Trillium Review

Award-winning and a fan favorite, comics creator Jeff Lemire spins the tale of two star-crossed lovers through space in time in Trillium that features the beautiful collection of every issue from #1-8 in this new graphic novel released today for purchase.

It’s the year 3797 and botanist Nika Temsmith is researching a strange species on a remote science station near the outermost rim of colonized space.

It’s the year 1921, and renowned English explorer William Pike leads an expedition into the dense jungles of Peru in search of the fabled “Lost Temple of the Incas,” an elusive sanctuary said to have strange healing properties.

Two desperate souls separated by thousands of years and hundreds of millions of miles, yet they will fall in love and, as a result, bring about the end of the universe. Even though reality is unraveling all around them, nothing can pull them apart. This isn’t just a love story, it’s the LAST love story ever told.

Jeff Lemire’s time-bending love story about two people born thousands of years apart and in drastically different situations who are brought together due to a rip in time is a great piece of something different that I would definitely like to see more of from Vertigo. There’s a lot of elements in this series that would play out well over the course of a larger series. Trillium has been well crafted by Lemire in his third outing with Vertigo (who has contributed so much excellence to the DC Universe) that there is only one thing that lacked in Trillium… more. It left me wanting more of what it had going for it, but lets explore Trillium and talk about why you should be on the look out for this graphic novel at your local comic shop.

Trillium sets up a lot of world building in the beginning of this series. With Nika in the future we see that humanity has been slowly wiped out by this virus called the Caul, which is slowly making its way across the galaxy and leaving no survivors in its wake. Nika’s world is in danger and her people are working to find a way to save the human race by creating a cure for the disease by using the local fauna on a planet that they are currently settled on while attempting to escape extinction. The locals, however, would rather not play nice about giving over what they have. Nika is working on a peaceful treaty between the two sides when the rip in time occurs that brings our two characters together.

William’s world on the other hand is set back in 1921; he is a troubled war veteran that Lemire portrays as having demons left over that he carries with him from the war and is clearly suffering from PTSD. However, William is attempting to bring new passions to his life and is working to find the lost temples of the Inca’s. These temples that he is searching for act like a portal to a series of other portals, almost like Stargate. The temple he finds in particular is linked to Nika’s temple which she comes through into his world.

The story and artwork push the comic experience and the art style itself is relatively unique on its own as Lemire uses a fantastic watercolour style that you really don’t see too often in comic books. The artwork gives the comic a wonderful handmade feel, makes the story feel warmer, and more heartfelt than it would if an art style in line with more typical fare had been utilized. This is one of the reasons that the reading experience of Trillium really stands out against other comics currently on the shelf, and has this feel of comics back in the 1940s which is great as Lemire is building what amounts to a classic love story.

While Trillium brings out the best of Lemire’s artwork, it also brings out the best in his writing. The work inside this collected graphic novel really makes you care about the fates of the characters involved. This is a great feat to accomplish as this is a unique story and doesn’t have established characters that we’ve read about time and again. This is crucial to making this story work since it’s a love story first with a veiled science fiction backdrop. Not a lot of comic readers may see the appeal in a comic based on the love between two characters.

William and Nika are a great main pairing, but Lemire also gives the supporting characters some depth so that the main characters have someone to play off of throughout as William and Nika are more often separated than together. The supporting cast, Clayton and Captain Pohl are great, but there’s also some really great heartfelt moments that Nika has with her mother in flashbacks that are truly special.

Beyond the fact of how pretty the book looks and how well written, it looks there is also the obvious fact Lemire did a lot of work to experiment with page layouts. Time jumps occur often and the mixing of time happens quite a bit as well which really keeps you with the characters and the trials that they are going through just to get back to one another. However, as confusing as it sounds, time is extremely fluid in this book and it gives credit to the skill of Jeff Lemire.

Lemire has stated that he took major influence from Arthur C. Clarke, Moebius and contemporary comic book series Saga. Jeff Lemire created a world and wonderful characters and crafted an eight issue series that has more heartfelt creativity than some long running series.

However, I would like to see more of this series, where it was headed and the undercurrents it set up while bringing these two together. I would like to see them explore more of what they discovered and all the possible doors it could open. But really, as a love story, it aptly begins and completes the journey, while at the same time leaving the door open for more.

In the end, with the initial mystery at the center of Trillium and the way Lemire unfolds his story over the eight issues and the way in which it concludes by the end, you are hooked and invested with these characters, which makes it definitely worth picking up as a collected graphic novel. The concept is fascinating, so if you are looking for a breather from more action heavy, power driven fare, give Trillium a run. You won’t be disappointed.