Trillium #8 – Review

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

The Story: Love will see us through…a black hole.

The Review: If there’s one genre that’s about as stifled as superhero, it’s romance. Between ridiculously prolific writers like Nora Roberts and Danielle Steel, as well as the plethora of chicklit on the market, romance has gotten a bad rep in fiction, and for good reason. No matter how good the writing is,* the driving force of every romance story ultimately comes to the question of “Will they or won’t they,” and the answer is almost invariably “Yes, they will.”

Since the romantic formula is such that you nearly always get the same result no matter how you work it, the only real entertainment comes from the variables thrown in. I’ll cut to the chase: if you want a romance to succeed, you need to make people care about which side of the will-they-won’t-they question your chosen couple lands on. I don’t know about you, but whether Nika or William get together is the least of my concerns for this series, which is a problem since Trillium is really about almost nothing else.

As individuals, you like Nika and William fine. On paper, you can see how they make a good match. But it’s a bit like getting matched up on some online dating site—of which I assure you, I have no personal experience. Compatible as they are, the spark just isn’t there. Whatever passion they have for each other, it doesn’t manifest in anything you recognize as genuine. William’s final speech to Nika is full of ripped-from-the-movies lines, things like, “We’re meant to be together,” “I feel like I’ve always known you,” “I knew that I wasn’t alone anymore.” Sweet, sentimental, and completely unconvincing.

To be honest, I have more affection for Clay than I do for his brother or Nika. Despite the fact that he’s been kept out-of-the-loop from nearly all his brother’s time-traveling business, Clay’s always been unfailingly supportive, trusting and active even without the awareness our heroes possess. He makes no less a sacrifice than William or Nika in the effort against the Caul, and his kamikaze charge of the infected colonist ship sure has a lot more inherent drama than their slow, bittersweet uncoupling from the Ark. The most truly disturbing moment in the issue comes a moment before Clay perishes, as he suddenly gasps, “Oh God! Billy… Billy, I-I remem—” Small reward for the trauma he’s had to suffer, just for being a good big brother.

In the end, you never really do understand much of what’s going on in Trillium. The most basic question of how humanity incurred the wrath of a sentient virus in the first place is never answered. And even though Nika and William take a hopeful, suicidal leap into a black hole to see what there is to see, we have no clue what the purpose of all this time-traveling is about other than to show the immortality of our couple’s love. All this because Nika couldn’t get a rush job on that trillium delivery from the Atabithians in #1.

Lemire delivers his usual mixed bag of art. If you’re not a fan of his ruddy, near scribbly style by now, you’re not about to change your mind. But for those who can appreciate the strangely sophisticated power lurking beneath his awkward-looking lines, you’ll enjoy the special effort he makes for this final issue: a double-splash of Nika and William in embrace, stretching and merging together through the confines of a black hole into a star. Here, you’ll see the artistry in Lemire’s seemingly misshapen work, for his delicate touch and flowing watercolors makes the visual seem closer to expressionist painting than comic book visuals.

Conclusion: In the end, William and Nika’s romance seems like the black hole that unnecessarily drew every other character and plotline into its crushing predictability.

Grade: C

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * To make it clear, I am not taking the position that Roberts and Steel are good writers.

– Essie survives! Hurrah! And, oh yeah, humanity does too, so good for them, I guess.

– So I take it that Pohl is just left behind in the past, killing aliens on Earth?