After a shaky begin to 2013, the year ends in victory for Vertigo Comics as Jeff Lemire’s legendary sci-fi romance Trillium takes the damaged Frontier award for finest restricted Series.
For long-time followers of the Vertigo imprint, early 2013 was a time for anxiety. The departure of Karen Berger, the swiping back of essential characters into the DC Universe, the second coming of picture as well as uncertainty about workers as well as relocation left a great deal of visitors fretting that Vertigo was, um, looking over the edge.
However, under new executive editor Shelly Bond, the imprint came out swinging as the year went on, as well as one of its acclaimed launches, Jeff Lemire’s Trillium, has been voted finest restricted series of 2013 by the visitors as well as personnel of damaged Frontier.
I’ve been a significant fan of Jeff Lemire for years, as well as even though I can’t begrudge him the chance to keep spaghetti hoops on the table with a significant slate of DCU composing gigs, it’s his creator-owned writer-artist work that truly gets my heart beating a bit faster.
After the emotionally charged post-apocalyptic drama of his last Vertigo series, wonderful Tooth (2009-13), Lemire has nailed his sci-fi colours much more firmly to the mast with Trillium, an ambitious eight-parter that – like Scott Snyder as well as Sean Murphy’s The Wake, from the exact same publisher – spans the millennia to look at the huge photo of human development.
From its very first issue, released in August, Trillium set off like a train, taking the comic-book style as well as providing it a great twist to bring two disparate stories as well as characters together; #1 famously utilized the double-cover flip book style to tell two stories that satisfy in the middle.
From one end we were taken to 1921 as well as introduced to a normally haunted Lemire protagonist – William, a traumatised British professional of the excellent War, checking out the jungles of Latin America for the lost temple of the Incas.
From the other end we were flung ahead to 3797 to satisfy ‘Xeniologist’ Dr Nika Temsmith as well as see her negotiations with a native alien race for supplies of the Trillium – a plant that may save the last few thousand human area colonists from an annihilating afflict understood as The Caul.
Before long, the fates of William, Nika as well as humanity in general ended up being inextricably entwined. The speed picks up as well as the stakes increase until, at the midpoint of the series, we’re dealt with with a Watchmen #11-style white-out as well as a subtitle announcing ‘The End’. Then, in #5, one of the most interesting single problems I can remember, things get truly interesting…
Lemire’s expressionistic artwork has always enthralled me, however he’s taken his style a step even more in Trillium; perhaps influenced by his good friend Matt Kindt (Mind MGMT), he’s started to add ethereal watercolours to his work, adding an additional layer of atmosphere.
Apart from the hold exerted by the primary story, the cliffhangers at the end of each problem as well as formal experimentation Lemire employs makes Trillium a thrilling monthly experience. in addition to the flipbook element of #1 – which makes a return throughout the series – the problem of communication between the different celebrations is depicted vividly, including a language of alien glyphs that cries out to be ‘decoded’.
Indeed, the whole thing reads like a bit of a paean to the somewhat unfashionable ‘floppy’; as in Mind MGMT, there’s lots of stuff in the single problems that won’t work half also digitally, or even in trade paperback format.
So, as we head eagerly towards the story’s conclusion, hats off to Vertigo as well as congratulations to Jeff Lemire for Trillium – damaged Frontier’s finest Mini-Series of 2013.
