By: Jeff Lemire (story & art), José Villarrubia (colors)
The Story: Never trust a parent who says, “Everything will be all right.” Especially in space.
The Review: In almost any time-traveling/reality-altering story, there comes a moment when the universe goes topsy-turvy for a while. History changes, lives take different courses, things that shouldn’t be gleefully are. Never to fear, however; in pretty much every case at least one person knows that something isn’t right and will push themselves to make it so again. It’s a necessary fictional convention that unfortunately makes these kinds of stories a little formulaic.
On the plus side, even when things go back relatively to normal, scars remain. For the world of Trillium, there’s a lot of opportunity for things to remain awry, even if Nika and William by some freak chance manage to return to their proper timelines. The one that sticks out to me is the fact that William now has all this advanced technical knowledge in his brain, which even memories of his past life can’t completely crowd out. That sort of leaves only two options for William, doesn’t it? Either he loses that knowledge (and potentially his memories of all that’s happened in the last five issues) or else he gets to stay in the future.
The latter option would be an appropriate ending for a series that Lemire has described as a love story—even though the relationship between Nika and William has all the drama of a great romance, but little of the passion. They’ve spent so much time apart that we really haven’t had a chance to get sold on the two as a couple, and on their own, they’re too distracted by their immediate problems to be too choked up about the other. William’s occasional gazing on Nika’s projected portrait is about as intense as it gets.
On the other hand, Nika and William have no one else to turn to for sympathy or understanding in this situation. Even Pohl and Clayton, as supportive as they are of our protagonists, don’t have the capability to grasp this warped reality the way Nika and William do. Despite being just as deeply affected by the changes, Pohl and Clayton remain essentially themselves, that is, trigger-happy and concerned, respectively. But switching places in time has left Nika and William a little more like each other: Nika has grown tentative and nervous, while William has gained a new measure of decisiveness. It’s not love, exactly, but it’s a deep bond nonetheless.
You can appreciate, however, that Lemire would rather focus on the real meat of the story than devising new meet-cutes. But even in this respect, it’s hard to tell what the true stakes are. The whole conflict with the Caul has faded into the background, becoming more of a nagging obstacle than a pressing crisis. Nika and William are rightfully obsessed over the time-space confusion they’re enmeshed in, but they seem to have forgotten how and why they got to this point in the first place. Why restore the timeline to normal if they’re doomed either way?
You got what Lemire was trying to do with the flipped pages and panels before, but at this point, they’ve become more of a hurdle in the reading than an integral part of the story. Since Lemire has already given each timeline its own color palette, flipping the pages just seems like overkill, forcing you to turn the issue around way too many times before you can get to its end. In all other respects, Lemire’s art remains what it is: distinctive, unusual, borderline unpleasant.
Conclusion: The story loses a bit of steam and Lemire’s artistic risks don’t offer much payoff, but the plot still keeps you involved.
Grade: B-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – Call me overprotective, but if I ever have kids in space, they are staying indoors forever. Between the disastrous, sudden meteor shower here and the one in Gravity, I am turned off from the exposure of space for life.
Grade
Conclusion