Trillium #5 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story & art), José Villarrubia (colors)

The Story: Looks like someone got up in the wrong timeline this morning.

The Review: You got to give credit to Lemire; the man does not let the grass grow under his feet.  On the face of it, a time-travel romance sounds like it should be a slow burn of a read, but Lemire has taken the complete opposite tack.  Not only has Nika and William’s relationship deepened in an incredibly short amount of time, but the series has really sped through its plot points, causing more cataclysmic changes in just five issues than some titles do in twenty-five.

Certainly you didn’t expect that by issue five the whole fabric of the Trillium universe would be rewritten, switching the places of our two protagonists and amending the time-space continuum to accommodate the change.  It’s an unexpected development, but it’s also important for what it means for the story.  It means the temple Commander Pohl foolishly tried to destroy last month can do much more than send people back and forth to predetermined points in time, a purely passive ability of a man-made object.  The breadth and completeness of the reality change indicates some higher, thinking power at work.

As neatly as their lives have been revised, however, it’s inevitable that Nika and William will remember the truth, and there’s a clear answer why they do when no one else does: they consumed the trillium; Pohl and Clayton did not.  It begs the question of what exactly are these flowers and where do they come from?  How can they simultaneously serve as a universal remedy, a catalyst for profoundly effective alien rituals, and a safeguard against the effects of a fundamental change in the universe?

And what about Delinis, the scientist from the future who wound up in the past, brain-dead?  He, too, seems to have some latent memory of how things used to be (“I—I know you,” he says to William) as well as an instinct for how to set things right (“She can save him…only she can save him…”).  But did he also consume the trillium?  Or is he simply the tool of the same power that wrought these changes in the first place.

While these questions remain outstanding, it’s interesting to see how exactly the different periods have changed as a result of the big timestream kablooey.  Technology in the 1920s has advanced significantly, mainly in the people’s highly implausible choice of travel, though it’s not explicitly stated that this is the result of “artifacts” (e.g., Nika’s old spacesuit) newly discovered in this era.  WWI has altered from your usual conflict of nations to one between species, as we get repeated references to “the Blues,” presumably a reference to the Atabithians also caught up in the destruction of their temple.

The future is, in contrast, virtually unchanged except in one respect, which may prove to be important later.  While the Caul remain an impending threat for the colonists, their strategic response to the virus invaders has changed.  Notice that at no point does anyone mention trillium; rather than fighting the Caul, the colonists are now focused on escape, stating that “the Ark is close [to completion].”

There is one point of execution in this issue that is noticeable and irritating enough to damage its overall quality, and that is Nika’s addled habit of repeating after all the other characters.  It’s basically a shortcut to get them to continue on with their exposition while maintaining a semblance of conversation, and it gets very old, very fast: “The war?”  “The exhibition?”  “We-we were there?  Together?  We were in the jungle?  In the war?” “Secrets?”  “You’re going back?”

I once saw a cook on TV refer to a dish she made this way: “She ain’t pretty, but she’s good!”  I could say the same of Lemire’s art.  While all the characters do end up looking like they just came from a traumatizing accident, their expressions and body language are well-rendered, with no exaggeration, and the flow of the story is always consistent and smooth.  You could do worse even when the artist has a more conventionally attractive style.  A word on the coloring: Lemire should consider having Villarrubia do the work solo from now on because his bolder, darker shades help Lemire’s scraggly lines stand out far better than Lemire’s own watercolor washes.

Conclusion: With plenty of material to occupy your mind even when the action has quieted down, this is how a solid issue from a Vertigo series should look like.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Essie is probably the most awesome A.I. ever.  “William, may I speak bluntly?”

“When do you ever not, Essie?”

“Touché.”