TRINITY OF SIN: PANDORA VOLUME 1: THE CURSE
Written by Ray Fawkes
Art by Daniel Sampere
Published by DC Comics
Release Date: March 19, 2014

Pandora seeks redemption for unleashing sin upon the world in volume 1 of the series, but all is not as it appears to be….

Or is it? Ray Fawkes attempts to flesh out the back story for Pandora in this collection, all the while trying to make her a strong player in the DCU. I say “trying” because this collection feels like it doesn’t have a lot of story to tell. Fawkes constructs a story surrounding the box and the character herself that turns back on itself so often that it is frustrating and feels like it has so very little to say. The Geoff Johns primer pages are the more gripping than the entirety of the collection and almost doom this collection to failure as they are the high watermark to compare the rest of the collection to. Outside those pages, this character is one dimensional, seeking redemption and nothing else, fighting against a non-existent villain over the course of five issues that feel like they could be a one-shot. Readers never get to dig deeper than the surface with the character, and her lack of depth is obvious throughout the collection. This is a character that adds next to nothing to the Trinity War, or DC Universe, save for being the girl who opened the fateful box. The dialogue is blatantly simple throughout the collection, hitting readers over the head with a hammer with how obvious much of it is. This collection is very verbose at times, and with the story being so straightforward it feels like reading through mud at times. The pacing is slow and, at times, the story feels like it is stalling to fill up pages. This is a character with no back story, a completely unmarked path to create, and absolutely none of that happens in this collection. Each new character we are introduced to are stock at best, with no discernible personality traits to make them memorable or give this story some flavour at all. This story suffers from a weak primary character, weak villain, weak side cast, and heavy handed dialogue. For a seemingly ‘critical’ character in the DCU considering her involvement in major events, there is nothing here to make her stand out.

Daniel Sampere’s art is decent, never amazing, and never exceptionally poor. There are some interesting panels throughout the collection, but, overall, the art is as bland as the script. Pandora does not visually command the panels of her own book, and some of the facial work throughout is awkward. The characters are, for the most part, boring to look at, with the Sins, in particular, a wasted opportunity to really go wild. The artwork feels like it constantly takes the safe and easy way out, never taking any risks and therefore never getting any real rewards.

Trinity of Sin: Pandora Volume 1: The Curse is a generic collection that does very little to build the DCU or establish Pandora as a character of any relevance at all. This is not the best work of any of the creative team by any means, and I see little future for this title outside a fairly extreme shakeup. The surface of this character is hardly scratched and the tie-ins to Trinity War feel wasted, leading to a collection that really just feels like a waste of time.

The Verdict: 4.0/10