Trigon
1122 - Trigon, a High Lord of Hell, makes an incursion into the mortal plane, overwhelming an entire sect of Homo Magi. The mystic Azar leads the survivors into the Paths Beyond, forming the temple of Azarath.
29 years ago - Trigon's cult takes in Angela Roth, grooming her to become his future concubine.
27 years ago - Trigon marries Angella Roth in the guise of her mysterious benefactor, and impregnatres with with his child to spawn an earthborn acolyte. She is abandoning her on Earth to hide her from his enemies and tries to kill herself, but is saved by the mystic Azar, who brings her to the dimension Azarath. Their daughter Rachel is born, and begins her magical instruction under the wizards of Azarath.
10 years ago - Trigon's daughter Rachel Roth takes the name Raven, and assembles the Teen Titans in anticipation of his return. He is successfully stopped and imprisoned back in hell. He empowers Dr. Simon Jones as his new acolyte, Psimon.
8 years ago - Trigon escapes his prison, banishing Simon Jones in his place, and overwhelms Raven. Together they imprison the entire dimension of Azerath. She manages to coerce the Teen Titans to kill her, breaking his connection to the mortal plane, allows the imprisoned denizens of Azerath to weaken Trigon so that the Titans can defeat him, stripping him of his ability to walk the mortal plane. He is cast back to his Hellrealm.
4 years ago - Trigon and the other High Lords of Hell are left vulnerable when Blue Devil's hellquest disrupts the balance of power in Hell.
3 years ago - Trigon is betrayed by the Blood Cult when Brother Blood resurrects Raven to usurp Trigon's mortal power base for himself. Left diminished, Trigon's seat in hell is usurped by Etrigan and is reduced to a lesser host.
The Teen Titans villians are kind of all over the place. The fact that one of their most famous antagonists is a literal demon lord is just wild. There might be a few other hell-themed baddies from different corners of DC, but Trigon really is something else again. He's the sort of design that really only happens when someone is basing a character on a nightmare they had.
Trigon's Comic HistoryTrigon appeared for the first time in 1980 in issue #2 of The New Teen Titans as part of the backstory for their mysterious new member, Raven. He was established as an omnipowerful lord of hell whose arrival on Earth would lead to the end of all things, and the comics really delivered on that premise. He lingered in the background, influencing Raven, terrifying ancient extradimentional wizards, basically building to an inevitable confrontation seemingly with no possible solution. When he finally appeared as a towering monstrosity that transmuted everything around him into a blasted hellscape, who had complete control over his daughter, and wore an uncomfortably small amount of clothing, there was a very real sense that this was an insurmountable threat.
The actual story of Trigon's arrival on Earth happened while the Titans were being written between two different books, New Teen Titans and Tales of the Teen Titans. One of the two books was set a span of maybe six months after the other, and at some point, One of them started just publishing reprints of the other. I own most of these books, and I lose track of which series is which at certain points. What this does to the story of Trigon, weirdly, is it lends it this sort of nightmare quality. Trying to read it now, you don't really ever get a clean sense of what is actually happening and when, and it all just sort of swirls into this terrifying milieu of horror imagery. Like most overpowered characters, truly bringing Trigon back would be a hard story to tell, but he has made appearances in almost all future versions of the Titans in one form or another. Generally, he's usually depicted as an incredibly high ranking Lord of Hell, but virtually all of those appearances are mere shades of his original arrival.. |
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Our Trigon StoryWe're limiting Trigon's earthborne appearances to the ones he made during Raven's time with the Teen Titans. There is actually a pretty complex backstory for how Trigon rose to power originally, but We actually found it easier to simply begin his story as a Lord of Hell, as that's a pretty universally understood idea. We've introduced the idea that the cult of Brother Blood actually worships Trigon, since that actually makes a lot of sense and brings them into the world of the Titans more organically.
One thing that we think is pretty important is to actually have his defeat at the hands of the Titans matter. Raven was resurrected by Brother Blood during Geoff John's run, but Trigon should actually continue to be trapped within his hellrealm That doesn't mean, of course, that his influence isn't constantly felt, but it becomes more insidious, something calling to her in the darkness as she tries to lead a normal life. We also decided to completely invent the idea that Etrigan actually usurps Trigon's original seat of power. We wanted Jason Blood to have more autonomy, and this was a cool way to do so while also granting Etrigan more power. Trigon is ultimately more of an idea than a character, but it is absolutely insane that this is one of the villains we get to use. |