That's how I'm looking at Trinity too. It's a great magnifying lens into
THE DCU and its characters in the way that 52 was. I don't think the disappointment stems entirely from the fact that the Trinity hasn't been appearing, I think a big part of it is that there wasn't really all that much done with them even when they
were appearing. And I mean done with them character-wise, not "LOOK AT THE COSMIC DESTINY SHENANIGANS." Busiek's superb writing and dialogue and Bagley's art makes this practically imperceptible, but when you look back at the first half of this series, almost nothing has been done with Batman or Wonder Woman's characters. Superman's really the only one who had some cool character revelations in the Crime Syndicate subplot, and that was just a few issues.
Along with my recent massive disappointment in JSA, I worry about an arc focused on Black Adam and Isis in that there's nothing wrong with Black Adam and Isis at the moment. They're awesome, they're doing great. It's Billy, Freddy, and Mary that don't work right now. I'm sure they're be satisfactorily handled, but they're really begging for a "Captain Marvel: Rebirth" here, and not "JSA vs Black Adam, round 8!"
DiDio's newsarama interview was actually very informative, at least in regards to how things look from DC's perspective. He gives a pretty candid analysis of the Marvels' situation at DC at the moment.
18) Speaking of Black Adam and the Marvel Family as a whole – we did have a question that came in to Newsarama asking us to ask you if we had a chance, about the Marvel Family and how the treatments they’ve had over the last few years seems to have left them fractured and unfamiliar to long-time fans...are they going to be pulled back toward at least a little...better known ground?
DD: Here’s the thing – the Marvel Family interpretation in regards to what most people want to see – the CC Beck version of Captain Marvel and the world of Fawcett City does not interact well with the rest of the DC Universe. Tonality-wise, it just doesn’t work. It’s a much lighter, much more open style than what’s going on in the DCU. We’ve been working –if you noticed – we’ve moved Billy out of the equation, he’s on the Rock of Eternity, and the characters that we’ve been working with the most have been Freddie and Mary, because we felt there was more character there to address. Freddie’s origin was a lot darker...Mary’s origin was something off to the side. A lot of people also point to the Jerry Ordway stuff, which is really wonderful material, but again, tonality wise, we were looking for a way to bring the Marvel Family into the DCU as it was operating.
That being said, one of the reasons we created Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam was because we wanted to capture the special magic, wonder and heart of those characters. We thought we achieved that quite well with the Mike Kunkel stuff. I wish it was coming out little bit faster to be frank, but I think that captures a lot of the tone that people remember from Captain Marvel.
But where it stands right now is that we’re finding Captain Marvel’s place in the DCU – Geoff has done a wonderful job in bringing all the aspects of Marvel’s family – especially the Black Adam side – back. The thing about the Captain Marvel Universe is that we’ve mined it for so much richness – from Sivana to Black Adam to Mary Marvel to Freddie to Shazam himself. Billy hasn’t been part of that equation, and that’s something we’re working on right now – to make him part of that equation again. And some of that will be addressed in Geoff’s Black Adam story coming up in Justice Society.
I appreciate him not bull****ting, but I find his logic illogical nonetheless. You're so sure that the world of Fawcett doesn't interact well with the rest of the DCU? When was the last time you even
tried it? We haven't seen Fawcett City for years! I appreciate DiDio having instincts about these things, but the complete disconnect between what he thinks readers want and what readers really want has been so damned
frustrating.
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