Trillium #2

chapter 2:  binary systems

by Jeff Lemire

Trillium #2 does very little to advance the plot of Lemire's apocalyptic sci-fi love story; there are a few details we learn from Nika and William's language-barrier bumbling, but not many.  However, in their struggles to understand one another—and in their words, which only the reader can understand—we see the beginnings of their love story.  Lemire is willing to suspend the moment to allow their hesitant flirtation before he propels them via hallucinogenic Trillium delirium into one another's heads.  The thrill of Trillium may ultimately end up in Lemire's well-conceived sci-fi apocalypse and time-bending magic pyramids, but the heart of his story is his lovers, and he takes care to allow their chemistry to spark and their affection for each other to match their fascination.

Although, now that his leads from different worlds have found one another through the supernatural pyramid, Lemire abandons the flip-book format he used in the first issue, he's still experimenting with alternative formal structures here.  The alternation of point-of-view between William and Nika, so that at any one time we readers only understand half of their conversation, and ultimately their synthesis after mutually consuming the Trillium petal challenge the reader to experience the bewilderment of the characters themselves, to read Lemire's subtle illustrations as diligently as his words.

Trillium #2 isn't as mesmerizing as the opening issue, but its a pleasant, sweet breath before the action accelerates.  And Nika's return to her own time to the news that the colony at the edge of the last remaining solar system has fallen to the sentient virus seems to thrust her immediate needs to the forefront.  Her separation from William, who remains in his own time, though he discovers his brother has survived the attack by the natives defending the pyramid, begs the question: when and why might she return?  Or, perhaps, how does he follow?

[November 2013]