Title: Trillium
Author: Jeff Lemire
Publication Date: August 12, 2014
Synopsis: Award-winning and fan favorite comics creator Jeff Lemire spins the tale of two star-crossed loved through space in time in Trillium!
It's the year 3797, and botanist Nika Temsmith is researching a strange species on a remote science station near the outermost rim of colonized space.
It's the year 1921, and renowned English explorer William Pike leads an expedition into the dense jungles of Peru in search of the fabled "Lost Temple of the Incas," an elusive sanctuary said to have strange healing properties.
Two disparate souls separated by thousands of years and hundreds of millions of miles. Yet they will fall in love and, as a result, bring about the end of the universe. Even though reality is unraveling all around them, nothing can pull them apart. This isn't just a love story, it's the LAST love story ever told.
Collects Trillium #1-8.
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Review: This comic sounds like it should be epic, right? Star-crossed lovers, space, a botanist researching a strange plant species in the future and an explorer in the jungle in the past? I mean, this sounds like it should be one of the most exciting comics I've ever read! But sadly... it just wasn't well executed in my opinion.
The artwork is really interesting, and I think that was part of the reason that I kept reading even when the plot failed to hold my attention. The colors are often bold and eye-catching, and everything looks like a sketch. There are no really defined lines, and I think that that led to a really interesting effect. Especially since quite a bit of the store takes place in the jungle and space, which are typically pretty undefined spaces. I would be interested in looking in to more of Lemire's work just for the art.
But then there's the plot. And if I hadn't read the synopsis, I honestly would have had very little idea about what was happening. It's not especially clear that Nika is a botanist - she just goes to this place on this planet and eats a flower and then things get crazy. I mean, she doesn't even understand half of what these strange blue people say, but she eats their flowers anyway! Didn't anyone ever tell you not to eat things handed to you by strangers?
I also was no feeling the romance and the star-crossed lovers at all. There's a point somewhere near the end where there's a mention about only knowing each other a few hours, but somehow we're still supposed to believe that Nika and William are in love and that their fates are intertwined? They're not even from the same time or place! I just couldn't get behind their love story, and I was really disappointed by that.
Another thing that kind of bothered me, and maybe it's just because I was reading it on a computer, was that the frames were all over the place sometimes. Some would be sideways and others were upside down and it was really hard to read on my computer screen. There were also some frames that had SO many words. I felt like it was one of those bad PowerPoint presentations that have paragraphs of text on one slide and make everyone sitting through the presentation hate the whole thing. I think the art should tell the majority of the story in a comic book, and it was just so hard to get through all of the text.
I'm not really sure who to recommend this comic book too since I didn't really enjoy it. Maybe someone looking for interesting artwork? Or someone who enjoys stories about star-crossed lovers and space? Because even though this story wasn't for me, that's not to say that someone else - maybe you! - would enjoy it immensely. I think it had potential but just fell short, so I'd give it a 2/5.
--Ashley
