As one of the Teen Titans' most memorable enemies, Trigon has shown up to menace nearly
every incarnation of the team, but what is it that makes this demon so memorable?
Join us as we dive into the forbidden history of Raven's fearsome father and all the havoc
he has wreaked.
Trigon, unstoppable avatar of evil and bringer of doom, began his immortal life as a mistake
on the part of the good guys.
Centuries ago, a band of humans who were weary of human suffering created a haven between
dimensions, the place that would become Azarath.
It was paradise built by human hands.
Led by Azar, a visionary mystic, the pacifists of Azarath decided to cement their utopia
by purging it of all evil.
At first, they seemed to have succeeded in this monumental task, but the dark energy
began to coalesce into something altogether darker.
Ages passed, until a sect on a doomed and distant planet summoned a dark spirit in a
last-ditch attempt at survival.
The cast-off energy inhabited a woman of the order, and nine months later, Trigon was born.
His first act was to slaughter his mother and her compatriots, which was the beginning
of a long and bloody career of conquest.
Like many comic characters, Trigon doesn't have one singular origin.
The "New 52," a line-wide reboot of the DC universe's characters and continuity, gave
Trigon an alternate origin rooted in even more potent forms of evil.
According to Teen Titans #23.1, a "Villain Month" special where the bad guys stepped
into the spotlight, Trigon was created through the folly of a trio of alien beings known
as the Divine.
Acting as interstellar peacekeepers, they discovered a world they'd thought was cleansed
of wickedness had devolved into brutal chaos.
After finding the man responsible, the Divine attempted to quarantine him by feeding him
to the Heart of Darkness, an inescapable abyss to which they consigned all evil.
But the culprit was a juvenile Trigon, and his power was too great.
Instead of being consumed by the Heart, he consumed it, thus devouring the millions of
wicked souls the Divine had placed within it.
Flooded with power, Trigon killed the Divine and resolved to blanket the universe in his evil.
But he quickly found that he couldn't escape a barrier the Divine had erected.
Undaunted, he began to transport female humanoids his way, to be impregnated and spread his
unholy soul throughout the cosmos.
While Raven's mother, Arella, had originally been fooled by a mystical disguise,
she eventually learned the truth of her daughter's parentage: the demon Trigon was Raven's father.
Though some on Azarath wary of Raven, given her demonic ancestry, she was allowed to grow,
learn, and master her powers within the sanctity of its borders.
But not even an interdimensional Eden could shelter Raven for long, nor keep her ignorant
of her father's thirst for power.
Terrified of what he might unleash upon an unsuspecting populace, Raven traveled to Earth
and asked the Justice League for aid.
When she was turned away, she had no choice but to gather a team of heroes on her own:
the lineup that would become the New Teen Titans.
In this way, Trigon planted the seed of his own destruction.
Fear of him didn't keep Raven quiet, pliable, or cowed it empowered her to defy him, regardless
of the consequences.
She refused to further her father's destructive agenda, refused to accept the Justice League's
cold shoulder, and finally, refused to give in to the Armageddon that Trigon briefly brought
to the Earth.
Trigon might've thought fathering half-demon children would seal his eventual victory,
but he didn't count on their human halves winning out.
Raven gained her powers through her demonic parentage, but it was her ability to love,
find fellowship, and work alongside her friends that truly mattered in the fight against her father.
With Trigon's level of hellish power to deal with, it makes sense to ask how the Teen Titans
finally managed to bring down the terror of a thousand worlds.
Well, it wasn't easy.
An initial attempt that combined all of the Titans' powers, Arella's empathic abilities,
and an interdimensional portal, put him away for a while, but it didn't destroy him entirely.
Trigon, ever patient, bided his time, ruminating upon the abilities of Raven's new team and
how he might counter them, steadily growing in power until he was able to break free of his bonds.
In one terrifying campaign of violence, Trigon laid siege to Azarath, murdered its inhabitants,
and corrupted Raven's soul entirely.
But the souls of Azarath hadn't dissolved into the ether.
Being magically powerful, they dwelt within the Rings of Azar, holy relics worn by Raven.
In a complex plan, the Titans were taken over by Trigon's evil and murdered Raven, a terrible
act that nevertheless allowed the souls of Azarath to use her as a channel.
Trigon was then blasted with pure Azarathian light, and his soul was disincorporated and
his body torn apart.
With Trigon seemingly vanquished, Raven came back to life, and the world returned to normal.
Good had won … but not without a battle few of the Titans would ever be able to forget.
Raven is, of course, Trigon's most famous child.
But the legendary baddie made sure to have far more than one kid to choose from when
it came to his nefarious plans.
Hundreds of Trigon's offspring populate the DC universe, many of them possibly even ignorant
of their heritage.
Raven wasn't so lucky, and neither were the boys who became known as the Sons of Trigon.
Introduced in 2008's Titans #3, there were originally six members of the group called
the Sons of Trigon.
Conceived around the same time Raven was, they were intended to embody the seven deadly
sins, with Raven as the seventh, representing pride.
Jesse, Jared, and Jacob (envy, wrath, and lust, respectively) emerged as the leaders
of the heinous septet, and they used Raven as a portal to where their weakened father
slumbered.
And yet, they didn't raise him, as you might expect.
Instead, they stole away his power for themselves, an act so evil that it actually made their
fearsome father smile.
They were, of course, eventually defeated by Raven and the Titans, but the idea of Raven
having siblings was an intriguing enough notion that after the New 52 reboot, it was reintroduced
in 2013 in the pages of The Phantom Stranger #2.
Nowadays, Raven has three brothers named Belial, Ruskoff, and Suge.
What havoc they might wreak remains to be seen, but it's a pretty safe bt for readers
to assume it will be terrible when it arrives.
Initially, the New 52 meant a fresh start for Raven as a typical girl named Rachel Roth.
But Trigon's daughter never gets a reprieve for long, and the Phantom Stranger ultimately
delivered her back into the arms of her father.
After a stretch of time in the "under-realms," Raven reemerged as her father's "black bird
of terror," keen to conquer the world on his behalf.
Trigon had, in fact, discovered a certain respect for his daughter over the course of
their time together, naming her as his favorite child and seeking to use her as a spearhead
for future attacks on Earth.
Naturally, Raven turned against him, saved the world alongside the Titans, and sent Trigon
back to where he came from.
She hadn't ever truly been his creature.
Instead, she'd merely become an impeccable actress.
Even with that, though, Trigon's favoritism was striking during this period, and he even
desired to install Raven upon the throne.
As Trigon detailed while torturing his other three children, Raven's knowledge of love,
compassion, and justice would, he believed, make her a conqueror he himself couldn't become.
It's a twisted sort of respect, to be certain, and still largely self-serving.
But for a time, Trigon saw his daughter as greater than himself, if only in one crucial aspect.
Trigon is an all-star villain, the sort of world-shattering powerhouse whose appearances
require entire storylines' worth of buildup, execution, and resolution.
His is an evil that extends beyond his own stories, however, to the point of creating
entirely separate bad guys.
Psimon, an enormously powerful psychic, is the most famous example of Trigon's proteges.
Once a physicist seeking to blaze new trails in dimensional exploration, he got quite a
bit more than he bargained for when he accidentally breached Trigon's realm.
Seizing this rare opportunity, Trigon imbued the hapless scientist with devastating mental
abilities, twisted him towards his own desire to conquer the Earth, and, presumably, told
him to start spelling his name with a silent P. Psimon set out to further Trigon's mission,
joined the Fearsome Five, and began a long and ugly career of brutality, manipulation,
and violence.
However, he didn't actually end up doing much to carry out Trigon's plans, and after a stint
of banishment, he appeared to have been forgotten by his dark master.
Unfortunately, that didn't stop Psimon from using his powers for evil, and if anything,
he'd been freed to create as much panic and mayhem as he liked, following no agenda but
his own desire to inflict cruelty.
Psimon stands as a monument to Trigon's malice and power, a decent member of society left
shattered and rotten by a passing glance from worlds-shaking evil.
What Trigon started, though, the Joker ended.
When most of DC's villains were trapped on another planet, Psimon annoyed the Clown Prince
of Crime so much that he wound up finding out why it's a bad idea to keep your brain
inside a glass dome.
One of the best things about superhero comics is their multiple-choice approach to storytelling.
So it goes with Trigon.
Perhaps his most unique form is that of "Das Trigon," a villain of the DC Bombshells series.
Within the Bombshells universe, Trigon was a German mountain spirit whose liaison with
a human woman led to Raven.
Here, Raven grew up in a small Alpine village, instructed by her grandfather in the control
of her powers until the Joker's daughter upended her tranquil life.
Eventually, Raven rediscovered her father working for dark masters, but this wasn't
the aimless evil of Trigon's past.
In this story, Trigon felt utterly untethered when Raven's mother died, so he gave up on
goodness to join the dastardly General Faora … until Faora threatened Raven's life.
Trigon fell defending his daughter, who buried him beneath a tree and wept for the father
she'd never known as well as she would've liked.
It was a very different Trigon, indeed, and all the more affecting for it.
These days, most kids know the Teen Titans from Teen Titans Go!, where Robin, Starfire,
Beast Boy, Raven, and Cyborg spend more time scarfing burritos and getting into wacky scrapes
involving waffles than they do crime-fighting.
For as off-the-wall as the cartoon is, however, it digs deeply into DC's vast and complex
history including, of course, Trigon and all the terror he's visited upon the Titans.
But like so many classic characters who've made an appearance on Teen Titans Go!, this
cartoon version of Trigon is … rather different.
Instead of his usual look — you know, capes, ragged loincloths, giant demonic antlers — he
wears sweater vests, slacks, and neckties.
And sure, yes, he's described as the "master of the dark, destroyer of dimensions, enslaver
of civilizations," but, well, he does make sure to always spend Thanksgiving with his
daughter.
And when Demon Prom rolls around, he nominates Raven for Prom Queen.
And he does spend Father's Day leafing through treasured photos of his baby girl.
Trigon is a bad guy in Teen Titans Go!, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's a bad dad.
He might want to rule the Earth, but he also wants what's best for his precious daughter,
no matter how embarrassed that might make her.
"I'm so proud. The only thing left to do is kill your friends."
"Kill us kill us!
You can totally do it!"
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