Trillium #1

chapter 1:  3797 - the scientist

chapter 1.2:  1921 - the soldier

by Jeff Lemire

The opening chapter of Jeff Lemire's newest creator-owned series is stunning, an issue that utilizes the flip-book format as a powerful creative tool rather than an easy novelty gimmick.  The premise is as simple and elegant as it is provocative:  Nika, a scientist from a distant time at the edges of the known universe looking for a cure for a sentient virus which has nearly wiped out the human race, and William, a former soldier in World War I suffering from PTSD and obsessively in search of the lost Incan temple somewhere in the Amazon, stumble on each other at the very site they both seek.  And the book itself materially mirrors the curious temple, as it unites Trillium's two protagonists at its architectural center.

It is a testament to Lemire sense of archaeological mystery that the future of the human race, even the physical remnants of Spanish conquistadors at the alien temple gate, is more compelling than the known past.  Although William's motivations for his almost monomaniacal quest for the temple at the expense of his brother and his search team remain undefined, his story is far less vivid than Nika's all-too-familiar future, the details less interesting.  Nika's encounter with the mysterious alien race with access to the titular flower is fascinating, mostly because it remains as mysterious to the readers as it does to Nika herself.  Her translator is patchy, if improving, and her interactions with the strange blue people unprecedented by the human colonists, and she seems to have inherited some burdensome task from their former leader.

Lemire's artwork here is as handsome as any he's yet produced.  Faces in particular, which in some other of his efforts are captivating if a little queer and somewhat emotively stiff, are in Trillium dynamic and humanly subtle.  His colors, on which he collaborated with José Villarrubia, are electric, a soft but rich palate in which the future world has more variety but less strength of color.  Lemire has also sprinkled his artwork with some very cryptic, and possibly very revealing, imagery.  In particular, Nika's entrance into the pyramid greets her with complementary wall sculptures (Trillium #1, "the scientist": 14), inversions of one another which suggest multiple pyramids connecting from different places or times and at their center the face she sees emerge from her ingestion of the flower.  It is also notable that some of the design work featured on the walls of the aliens' civilization are repeated in the body art of the Amazon natives in William's expedition.  In short, unlike Lemire's beautiful artwork in some of his other publications, such as Sweet Tooth and Underwater Welder, Trillium really rewards close scrutiny of its artwork.

[October 2013]