Trinity of Sin #4

The Box of Redemption is a toilet!

Is this the issue we find out who The Question is? I bet he was the first sentient person to have a moment of free time because other people were hunting the mammoths and gathering root vegetables and protecting the tribe while he was sitting on a rock trying to avoid the myriad tasks his people needed to keep them all alive for another winter. And suddenly he had a moment of pure unadulterated luxury, free from worry and death and cold and hunger and strife, and he thought, "Who am I?" (In his own prehistoric language, of course!) The question was so foreign to him that he spoke it out loud as another member of his tribe was passing by. The tribesman turned to him and said, "You Zok!" And Zok said, "No, no! But who is Zok? Really? Who are any of us?" And the other tribesman, not realizing that Zok had just invented philosophy, failed to smash his skull and save us all from pretentious bastards sitting in coffee shops centuries later saying, "What's outside this window? Is it just a fantasy? What is reality? How can we ever know anything? What if it's all just zeros and ones?"

Just as the Trinity were about to recover the Redemption Box at the end of last issue, The Question turned on them! Quackers the Cosmic Duck appeared in the sky with a battalion of monster bugs to recover the Redemption Box for herself. If all of these people want so desperately to be redeemed, why don't they address what they did wrong and work to make amends to the people they hurt? Why does everybody think there's an easy fix for everything? That Box is probably just full of snake oil and dog turds.

The first few pages are filled with a lot of The Phantom Stranger's mental masturbation.

Taking The Question prisoner, Pandora and The Phantom Stranger flee from Quackers and enter the heart of the mountain where the Redemption Box is kept. But they can't open the box until The Phantom Stranger fills a few more pages with his pseudo-philosophical bullshit.

Why doesn't J.M. DeMatteis just write a novel? Why is he writing a comic book when he seems to invest most of his energy in telling the tale through the eyes of The Phantom Stranger, Narration Box after Narration Box. The visuals are rarely needed and most of the plot points come down to the Trinity either overcoming an obstacle using their vague powers or not overcoming an obstacle using their vague powers. It makes for a fairly boring comic book. But DeMatteis seems to be most interested in documenting The Phantom Stranger's thoughts and his inner struggles. I think that would work much better as a novel where he could spend pages on the inner struggle of each character. That way, the mundane plot points would be better spread out and perhaps feel less like trivial moments that exist simply to create a false sense of the characters' forward progression.

The spell was unbearable! But they bearabled it anyway!

The three eventually touch the Redemption Box together and say, "Taaruu!" Instead of turning into a God so they can defeat Quackers, they're sucked into the Redemption Box where they're crucified upon a bleak, barren plain. Quackers shrugs at their disappearance, takes the box, and heads home.

Trinity of Sin #4 Rating: -1 Ranking. What is the fucking point of this comic book? What is the fucking point of Trinity of Sin in The New 52? Weren't they supposed to have some kind of important part to play? If they're not the cause of the Convalescence, then I'm just going to be left baffled by this entire series. So far, they're just victims that have done nothing but react to Quackers taking over the world. It's mostly just a lesser version of The Blight storyline minus a babysitter as Jesus character. If I felt emotions, I'd be angry that this comic book were stealing so many precious moments of my finite lifespan!