Trio by John Byrne – Comic Book Review
I picked this up really wanting to like it. Byrne CAN do work I enjoy and it’s been a while since he did something I liked.
This was NOT it.
The characters don’t have super-hero names…OK, not clear ones. They are called One, Two and Three as well as Rock, Paper and Scissors by different groups making it very confusing to follow. We start in the middle of a fight, which is a nice way to get things off to a big start, but we don’t know much about the group other than they all know each other, have known each other for a while and work as a team.
Is this a world where there are a lot of super-heroes? Only a few? Only these three? Is this a normal occurrence?
Paper/Two is injured in the fight and the team doesn’t know if she is dead, so she is whisked off to a high tech headquarters, and MORE confusion ensues…is this a HQ they they own, or if they don’t who has all the high tech equipment? Rock/One doesn’t go the HQ and instead turns into human form, without any clothing (but has a big wad of money to pay for a cab making me wonder where he stashes the money if he can’t stash clothes….) is dropped off at home and greets his family where we get a revelation as to who Rock/One is when he isn’t smashing stuff.
Rock is pretty much The Thing with a different personality, Scissors may well be the goofiest looking character outside of a fanzine and Paper seems utterly worthless in a super-hero sense.
Byrne’s art looked better than it has in a long time, but the character designs of both Paper and Scissor was a mess, just amateurish and I don’t think anyone could make Scissors look good.
So…how did it work as a first issue?
DAMN this book needed an editor. I can understand a first issue having a “teaser” aspect to it, but this felt like an idea, not a story. There is a way to do the “you are in a new world” as a first issue that entices you. Think about the first issue of Transmetropolitan or the pilot episode of Lost and you’ll see how to use this technique.
Too many things just happen without any explanation, and there is NOTHING here that interested me enough to come back to get some answers next issue.
It’s a damn shame, since I am more than ready to follow a new John Byrne comic.
