquaman raised to the top tier.  

DC, you had a generation (or more) prepped from childhood to view this a quarternity of top-tier iconic heroes and you wasted the opportunity. You are incredibly good at wasting opportunities.

They are kinda/sort slow-rolling that nowadays, but Aquaman is sometimes as much "over there" as he is "up there" in the heroic hierarchy.  I suspect the lingering hand of Pope Innocent III, whose Fourth Council of the Lateran rejected the concept of the Quaternity in 1213.

Who would make an awesome addition to Aquaman's rogues gallery.
Kind of like an updated Torpedo Man.
"Continue to enjoy your graceless state!"

Third, there's not really a much better term. "Triumvirate" doesn't work because that refers to three men  etymologically, and to political rulers, a very bad connotation indeed.  "Trio" is a musical group, "triad" a musical chord", "troika" is too Commie-sounding, "ternion" is AWESOME but no one without pince-nez is going to use it, etc.

"Trigon", unfortunately, was already taken.

But, as stated, while I'll endure its use in our world, its use in-universe is unacceptable.  And the idea that Wonder Woman would name her daughter that?  Honestly, it's the most "cringey" fan-ficish thing I've seen since I don't know when.

I'd have to give it some thought.

Add to this the "me-too!-ism" of it all. Superman and Batman have children now, so Wonder Woman has to!  Because rather than have her, gods forbid, be her own person, we have to have her mimic Superman and Batman in order to remain at their level.   

It's a modern day mutation of the Dynastic Centerpiece Model, you see. We still WANT Kid Sidekicks but we feel bad nowadays about heroes picking them up at circus fire-sales, dressing them in bright colors, and throwing them at gun-wielding gangsters.  Plus, so many readers nowadays aren't children but rather HAVE children that we want heroes who share that condition so we can continue to identify with them.  So now the craze is for our heroes to have children who are way older than they should be, whom they dress in bright colors and throw at gun-wielding gangsters. But it's their own children, so it's okay.

Therefore our only actual sensible sane responsible adult iconic superheroes are Hal and Barry. Just you think about that.

So, how IS Wonder Woman's child inappropriately-old already? Oh, that's easy.... she's hasn't been born yet. This is a FUTURE person.  From the FUTURE.  Where fashion has gone to hell, apparently.

Yes, it just keeps getting worse and worse.  It's another "possible future that's definitely going to happen" that one writer creates and fans takes as gospel, because well, we actually like pretend this stuff makes sense, rather than just "whatever nonsense the most recent Auteur was allowed to spit out".    No offense to Mark Waid, but DC's readership is STILL in collective therapy from Kingdom Come.  So, rather than do the work, King is just skipping to the answers in the back of the book.  

Well, this is wrong on so many levels.  I'm going to pass over the obvious ones that come from this approach. We've all seen them before and can identity them easily enough. I'm just going to point out the irony of taking this approach to creating WONDER GIRL.  The only reason there was ever a Wonder Girl character separate from Wonder Woman to begin with was because sloppy editors/writers at DC weren't paying any attention to the fact that, when they created Teen Titans, the character Wonder Girl WAS WONDER WOMAN as a youth (in the same way Superboy was Superman).  DC has spent 60 trying to fix that mistake (still unsuccessfully).  So, yeah; having Wonder Girl be from a different time period? Not a great plan, historically.

Longtime readers know there is only one writer who could have cared so little about continuity.
Until now.

And that brings us to our final point. DC's slash-and-burn approach to Wonder Girls. To be fair, they have this approach to a LOT of characters.  

Some versions may deserve to be slashed and burned, however.

No matter what snow they shovel at you now, these characters were not made to work with one another. They were made to supplant one another. 

Kid sidekicks/youth heroes (and the broader heroic dynasties they are part of) are at the heart of conflict between two opposite tendencies at DC.  DC often mixes up the concepts of heroic "legacies", to show that heroism is a tradition that is carried on rather than dying with an individual, and "replacism", the avid rush to ditch any existing version of a character for a newer version that The Kids or a Different Audience Might Like Better.

POOCHIE IS FROM SPACE AND HE'S THE NEW GREEN LANTERN

When you have all the copies and younger duplicates lying around, it becomes VERY tempting to the powers that be to ditch That Old Character They Didn't Create and Feel Constrained By and Don't Have Creator Rights To.  The very tools that are supposedly created to respect the past are used to kill it.

And Replacism has a strong pull in an era given to narrowcasting rather than broadcasting; where we make a lot entertainment tailored to smaller varied audiences rather than a few shows designed to appeal to a broad audience.  The classic DC icons are "broadcast" icons designed to appeal broadly and they are correspondingly generic.   

Almost interchangeable.

The more people who can identify with Mr./Ms. Secret Identity, the fewer people can identify with him/her CLOSELY.  Hey, I'm Modern! I don't want your generic old white guy superheroes, like stupid brain-damaged Hal Jordan! I want a Green Lantern I can IDENTIFY with, who's like me. Somebody gay. Blond. Left-handed. Independent. With fashion flair. Who despite being not too young, looks REALLY good for his age. And likes dark-haired guys named Alex.

Okay, DC. You win this round.

But this can lead to increasingly rapid turnover/proliferation in a character that instead leaves everyone with next to nothing.  Instead of one Green Lantern we can all see a little of ourselves in every month, we each get one Green Lantern we could see a lot of ourselves in... if we ever saw them, which we don't, because there are 87 of them.  

In recent years, DC (or certain forces at DC) have been smarter about this issue and drawn a line in the sand. Despite taking guff for it, for example, Geoff Johns rolled back the turnover-cascade that had taken over Green Lantern and Flash by re-establishing Hal Jordan and Barry Allen as those mantle-bearers.

A task they handled easily, even after being dead for twenty years, because making it look easy is what they do.

One can complain about Johns' bringing back "his generation's version" of those characters, but the choice is defensible as where the problem started. If you draw the firebreak anywhere else, the choice seems arbitrary and the problem might take root again.  His recent work with reintroducing kid sidekicks and the Justice Society is also his attempt to re-inject the concepts of Dynasty and Legacy to help stabilize how DC deals with balancing past, present, and future.  

"Trinity" is... pretty much that opposite of that. She's just The Latest Author's Version of Wonder Girl, since I guess we've already consigned Yara Flor to the Discount Bin of discarded versions of Wonder Girl.

Remember her? Me, neither. I literally have never seen her in anything. At least her costume is marginally less ridiculous than Trinity's.

Except this one comes with the cheap trick of being Wonder Woman's daughter, which King clearly hopes will insulate her from eventual elimination (as it has odious Damian and the incomprehensible and blandly controversial Jon Kent).

It's a headline-grabbing, de-stabilizing pyrotechnic thrown out by an author who can't write a mystery, so instead he 'subverts expectations".  Well, what I expected from the Dawn of DC was certainly better than "Trinity" so consider my expectations subverted, Mr. King.

Your mother said she found this in your closet...

"Answer me, Hal...

Who taught you how to do this stuff?"



"You, Alan...

I learned it by watching YOU!"

Always remember...

If you keep digging you'll almost always find that...

Barry is to blame:

Green Lantern Filmation: Sirena's Final Hissy

Meanwhile, on the grim and forbidding Planetoid Sargasso...

Sirena, the Empress of Evil (tm), has launched her fleet against the decrepit Oans, who prepare to watch the own destruction from the comfort of their own comfty chairs, up from which, like good retirees, they would never pick their asses.

"Despite our infinite wisdom, we have deceived by the nurses, Ollie Ollie Oxenfru! For surely this spectacle is not Mattlock!" "Silence, Jolly Jowly Jerry-Tol, or our pudding rations will be threatened!"

Meanwhile, Kairo, Hal Jordan's Venusian Helper, manages to convince the kamikaze space-owl (whom he is now calling "Beepy" --or maybe "Beaky"-- instead of "Beefy") to fly into the Rapunzel-tower where Green Lantern is being held just out of arms reach of his power ring, and do its thing.

Which it does.

Here's the windup...



and the pitch...

and... STRIKE OUT!


Finally, someone dumber than Hal Jordan. At least when Hal got hit in the head with a space-owl he wasn't STARING RIGHT AT IT.

Hal, as predicted makes a dive for his ring.

Actually, it's more a dainty 'pluck'.

And shoves it onto his middle finger, which is not where one usually wears rings.

Why does Hal wear his power ring on his middle finger?

Because "FUCK YOU!", that's why.

The Eyes of Hal Jordan will still stare you death, power ring or no.

But Hal doesn't follow rules, buddy; he breaks them. Or, perhaps, is simply blithely unaware of them, along with space-owls, highway signs, buttresses, the Twelve Steps and any other thing that might get in his way.

"Guh*hick*reat jzhob, Beasty!", Hal congratulates the kamkazi-bird that just an hour ago attacked him and let him get captured in the first place. To be fair, Hal may not even know that, since he didn't even SEE the owl hit him ...

Which looks like this, in case you've forgotten

...and therefore just assumes that this is some new pet of Kairo's. Named "Beasty". I kind of give up at this point, because the only thing stupider than Hal recognizing the space-owl and treating it as if it were Kairo's familiar pet and calling it by a name he can't possibly have ever heard is ... his doing all that AND GETTING THE BIRD'S NAME WRONG. Ironically, it's the only single word in the entire cartoon that Hal doesn't slur over. Even when doing the impossible, Hal not only does it incorrectly, but painstakingly incorrectly.

Hal rings his way out of prison, Kairo, with his pretty pretty eyelashes, mounts Hal...

Hey, I don't write 'em. I just call 'em as I see 'em.

and, because there is so little time left in the cartoon, Green Lantern does exactly what he should have done in the beginning: he boxing-gloves the entire Freakish Alien Horde into unconsciousness.

Hey! Hal can multi-task!

Wow; just like the "Before" and "After" photos at my 28th birthday party.
Except these guys are still wearing their unitards.

Green Lantern sends Kairo and Beastly (the owl's name changes every time it's said, by now) back to earth in the experimental space-plane with the other prisoners, while he goes off to kick Sirena's fleet's ass.

Literally.

Note that the ships are yellow. Just like the Freakish Alien Minions. None of which bothers Hal's ring at all. Because while kamikaze space-owl cannons are not too stupid for Filmation, apparently the power ring's traditional weakness to yellow is too stupid. Oh, and the "Chekov's gun" in the opening scene, where Hal didn't take the time to charge his power ring? Nope, that gun never gets fired, and Hal's ring doesn't come even close to running out of power. Why? Because Filmation doesn't follow rules, buddy, they break them.

In last, desperate attempt to save her plan, Sirena orders her armada to "fire their destructo-bombs" (as opposed, one supposes, to their constructo-bombs) at Green Lantern,



which he just sproings right back at them.

I'll say this for Hal: he's a FUN drunk.
Unlike Sinestro (mean drunk), John (sleepy drunk), Guy (lecherous drunk), or Kyle (sloppy drunk).

Her armada defeated, Sirena is sentenced to "a long-term of galactic confinement." Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding the term, but "galactic confinement" doesn't seem particularly onerous. "You may not leave the galaxy!" isn't much of a punishment, even for someone with a fleet of spaceships.

Back on earth, Hal and Kairo have a happy fade-out with Hal telling Kairo he can keep his space-owl pet, "Beastly", which is what they are calling it in the final scene.

You know, the longer you look at that, the creepier it gets.

If you don't believe any of this, watch the cartoon and tell me I'm lying. Meanwhile, Guardians bless writer George Kashdan ...

George. BEFORE martinis.

...for taking the ten minutes it took him to dash this episode on the back of a gin-ringed cocktail napkin before getting up from the breakfast table one morning, probably the same day as he wrote this incomparable classic.

Green Lantern Filmation: The Guardians Order Take-Out!

Meanwhile, on the Planetoid Sargasso….!

Equatorial rings are SO 1990s.

Which is "grim and forbidding". Because authoritarian announcer Ted Knight said so. Which is pretty much the final word on any factual matter.

Hal Jordan, having been hit in the head with a radar-guided space-owl, is dragged off

Which looks like this, in case you've forgotten.

by the Freakish Bat-Creature Minions of Sirena, Empress of Evil™, who is now free to initiate her attack on Oa.

The Sargassonian Fleet. Or four hotdog carts in Dubai. Hard to tell.

So, what’s the motivation to attack Oa, anyway? Perhaps we’ll find out soon. Meanwhile, the Freakish Alien Bat-Creatures do the logical thing: lock Green Lantern up in a windowless cell deep with the bowels of the earth behind many secure doors and seal his power ring in a steel box and bury it miles and miles away.

BWaahaahaha! Just kidding! This is Filmation, folks, so they do no such thing. They dump Hal like a rag doll on the floor of a Rapunzel-tower in their Magic Kingdom Castle, plop his ring on a wooden table right in front of him, and sit down to glare at him menacingly over that table with their improbably red eyes. Well, not sit, really, because there are no chairs. For that matter, I’m not sure the Freakish Alien Bat-Creatures can sit; another triumph of martini-guzzling Cartoon Evolution. Anyway, the whole set up is nearly foolproof and nothing could possibly go wrong, unless, I dunno, Hal gets the chance to grab his ring or something.

In fact, being a clever and resourceful superhero, I’m betting Green Lantern concocts some clever subterfuge to distract the Freakish Alien Bat-Creatures. Like suddenly shouting, “HEY, FREAKS! WHERE ARE YOUR FRICKIN’ HANDS, HUH?” Then, while they stare stupefied at the mysteriously empty points on the end of their wings and try to remember who dressed them in these blue unitards (I’m guessing Sirena, which would have been a sight; “No, you fools! First you must step INTO the leg holes, and then wriggle your left wing through the---arrgh! Very well, I’ll do it MYSELF!”), Hal knocks over the table so that the ring falls his way, while he does a Kirk-roll, slips it on his finger and then melts the whole shoddy castle in "a bath of green heat", while announcing every action out loud to no one, in as clear a voice as his TBI-addled brain can muster.

Bwaahahahaha! Just kidding! This is Hal Jordan, folks, so he does no such thing. He lies there in a heap, until Mr Schienman, er, I mean, one of the Guardians of the Universe sends a glowing ghost-o-gram to Hal’s Venusian helper, Kairo...

And on the way back, bring me a blintz. Wait—what’s that, Murray? Okay! Alright, make that two blintzes.

...telling him to stop arguing with the space-owl that hit GL in the head and go save Hal, because Hal’s his ride home.

And, oh, what a ride he is.

In other words, “Get off your ass and back on to Hal’s”. What the Guardian actually says, by the way, is "Green Lantern and his ring are in the topmost chamber of the castle; go; help him!" To which any normal person would reply, "Um, if Green Lantern and his ring are in the same place, why the heck does he need help from Eddie Munster in a jumpsuit?" But Kairo is not a normal person, he's a Venusian helper with a space-owl.

A space-owl?! Yes , in the time that it took the All-Male Horde of Freakish Alien Bat-Creature to haul Hal’s ride-able butt off to the Rapunzel tower, Kairo has inexplicably befriended Sirena’s space-owl and is treating it like it’s been his dog for the last five years: “Cut it out! I don’t have time to play with you now, Beefy! Green Lantern’s in trouble!”

Duck, Kairo, DUCK!

To which my official reaction would have to be: WTF?! This thing is the crazed predator that willingly flew head-first into the back of Hal Jordan’s skull

Which looks like this in case you’ve forgotten.

When and how did it become Kairo’s pal? When did it get a name? Did Kairo name it, and why? 'Cuz I'm having a hard time imagining that Sirena, Empress of Evil (tm), would name her killer space-owl "Beefy".

Kairo, why would you name the alien creature that just knocked out your friend? And name it "Beefy"? It's like watching a thug clobber your friend with blackjack, and then hanging out with him; "Hey, you're kind of cute; I'll call you Beefy."

Why the hell would you call a space-owl “Beefy” rather than “Raptor Redfeather”? And just what kinds of drugs did Filmation employees use, anyway? Really, this makes about as much sense as cutting back from a scene where the Joker and Harley Quin capture Batman to discover that, during the commercials, Robin became Harley’s boyfriend and started calling her “Betty”. “Cut it out! I don’t have time to play with you now, Betty! Batman’s in trouble!”

Anyway, logic be damned, Kairo and Beefy -- or Beepy (really, it’s hard to tell what Kairo is calling him, so thick is his Venusian accent, and it never sounds the same twice)-- climb the Rapunzel tower to rescue stupid, stupid Hal...

"I may be stupid... but I'm really, really good-looking."

...and, in the process, make evident exactly why Sirena is so motivated to conquer Oa.

Oa is a pretty shiny planet that would make a fabulous earring, the kind one might wear to a Klordny party at Legion Headquarters.

Sargasso, on other hand, is a crappy planetoid that looks like it was made out of mashed potatoes, sorghum, and food coloring.

But with a lovely view of the river, according to the real estate ad.

Oa has pretty shiny architecture that looks like something little Helen Frankenthaler would have made in crafts class at Color Field Elementary out of cellophane, frosting, and jimmies.

Or like C’thulu’s really pretty sister. The one who used to pick on him all the time.

Sargasso has a warped and bent castle that looks like somebody dropped Victor Von Doom’s birthday cake.

“I will have my revenge on gravity for this outrage! Curse you, RICHARDS!!!!!”

Geez, no wonder Sirena spent all her resources building a fleet of ships with which to conquer Oa. Rather than, say, creating a nice low-profiled neo-urbanist community for her and her All-Male Horde of Freakish Alien Bat-Creatures. Why build when you can “borrow”? Plus Oa already comes with its own All-Male Horde of Identical Alien Creatures: The Guardians.

Looks like somebody should have taken their Metamucil, like the nurse told them to.

And the only thing that could possibly stop her invasion is a precariously perched Venusian helper, a fickle space-owl, and a semi-conscious Hal Jordan.

Guess who wins?

NEXT UP: Sirena’s Final Hissy-Fit!