THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Trigon gets his own comic, focusing on how the demon lord of evil came to power. Another origin story means that this comic has to work harder to meet the bar set in other Villains Month comics, and boy, does Trigon not meet that bar.
POSITIVES
There is a reference to the history behind Wonder Girl’s armor in the comic, and it’s nice to see the connection with Trigon make an appearance in the one-shot.
Cafu’s art is great, but there really isn’t a lot of variety in how one can depict Trigon conquering universes. Expect a lot of fire, demons, fire, blood, and more fire.
While a lot of the subject matter is unnecessary, the ascension of Trigon from alien in a separate universe to Demon warlord is certainly interesting. The only real disappointment when it comes to Trigon’s ascension is the lack of time spent before he absorbed the power from the Heart. It would have been nice to see more of the demon before the power.
NEGATIVES
The comic attempts to establish Trigon as an evil badass, but will probably end up making readers uncomfortable with devoting so much time to discussion of Trigon’s sexual tendencies. I really don’t understand the move, and it’s more unnecessary than enlightening.
The comic also fails to establish any correlation and causation, as the story just kind of keeps moving. You have to assume the why of every situation, and the answer is always going to be “Because Trigon is Evil.”
Beyond the factor of Trigon being a badass, there isn’t much substance to this comic. Without outright saying that Trigon isn’t a good villain, he is characterized as evil made flesh. His motivations will always be evil and indefensible, which makes it so a person could nearly never have empathy for the demon.
Verdict
(2/5)
This comic is hard to recommend. Trigon is a villain with whom a person can share no empathy, and the story is about how he has murdered swathes of men and raped an equal amount of women. It’s a lot like going to history class, but at least history class could give us the reasoning of dictators. Here, it’s just cause he is Trigon, and man, that dude is super evil for the sake of being super evil.
