Oh, and there are spoilers in this post, but only fairly old ones. Like, who's in the coffin. And who's the final Cylon.

There are many reasons to love spoilers, all of them totally valid, in my book. (Inflicting spoilers on people who don't want to be spoiled? That's a different matter, and it's something we agonize over a lot at io9. We do inadvertently put spoilers where spoilerphobes can see them, on occasion, but it's always by accident or misjudgment, and we agonize over it a lot more than you might think. Generally, though, we try to include spoiler warnings before going over to the spoiler side.)

But at the same time, there's a pervasive misconception about spoiler-lovers floating around out there that I'd like to clear up: that we're power mad. That the only pleasure in reading spoilers, or sharing spoilers, is to feel powerful. To know something that other people don't know. The spoiler-phile, in the view of some media people, feels powerful because she or he is robbing stories of their power: the power of suspense, their ability to surprise.

J.J. Abrams writes in a recent issue of Wired Magazine:

It's telling that the very term itself-spoiler-has become synonymous with "cool info you can get before the other guy." What no one remembers is that it literally means "to damage irreparably; to ruin." Spoilers make no bones about destroying the intended experience-and somehow that has become, for many, the preferred choice.

But to be honest, knowing spoilers doesn't make me feel powerful or one-up on any one else. And i don't feel like they ruin the experience of consuming stories afterwards. It just makes me more excited about the narratives I already love. And, often, more curious about the narratives I don't know anything about — or have already lost interest in. The more I know, the more fascinated I become. Because I'm a geek, duh.

So here are some reasons why we love spoilers.

The lure of the forbidden:

Okay, sure. We just got done saying that we don't love spoilers because of some crazy power trip. But at the same time, the fact that spoilers are regarded as "naughty" or even sleazy certainly has its appeal. It would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise. Here at io9, we don't publish gossip: Edward James Olmos could do nude gymnastics in public every single day, and we'd never mention it on our blog. But we decided early on that spoilers are to us what gossip is to Perez Hilton. It's our naughty indulgence, and the stigma attached to it only makes it more exciting.

The more you tell us it's wrong, and we'll go to Hell or grow hair in places our Brazilian waxer won't go near, the more we crave it. It's just human nature.

The grand conversation:

Paradoxically, the Internet has fueled my love of old media. I would have given up reading comic books years ago, if it weren't for the fact that writers like Gail Simone and Kurt Busiek are so accessible online. Commenting on their work, answering fans' questions, responding to your harshest criticisms. I'm much more excited to pick up issue #5001 of Super-Blasting Mega-Dorks when I know that my $2.99 is, in part, buying me a chance to participate in a huge ongoing conversation online.

And it's not just creator participation — it's reviews, previews, and yes... spoilers. Part of the thrill of taking part in fan communities is piecing together the clues about what's coming next. Movie studios, TV companies and comics companies know this, and they try to use it to their advantage, with viral marketing, clever hints and promos that tease you with upcoming plots. When fans get together and geek out about upcoming TV shows and movies, a big part of that is always going to be speculating/guessing/clue-hunting about what the next thing is.

Like I said, the big media companies know that this is going on, and they would like to control it. In fact, they know that eventually, this conversation will become the entertainment you consume. Television will be moving online slowly but surely, and "webisodes," awful as they usually are, are just the thin end of that wedge. Entertainment is going to become more and more interactive, and harder and harder for big media to control.

But that's a meta-topic for another day. Suffice to say, for now, that obsessing over spoilers, rumors, leaks and sometimes outright lies is a huge part of the way we're all building community around the shows and movies we love. Just like fanfic, it's not authorized, or under the big conglomerates' control, but it fuels our shared love. And often the speculation about what's coming is more entertaining than the reality turns out to be. (See: Almost every movie this summer.)

The unconventional seduction:

I gave up on Star Trek after Deep Space Nine went away. I tried to watch Voyager, but it made me feel like my brain was being squished into a jello mold very, very slowly. And Enterprise just left me totally apathetic.

But then a funny thing happened: long after I stopped watching Trek, I kept reading spoilers for it. I also read reviews of episodes I'd missed, on Cynic's Corner or Jammer's Reviews or Television Without Pity. But reading spoilers for upcoming Trek episodes was more fun, partly because they sounded more crazy and over-the-top when you heard about them in advance. ("Kes gets a barbarian warrior's personality stuck in her brain? Tucker gets pregnant?")

The weird thing is, reading spoilers for Trek — and for other shows I barely watched, like Smallville — made me feel like I was still following them, to some extent. And the spoilers and rumors actually helped recharge my interest in those shows. I actually came back to Voyager in its last season, and also started watching Enterprise again after a couple years away, because I was reading spoilers and they seemed excitingly weird and/or potentially awesome.

Ditto for several comic books, and more than a few movies. Hollywood's official marketing machine gives away plenty of details about the storylines of upcoming stuff, but at the same time, the blandness of a lot of trailers and blurbs tends to turn me off. But sometimes, coming across a really outrageous set photo or gonzo rumor can spark my curiosity in the way a hundred peanut-butter-smooth promos never can.

The dreadful admonition:

And then there's the other side of it: Sometimes we need to be warned. "Trip gets pregnant" actually isn't necessarily a good thing. Neither is "Satan annuls Spider-Man's marriage." Or "we'll be meeting Hiro Nakamura as a young boy." There's almost no way "Kid Hiro" could have turned out to be a good thing.

Sometimes, a television show or movie or comic has so much pain in store for us, we need a giant warning buoy flashing crazily and sounding a banshee siren, letting us know in advance. Of course, you can't really judge a piece of media based on advance plot info — especially stuff you read on the Internet. But at the same time, when a particular franchise has an established track record, you have to be vigiilant for the warning signs. Suppose Voyager was still on the air, and you started seeing reports that an upcoming episode would feature Janeway and Michelangelo going white-water rafting on the Holodeck. You would panic! And you'd be right to do so.

And then there's the case of Terminator Salvation, which originally ended with John Connor's face being transplanted onto Marcus Wright's cyborg body — after which a red-eyed Wright killed Kate Connor, Kyle Reese, and the rest of the supporting cast. The filmmakers were serious enough about this ending that they apparently filmed it. But after Ain't It Cool News leaked the ending, McG and company scrambled to replace it with the slightly-less-ridiculous heart transplant thing. So there's a case where spoilers not only warned us of a horrendous storyline, but actually averted it.

Getting back to what Abrams wrote in Wired, I don't actually think knowing who's in the coffin on Lost actually ruins your enjoyment of the storyline. The fun of a show like Lost, for most viewers, is seeing the characters grow and their relationships shifting. And finding out how Locke got into that coffin. (Which, for me at least, was a bit of a let-down.) A good plot twist is one that, even if you know it's coming, you still enjoy the ride getting there.

As I said before, I think entertainment is going to become much more interactive and much more audience-driven in the next decade or two, and the battle over spoilers is just one small piece of that. Traditionally, being a storyteller has meant having control over the narrative and deciding what the audience gets to know, and when. Maybe eventually, we'll have a new balance of power, one in which there's more of a give and take. We don't yet know what this'll look like, but here's hoping it leads to richer stories, in which strong characters — not closely guarded plot twists — are the real source of creators' power.

The series explores the roles Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman play in the DC universe by examining what happens when they are removed. Trinity delves into unapologetically mystical territory as it posits the three heroes as representatives of essential cosmic principles that underpin the Earth (and, by extension, the entire multiverse). The concepts they represent can be articulated in a number of ways - truth/justice/the American way and day/night/earth are just two combinations suggested - but they stand for something that is fundamentally good about the world.

Their magical removal from reality at the hands of the villainous trio of Morgaine Le Fey, Despero, and Enigma (who is, well, enigmatic) radically reshapes the world into one barely held together by the older heroes Carter Hall (Hawkman), Jay Garrick (the Flash), and Alan Scott (Green Lantern), who have marshaled the world's superheroes into the Justice Society International, sworn to keeping the peace and maintaining security at any cost. It's a world where the idealism of Superman has had to give way to mere pragmatism, and one that is vulnerable to the further machinations of Morgaine Le Fey, who seeks to attain godhood and rule the world.

There's plenty more going on, only some of which can be summarized easily. Krona, the renegade Oan immortal obsessed with learning the secrets of the universe, wishes to communicate with planetary intelligences. Green Lantern John Stewart has become infected with a super-intelligent alien parasite from the antimatter universe. The Crime Syndicate enlists the begrudging aid of the Justice League to save their Earth and its oppressed citizenry. An alien convict is desperate to regain his honor after accidentally killing a civilian. A Tarot card reader discovers she is connected to the soul of the world itself, making her a prime target for the upstart trinity.

On the altered Earth, Sir Alfred Pennyworth, late of MI5, recruits five others, from thuggish gangster Richie Grayson to sensationalist TV pundit Lois Lane, who share vague memories of the lost heroes to go on a quest to another universe, where the heroes have become an actual divine trinity. Heroes like Triumph and Tomorrow Woman must face the possibility that, should the true reality be restored, they would go back to being dead, while Hawkman wonders whether there is anywhere in the entire cosmos where he is truly meant to be.

There's a ton of stuff to unpack here, as befits a story that runs well over 1000 pages, and it's all interesting material. The epic length gives creator Kurt Busiek and cowriter Fabian Nicieza the necessary space to take a tricky metaphysical concept and make it concrete, which they do with aplomb. In a sense, the threat they're dealing with - a fundamental change to the nature of reality - is very similar to that which Grant Morrison explored in Final Crisis, but they have over seven times as much time to properly unfold their narrative, which makes for far more readily comprehensible reading.

This is a story that's equal parts personal and cosmic, and hundreds of characters get their own little moments, from Ragman to Black Adam to the self-declared alien tyrant Kanjar Ro. The minor hero Gangbuster, who protects Tarot as she becomes aware of her cosmic abilities and comes to her aid time and again, provides an everyman's perspective that keeps the potentially abstract stakes relevant and relatable. It's a sign of great writing when Busiek and Nicieza handle gang warfare in inner city Los Angeles just as nimbly as they do a godlike being searching for ultimate knowledge.

Busiek also makes some great choices to fill out the supporting cast - fans of James Robinson's run on Starman (which I am, since I'm a fan of things that are awesome) will get a kick out of seeing Opal City's own Charity O'Dare, who becomes the heroes' leading mystic once Tarot is captured. Kurt Busiek is well-known as one of the half dozen or so walking comics encyclopedias that DC keeps on staff, and it shows as he crafts a story steeped in the rich history of the DCU without ever drowning in gratuitous continuity references.

What the story arguably lacks is, of all things, enough Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. This is by design, as Trinity is less interested in exploring their relationships with each other as it is pondering their mythology and considering what they really mean to the DC universe. The best way to do that is to see what happens once they're gone, but it's worth acknowledging that they don't necessarily feel like the main characters in their own story (if I had to choose one person, I'd argue this is really Hawkman's story, but that's certainly up for debate).

The story isn't quite perfect, but most of my problems are quibbles. Krona is a tricky character to write, as his unimaginable power makes it difficult to really set up a fair fight against him. The climactic showdown between Krona and the godly versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman veers a bit between an epic clash and a minor nuisance for Krona. Much like with Superboy-Prime in other recent DC stories, there were times when fighting Krona seemed to take Trinity into Prince of Space territory. (For those who don't remember that particular MST3K entry, most of the fight scenes in Prince of Space entail the title hero patiently reminding his enemies that their weapons have no effect on him.) Ultimately, it's almost impossible to deliver a completely satisfying final battle after forty-five issues of setup, but Busiek and Nicieza just about pull it off.

And then there's the art. Trinity marks Mark Bagley's debut with DC Comics, and from the first issue he feels right at home. His drawing style is crisp, clear, and a joy to look at, but more to the point he simply nails the personalities of the characters he draws. I found his interpretations of Lois Lane and Alfred Pennyworth particularly memorable, but there's really not a single character he fails to capture. The rotating backup team of Scott McDaniel, Tom Derenick, and Mike Norton offers styles that contrast well with Bagley's. The various art styles ably hit the sweet spot between being too blandly interchangeable and being too jarringly different, and Trinity is well-served by the artistic variety.

When I started getting back into comics about two years ago, it was massive, universe-spanning stories, from Crisis on Infinite Earths to 52, that really showed me the unique ability of comics to craft stories on a scale that arguably surpasses any other medium, and I found the more mythical undertones of DC made it the better-suited of the two publishers for these sorts of tales. Trinity is probably the biggest and most epic superhero story I've ever read, and it's certainly one of the best. After all the problems of Countdown and Final Crisis, Trinity shows DC can still pull off both weekly series and metaphysical epics, particularly when they're done simultaneously.

Click through to check out our interview with Kurt Busiek, who is his usual illuminating self as he delves into the behind the scenes story of this massive undertaking.

How much of the story did you have in mind when you started, and how much came into place as you went along? What were some of the biggest changes to the story from original conception to finished product?

Once we actually worked out the story, what we had was a fairly loose outline that covered the high points, and then I'd outline the first act more tightly, and we'd work from that until it was nearly done, then I'd outline the second act more tightly, we'd work from that, and then of course the third. So we had the advantage of knowing where we were going, but the freedom of having a fairly sketchy roadmap, one that could accommodate new discoveries and opportunities that came up as we went along. So I don't think there were any flat-out "major changes" from the original conception — we delivered on that original outline pretty well — but there was a lot that came up while we were under way that we were able to incorporate.

The whole Tomorrow Woman arc, for example, wasn't in the original outline, it just came up along the way, and it worked, so we went with it.

This was the third DC weekly series, following 52 and Countdown, both of which had featured fairly large writing and drawing teams. Trinity, on the other hand, had a much smaller crew, with only you and Fabian Nicieza as your cowriter on the backup stories on the writing front and pretty much only Mark Bagley and the team of Tom Derenick, Scott McDaniel, and Mike Norton handling the art. How did it prove possible to pull off a weekly series for an entire year without delays with such a relatively small creative team?

In some ways it was easier than with a larger group, I imagine — because our creative team was small and focused, it wasn't as much of a headache to juggle different visions and schedules and such. I think the 52 crew had weekly conference calls, across I don't know how many time zones between Grant and the west coast guys. Fabian and I probably talked more often, but there were only two of us. All we had to do was get on the phone, and bang, writer-team conference call. It's a lot easier. And Fabian was always ready to talk stuff over, to make suggestions, to get me past logjams.

The other half was focus — Mark, Geoff, Grant and Greg were all juggling a pretty full plate along with 52, as were the guys who wrote COUNTDOWN, but I was working on TRINITY and ASTRO CITY and a very few other things. Fabian had more to juggle, between TRINITY, a few other comics assignments and his not-inconsiderable outside-comics work, but it was still kept lean enough that he had the time to focus on TRINITY.

Same for the artists — if you look at how much other work they were doing outside TRINITY, it adds up to an impressive but manageable workload for all of them. Everyone was pretty focused. The miracle was Mark Bagley, of course. He was the only one who wasn't doing anything but TRINITY, and he had a hellacious workload — 12 pages a week — but not only is he fast, he had the other quality that kept us on track: The ability to put ass in chair for long hours and do the work. Regardless of the distractions, the whole TRINITY team focused on the work and got it done when it needed to be done. And there were plenty of distractions — from buying and moving into a new house to deaths in the family and other emergencies — but everyone had committed to this schedule, and they did the work. So credit Mike Carlin, as well, for knowing how to pick a team of guys who'd all do that without fail. And for keeping us moving, getting us answers, support, encouragement, every time we needed it and without delays. I've worked on books where I'd turn in a plot and it wouldn't get approved by the editor and sent off to the artist for two weeks or more. In Mike's case, it was rare that something came in and didn't get turned around within two _hours_. A plot comes in, it was read immediately. An outline that needed approval would get it that day, or get requests for changes. We could work steadily because there weren't delays on the DC end.

And on that score, I'll add that it was a miracle that we didn't have to tie in to the other big events of the year — so we were able to keep moving, and not have to wait to find out what was going to happen in BATMAN or JUSTICE LEAGUE or FINAL CRISIS or whatever. We kept it largely to the immediate creative team. There were two moments where Dan Didio asked us to do something differently, and neither was anything major.

But in the end it comes back to focus. Tom Derenick did more pages that year than any other year of his career, and they looked great. Scott McDaniel handled anything we asked of him, from street-level adventure to space wars to trippy cosmic encounters, and made it all stylish and attractive. Mike Norton got a lot of character-drama chapters about a dizzying array of characters, and made them all individuals. And Mark Bagley drew the entire DC Universe and a brand-new mythology on top of it. And it's not like no one ever slowed down. But no one ever gave up, no one ever said, "No, I can't do that."

Plus, we all knew that once the year was over, it was done, so while that final sprint might have been exhausting, it would end. That makes it easier to keep pushing.

One of the big themes of Trinity is that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman fulfill special roles in the DC universe that no one else can quite fulfill. Was it somewhat strange to develop this idea at a time when two of these characters were undergoing major upheaval in their main books, with Superman leaving Earth for New Krypton and Batman apparently dying in the aftermath of R.I.P and Final Crisis?

Not really. After all, I knew — even if the readers didn't — that my story happened before all those other events. And I didn't really know what was going on with the other books — the readers saw it play out week-to-week, month-to-month, but that doesn't mean I was writing TRINITY while hearing about each new development in BATMAN RIP. I was seeing those books when they came out, and we outlined TRINITY long before they started to play out that way, so we just did our thing without the other events needing to intrude. Fabian knew a lot more about RIP, since he was writing ROBIN and other Bat-related stuff, but I felt like I was working on a big standalone novel, so I didn't have to think about the other upheavals.

Structurally, the story deals a great deal with arcane topics from tarot cards to the fundamental metaphysical structure of the universe. When dealing with such heady mystical material, how do you make these elements cohere into something relatively comprehensible and consistent? Is that even necessarily a priority? What are the challenges in taking these rather abstract concepts and grounding them as something real and immediate to the characters involved?

The one time I talked with Jack Kirby, he told me that it didn't matter how weird or cosmic or far out anything got, as long as your characters reacted to it the way real people would. Give the audience a vantage point they can comprehend, a place to stand that feels real, and they'll comprehend the bigger stuff. Ideas like the Worldsoul and the metaphysical structure of things would be arcane and dry if you just explain them in a vacuum, but if it's Tarot learning about them, or Krona trying to comprehend and failing, there's a character involved, a human emotional reaction, and that goes a long way.

For such a massive story - by my count, it runs to about 1144 pages - how do you go about settling on which supporting characters to feature? What leads you to such obscure characters as Gangbuster, Charity O'Dare, or Tomorrow Woman? Even with more major players, like Hawkman or Firestorm, how do you go about deciding they'll play supporting roles as opposed to any of the other secondary heroes in the DCU?

1155 pages, I think, with the additional pages in #1 and #52.

And the supporting characters came in for a number of reasons — usually to do the job of supporting characters, which is to support the plot and the themes. Sometimes that happens by design, sometimes it just kind of happens. To rattle through your examples — Hawkman we used because we were told that nothing was going on with him so we were free to use him, and we earmarked him to play a major role. After which, of course, plans for the HAWKMAN SPECIAL happened, and the character suddenly became off-limits, but since we were operating outside of the other events (and before the special, in any case), we didn't have to worry about that. Gangbuster was another deliberate choice — we were looking for characters to use that people hadn't seen much of recently, and Gangbuster is a character I've always liked, and who fit into Tarot's world well, so we roped him in.

Charity O'Dare we used because we were going to use Madame Xanadu, only she got her own Vertigo series and became at least temporarily off-limits, so we have her major role to Charity (and a few minor bits to Madame Zodiac). That storyline played out differently, in some ways, because Charity's a different character, but it made for some nice moments.

Tomorrow Woman was a complete fluke — we needed characters to put on a set of covers showing "replacement" icons, and I wanted to get a little weird with it. Green Arrow was kind of an obvious choice for a replacement Batman, and Black Adam fit Wonder Woman's myth-based warrior concept, and that meant we needed someone for Superman, and we didn't want the replacements to be all male (but we'd picked Black Adam in part to break up the gender pattern), so we needed someone for Superman who was female, science-fiction-y and in some way futurist. Who better to replace the Man of Tomorrow than a Tomorrow Woman? So we put her on the cover, thinking it was a nice bit, that we could use a dead character because we'd revised history and all — and then the fans went nuts. There was an outpouring of excitement even just from the cover appearing online, and we're not stupid enough not to notice — so we gave her more to do, and it just grew from there. Fairly early on, once we started using her, we proposed bringing her back at the end, restoring her to life, and got the okay, so we were off to the races.

Firestorm wasn't a character we'd planned to use as much as we did, but his role grew organically. As one of the youngest JLAers, he was a good choice to have John Stewart explain Krona to, so he started out purely as a mechanical choice — he's the one who doesn't know, so we can build an infodump around him needing to learn — but then some chemistry happens, and all of a sudden it wasn't just that he was the new guy asking the Green Lantern about GL history, he was the young black guy who didn't want to feel stupid in front of the team so he went to the older black guy to ask privately, knowing that John would understand why he didn't want to look like a dope. And from that little spark, a friendship came out on the page that we hadn't been expecting, and the Firestorm-John Stewart bond became important, so Firestorm got a bigger role to play.

That's the way it happens — some characters you set out to use, some are happy accidents. As long as it works, it doesn't really matter how you got them.

Beyond the Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman trinity, there are a number of other trios you developed over the course of the books. Obviously, there's the Despero/Enigma/Morgaine Le Fey trio that serves as the primary antagonists, but there's also a brief point around issue 40 where the vague trio of Lex Luthor/Joker/Cheetah, which is arguably a more natural set of antagonists for the heroes, seems to gain some significance. What was your thinking in using a more unlikely assortment of characters as the main villains, and what was the function of spotlighting the more traditional adversaries at roughly the same point in the story?

We didn't want to use Lex, the Joker and Cheetah (or Circe or Ares, the two other natural WW-archfoe choices) in part because we had this big weird plan, and it's not really a Luthor-y plans and it's not a Joker-y plan, so we needed characters who'd come together in that kind of plan. Also, we didn't want to just make the most obvious choice. And we wanted to get at some core ideas about the Trinity. Lex, the Joker and Cheetah aren't the same concepts as the Trinity, but the Dark Trinity we used — a woman of mystic power, a technological schemer and a powerful alien — fit a Trinity-pattern we could use in the story.

You could do that with Lex-as-Batman and Cheetah/Circe as Wonder Woman, but even then, the Joker doesn't step into the Superman mythic role well at all. And we see those guys all the time anyway, so let's have them play secondary roles and do something new with the main villains. That was the basic thinking.

The other big trinity appeared to be Alan Scott/Carter Hall/Jay Garrick, as they openly wonder whether they could have fulfilled the roles of the trinity, seemingly coming to the conclusion that they are lacking. How do you go about demonstrating the importance of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman without implicitly devaluing the contributions of other heroes, such as these three Golden Age crimefighers, to the DC mythos?

Keep in mind that Alan, Carter and Jay weren't simply presented as "not up to the task." They were a force in a revised history in which the very core concepts that make Superman, WW and Batman what they are had been removed, blunted, faded, all the way back through history, as seen by the fact that even the Egyptian gods in Prince Khufu's time were weakened. So it wasn't as if DC's normal Golden Age heroes aren't all that, it's that when you take away the mythic underpinnings that fuel even them, they have to soldier on in a less idealistic way, becoming more pragmatic than inspirational, becoming tougher and darker, making hard choices without the magic. So that's not a reflection on them as they were in the Golden Age, but on what they needed to be to keep the world together in a reality without that truth/justice/"American way" at the heart of it.

I think they did about as well as they could, all things considered.

It's probably a fool's errand to even ask this question, but how does Trinity fit into the larger DC continuity, if at all? In particular, The resurrection of Tomorrow Woman is probably the biggest change, although there also new characters like the Dreambound who seem to have more story worth telling. Will any of these changes carry over into other titles?

I think it's pretty easy to see where TRINITY fits into DC continuity — just look at the JLA. When we first see them in the series, Red Tornado is damaged and his brain is occupying the JLA computers. Shortly thereafter, he's been rebuilt and is back in action. So it takes place around the time that stuff was going on in the JUSTICE LEAGUE book.

As for repercussions — well, those last couple of pages will make for some very big ones, coming up. And yeah, Tomorrow Woman and the Dreambound and Xor and Tarot are out there, ready to do more stuff, have new adventures. Where and when those'll happen, I can't say for sure, but all that stuff happened, it's part of the DCU now.

Heck, I'd like to see Tatters, the Ragged Wonder, turn up in Ragman's life. And Supergirl meet Interceptor. And Tomorrow Woman figure that if she survived, maybe there's a way for her to save Triumph...

Ultimately, what are you hoping readers take away from Trinity? The obvious message seemed to be that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman have irreplaceable roles in the DC universe, but the ending of the story appeared to complicate that considerably, as the trinity acknowledged all the "normal" humans who had shaped them into who they are.

I think what we said is that Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman belong at the heart of the DCU, but it's not a one-way street. They represent things that we can see resonating in the other heroes, in all of us, in the whole world. They're the face of it, the symbols of it, but it's not unique to them. They get it from their lives and experiences and the nature of the universe.

But the reader doesn't need to think about any of that; this is a big sprawling adventure thriller, not a college class. If all they take away from it is "Wow, that was fun! The Joker turned into a whole city! The anti-Deathstroke is an idealistic hero! I wanna see more Tarot, and it was cool to see that annoying frog-guy blow up!" then I'm just fine with that. Theme is great, for people who like to approach stories that way, but it's an organizing principle that helps us write a story that has some weight, it's not something that all readers have to care about.

The stuff happening on the surface can be the take-away just as much.

In case you haven't already, click here to read our review of the entire 52-part series as a whole.

Who Makes Ultron So Great?
Well, firstly, just look at him. He's awesome. (And while we're at it, how can you not love a robot who talks like that?)

A product of the (occasionally overly-)imaginative Silver Age of comics, Ultron is much more than the average killer robot; his secret origin involves him rebuilding himself five times and then hypnotizing his creator into forgetting he existed, for one thing. Ultron first appeared in 1968's The Avengers #55 (following an in-disguise cameo the issue before) calling himself "Ultron-5, The Living Automaton" but, within a year, he'd already upgraded himself to Ultron-6 by coating his body in Marvel's unbreakable alloy Adamantium (Yes, the stuff on Wolverine's bones). That's the thing about Ultron; whereas other killer robots are content to just sit around on their metallic asses when not trying to destroy the world, Ultron is all about the self-improvement. Well, partially about the self-improvement, at least; there's also a pretty unhealthy obsession with his creator, Hank Pym and his girlfriend, Janet Van Dyne (AKA Ant Man/Giant Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket and the Wasp). According to former Avengers writer Kurt Busiek, it's that mix of self-refinement and hatred for his "father" that makes the character so wonderful:

Aside from Ultron being a really compelling visual design — there's just so much menace in that jack o' lantern face John Buscema gave him — he stands head and shoulders above other psycho killer robots because he's not just a killing machine. He's a robot with an Oedipal complex. All the coolest stuff about Ultron comes from there — the creation of the Vision (which also ties into Wonder Man's story), his complicated relationship with Hank Pym, his attraction to the Wasp and attempts to re-create her...the best villains are villains where there's a personal stake involved, and Ultron's a robot that's all about the personal. He's tied into the complex web of relationships that makes up the Avengers, and that right there makes him more compelling. Being murderous, indestructible, brilliant and obsessive just adds to the fun.

The Ultron Empire
As much a family man as a genocidal maniac, Ultron has also managed to surround himself with quite a collection of relatives throughout the years; he has built himself two "brides," Jocasta and Alkhema, both of whom have rejected him and went on to try and undo his various evil schemes, as well as two "sons," the Vision and the much less robotic sounding Victor Mancha, both of whom went on to become superheroes with the Avengers and the Runaways, respectively. It's a good thing he's obsessed with this supervillainy thing, because apparently he's not so great when it comes to creating obedient robots.

Ultron's Greatest Hits
Amongst some of Ultron's (admittedly momentary) triumphs:
* Turning Tony Stark into a woman by taking control of the Iron Man armor and doing something that was never really properly explained but had something to do with rewriting DNA sequences (Ultron seems to have a particular thing against Tony Stark; he's also re-assembled his body made out of old Iron Man armors and turned Stark into his "psycho-hypnotic" slave. Having a grudge against Iron Man can only be a good thing).
* Coming up with a plan to plunge the world into a "volcanic winter" by placing bombs underneath volcanoes around the world. I'm not entirely sure what a "volcanic winter" actually is, but I'm sure it'd involve a lot of lava, and it's hard to fault such a wonderfully James Bond Villain-esque ploy for style and ambition.
* Slaughtering an entire European state singlehandedly as a warning to the rest of the world not to fuck with him. Kurt Busiek can take credit for that one. He explained to me,

In going over Ultron's history in preparation for the story, it seemed like decades since he'd been a truly compelling menace — he'd been handled too easily, treated like a known quantity, so it didn't matter if he was kind of an afterthought in stories, or taken down without much difficulty. So we wanted to remind people of how dangerous he is, give him some impact to reestablish him as a deadly, ruthless threat.

Mission accomplished.
* In the same story as above, creating an entire army of himself to populate the world... after killing all of humanity, of course. Busiek again:

In dealing with recurring villains, I tend to ask, "What would they do _next_? How would they build on their past experiences?" I don't want to have characters just go through the same old patterns, I'd rather have them learn and grow and do something that builds on their history. And with all those familial relationships, all of them failed in one way or another, I thought it was clear that Ultron was lonely, and wanted others like him, so it would be interesting to have him skip the one-on-one and try to create a whole new race of intelligent robots, a context he could be a part of... He's a family-focused guy, so his stories are often about him trying to build that kind of connection. I just had him do it big-scale.

* Possessing an entire robotic alien race, after they try to assimilate him Borg-style, and then using that alien race to enslave other alien races and possess them, too.
* Temporarily ruining the wedding of minor supporting characters Crystal of the Inhumans and Quicksilver of the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants, just because sometimes schemes don't have to involve much more than just pissing people off, and who doesn't love a good wedding crasher?

Essential Ultron
Convinced that you need to check out some Ultron for yourself? Here're the four books you owe it to yourself - and your future robotic master - to pick up:
Essential Avengers Vol. 3: Contains the first couple of Ultron stories, including his somewhat loopy origin and his first attempt to create robotic offspring.
Avengers: Ultron Unlimited: Probably the best Ultron/Avengers story, it's the one mentioned above where he slaughters an entire nation and builds a robot army made entirely of himself.
Annihilation: Conquest Vols. 1 - 2: Ultron goes to space and decides to take it over. And then almost succeeds.

Astro City is a town packed with superheroes, but we often see the action from the perspective of ordinary people, or criminals, or sidekicks. Busiek sees his book as responding to the wave of "deconstruction" comics such as Alan Moore's Watchmen, which took superheroes apart. Busiek sees his mission not to put superheroes back together, so much as to use the lessons from taking them apart to make them work better.

Want to know the secret, overarching meta-story behind Astro City? There isn't one, Busiek revealed at today's Astro City panel at Wondercon. He has no "roadmap," and no ending for all the comic's characters in mind. Instead, he plans to keep telling stories set in the superhero-filled city until he runs out of ideas and writes an issue about super-pets playing poker. Find out what's in store for Astro City, after the jump.

Astro City is in the middle of a 16-issue mega-story called "The Dark Age," set in the bleak 1970s when everybody experiences a crisis of conscience due to the Vietnam War, Watergate and a wave of distrust in society's institutions. A collection of the first eight issues of "The Dark Age" is coming soon, and it'll also include the prologue that was published as one half of a flipbook with Arrowsmith, plus some sketches and stuff.

Also coming soon: two "character specials" featuring Astra (daughter of superteam the First Family) and the Silver Agent.

Busiek said he has lots of story ideas he hasn't gotten around to writing, including:

• the guy who used to be The Enforcer, who's now promoting a book about being the country's most famous hired super-muscle
• four teen sidekicks who turn 18 the same year, renovate an old crime-fighting vehicle and travel across America to figure out what their adult identities will be
• why two heroes, Crackerjack and Quarrel, are a couple

I asked Busiek if Astro City has changed its focus from how ordinary people viewed superheroes (which took up a lot of the first batch of issues) to a broader focus on superheroes interacting with society. He said his earlier award-winning series, Marvels, was much more about how an ordinary guy viewed superheroes. But that wasn't ever meant to be the focus of Astro City, per se. The first six issues of the comic were individual stories showing the superhero world from different perspectives, including a superhero's, but also that of a reporter, a petty criminal, an innocent bystander and an alien spy. "This series is not about any one person's perspectives," Busiek added. "The focus has never been simply about how ordinary people see the superheroes but about different perspectives on how people view the world."

He'd originally planned, after those first six issues, to go straight into the longer story arc about the Confessor, a Batman-like figure who turns out to be a vampire. But instead Astro City went on a six-month hiatus and then returned with a new publisher, so Busiek did some more single-issue stories, with different perspectives, to relaunch the series.

Don't give up on the massive The Dark Age storyline, Busiek said: it may feel as though it's not going anywhere, but it'll look different when you read the whole thing. The current second "volume" of four issues consists of the two protagonists, the brothers Charles (a cop) and Royal (a criminal) flailing around and getting nowhere. But the end of volume two contains a development that sets up everything that happens in volumes three and four, when the two brothers begin to change their circumstances.

Famous names: Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross

Crunchy goodness: 5

Elevator pitch: It's like Piers Plowman meets Galactus and the Green Goblin!

The shit: Busiek's technique of focusing on a street-level view of grand operatic happenings got its start in Marvels, and was at its most finely honed.

Life lesson: Superhero angst actually looks more impressive from a distance. And heroes look better when you're looking up at them — unless Hercules is wearing his leather skirt again.

9th Art Review by Brent Keane