Comic Vine Review

39 Comments

Trinity of Sin #1 - The Wages of Sin, Part One: Nightfall

2

The Question, Phantom Stranger, and Pandora come together to fight evil

The Good

In TRINITY OF SIN, something is behind attacks on Pandora, The Question, and Phantom Stranger, but who is it and why are they doing this?

It is nice to see J.M. DeMatteis running things on this book. He's done a great job with his run on Phantom Stranger and really made that character one of the more fascinating ones of the New 52. Frankly, having these three characters in the same book makes sense, since they are the "Trinity of Sin." This is a book that many people have been waiting for.

The issue is very new reader friendly, which is a good and bad thing. Anyone can jump on, even if they have no idea who this cast of characters is. There's a bit of background and who these folks are and where they come from. New people picking this up should have an easy dip into this pool.

The Bad

The issue focus is not on plot. Towards the end of the issue, a story is dumped onto the reader, and it's pretty much "we have to come together to find out why there's bad guys after us." It's pretty dry and doesn't hook in the reader at all, even if the Trinity of Sin are high on your "rad characters" list.

As far as first issues go, there's no hook. The majority of this issue sets up who these characters are, but the thing is that people picking this series up are most likely going to be people who really enjoyed these characters in previous series. New readers won't really be jumping on, so a lot of the narration is simply redundant.

What we're left with is an underwhelming issue featuring some very cool characters, which DeMatteis has been working with for quite some time. He's done a lot of great crafting with Phantom Stranger and a little with Pandora in JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK. Expectations are a bit high because of this, and it simply doesn't live up to them.

The Verdict

Fans of these characters will be a bit let down because this issue feels like it reads solely for readers who have no clue who any of these characters are. That's the big disappointment since DeMatteis did such a good job with THE PHANTOM STRANGER. It almost feels like a lighter, carefree book presenting a very light plot to the reader. The art is middle-of-the-road and doesn't help nor hurt the book. While this issue really didn't like up to its potential, there's still a bit of hope on the horizon.