With limited advertisement to disrupt the flow of the flip book, I find myself going back and forth, flipping forward and backward, turning the issue to check details and make comparisons. As if out of a dream - and paralleling William’s own nightmares of the war, again - the landscape of this alien world rises, and even the shadows cast by Nika and her rover onto its surface seem unearthly in nature. Certainly, the world of 3797 feels a bit more fantastic, tenuous even, than the jungles or museum interiors of 1921, but as well it should. Lemire’s signature rough style is a perfect match for the anxiety and anticipation of both lead actors, giving Nika and William each a certain desperation even through moments of rest or wonder. We’re left with a single issue that feels like more than the sum of its two parts, as readers are offered the opportunity to begin connecting dots right away. The disease and devastation that overtook the western world in World War I juxtaposes with the onslaught of a sentient virus looking to conquer more and more land, at an ever-increasing contraction rate. The story of the Incan goddess, who is split in two and seeds the world with plants, weighs against Nika’s own surprising ingestion of the plant meant to save the human race. There’s no question in my mind Lemire succeeds on this count, as the first chapter is both intriguing and full of fascinating parallels that already beg for dissection. Not graced with the long form of Sweet Tooth - one of my personal favorite post-apocalyptic tales that ran forty issues - or the done-in-one bang of a graphic novel like last year’s exceptional Underwater Welder, the writer needs to come out of the gate running and hook us immediately into this brave new (or old, as the case may be) world.

Lemire has a bold task ahead of him with Trillium to get readers involved and invested in what is planned as a finite eight-issue mini-series.

Do you follow the man or do you follow the woman? Do you unceasingly search for the past or do you desperately rush to save the future? And at the center of it all is a single plant that could hold the key to illumination, salvation… even love. A story told in parallel, with one protagonist from the far future and one from nearly one hundred years hence, Trillium opens with a choice.

Trillium by jeff lemire