Trees #8

by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard

At the exact moment you think you’ve figured out a Warren Ellis comic, when everything seems like it’s starting to fall into place and you’re really starting to get a feel for it, that’s the moment that he turns everything upside down and shakes it like a pissed-off seven year-old finally getting his hands on a snow globe his mother said he wasn’t supposed to touch.

Trees has been something different from the start; hard to pinpoint exactly where Ellis is headed, but damn hard to put down or forget about. It’s like he has some uncanny knack for getting under your skin. When you put down an issue of Trees you don’t just blink once, forget and move on to the next comic in your stack, it sticks with you. You can’t help but think about what you just read because it’s deeper than what it appears to be on the surface. That’s what makes Trees great, among other things, and that’s what will make Trees something that will be talked about for a long time to come.

One of those other things that makes Trees great is Jason Howard. This man is elevating this book to another level. His art is unique and detailed and it just adds so many layers to the already stacked writing. His colors are fantastic and everything from his amazing cover designs to his characters to the world he has created put this book completely into a category of its own. This is absolutely not like other books on the shelves, and you don’t even have to read Ellis’ words to see that, plain as day.

Trees is one of those books that started off slow, and admittedly it took a Comixology sale to really give this book the chance it deserved from the beginning, but if this issue is any indication Warren Ellis and Jason Howard are just getting started. They’re starting to pull the curtain back and they’re most certainly taking no prisoners and holding nothing back. In twenty-odd pages, Trees has jumped to the next level. Issue eight blazed by because the next page and next panel could not come fast enough. Everything changes, and who can say if we’re ready for it?