Trillium #6

By Jeff Lemire & Jose Villarrubia

Trillium is Jeff Lemire’s love story between two people who live almost two thousand years apart. These two people were able to meet thanks to a lost Incan temple that is home to some indigenous alien tribe that cultivate a trillium flower that can cause unknown effects to those who eat them. Now that Nika and Billy seemed to have swapped time periods after entering the main doorway of the temple, they are working to try to find one another again and fix whatever they did to each other’s time periods.

Lemire has really went all out on not only the story in Trillium, but in the way he tells it on the page. Every issue tells the story from both Nika and Billy’s perspective but the way they tell it is different with every issue. This experimental style is eye-catching in how different it is while still utilizing the common comic book format most are familiar with. This issue actually has some strong character development, but the disorienting storytelling style actually gets a tiny bit confusing towards the end of this issue. Some of the styles in earlier issues were different but still were easy to follow, even if you have to turn the book upside-down or read the latter half from back to front. This issue’s format just felt more like it was running out of different ways to tell this story and the last three pages of story were confusing for no reason other than to experiment on storytelling.

Lemire’s storytelling can seem confusing at times but Trillium itself is such a strong story that it doesn’t take anything away from the tale he is weaving. The other aspect of this story that makes it very appealing and really heightens the reader’s overall experience is Lemire’s  signature style of art. It’s understandable that there are people out there that don’t like Lemire’s distinctive sketchy style but he is able to express so much emotion on his characters that really sucks you in as a reader and makes you feel strongly towards his characters. Even though, personally, Lemire’s black and white work is just as expressive and engaging, when he does a colored series like Trillium or his previous series Sweet Tooth it really makes his style more fun and appealing. Those colors are compliment of both Lemire and Jose Villarrubia, whose combined styles enhance the overall mood of the story by giving a pulp sense  that caters to this sci-fi romance story.

Trillium has been Lemire’s most ambitious work to date and the reader really does get that just by reading it. Both the story and the storytelling are very refreshing for the comic book medium which usually isn’t a very easy task. There are only two issues left in this series, so as things are coming to a close it will be interesting to see how all of this story will wrap up because the one thing you can say about Trillium is that nothing about this series is predictable.