Review: Trillium

A New Hope
Why Trillium? Besides being the official symbol of Ontario (where the series's creator Jeff Lemire lives), a trillium's three-petal flower follows perfect symmetry and primarily grows in the wild which means to see (or to experience) a trillium, one must hunt, explore -- a wild plant found in wild places.

Despite what he may say, a cartoonist and writer as conscientious, passionate and aware as Lemire does not choose a word like 'trillium' as the title for his creator-owned work for kicks or because nothing else was available. Trust me, I grok how a reading of Trillium through the lens of the flower (from which the title takes its name and which figures in the plot) sounds dull, stuffy and superficial; however, so much of Trillium #1 unfolds (twice) as a search for understanding and hinges on moments of discovery and the search for meaning … of any and all kinds.

The two lost souls swimming in Lemire's fishbowl are William Pike and Dr. Nika Temsmith. Pike is in a psychic no-man's land. He suffers from shell shock (PTSD) as a result of his experiences in World War I. Now he's taken on a myopic quest to find ''the fabled Lost Temple of the Incas [which contains] not only wealth and treasure but ultimate dominance over death itself!'' On the flip side, Temsmith is one of ''only four thousand humans left'' in the universe due a sentient virus, The Caul. If she can't convince the natives of the planet Atabithi to allow her access to a species of trillium which ''contains a unique chemical property that The Caul seems unable to breakdown'' than it's 'game over, man' (and woman). A hat tip goes to Lemire for his homage to longtime science-fiction author, editor and fan, Frederick Pohl, who's surname Lemire lends to Nika's superior officer. 

In my review of Collider #1 I wrote: ''editors Sara Miller and Mark Doyle should have pushed the series creators (Oliver and Rodriquez) to defy timeworn narrative conventions.'' Doyle and Miller must have read my review and passed it along to Lemire because Trillium #1 is a palindromic flip-book, touché Vertigo editorial. The layout of each page of William's story mirrors Nika's story. Perhaps there's something in the air in Canada because another son of the 'True North Strong and Free' fellow comic book artist and writer Andy Belanger pulled off a similar trick earlier this year with Kill Shakespeare: The Tide of Blood #2.

The title and credits page which comes four pages into each chapter -- and which unnecessarily repeats over the final panel in each story --  indicates Nika's story takes place in 3797 and represents 'chapter 1' while William's story set in 1921 is 'chapter 1.2.' There is also instruction to: 'Turn book over.' Really. Numbering each chapter neuters (some of) the thrill of the story Lemire tries to tell. Give credit to the creators (Lemire, colorist José Villarrubia and letterer Carlos M. Mangual), but this isn't some faux linear 'choose-your-own-adventure' tale. Reading (and rereading) either story informs and embellishes its mirror (mate?) regardless of which story the reader chooses to read first, or second. If Vertigo wants to 'Defy,' I would suggest they also 'Trust.'

 

Trillium #1's presentation is a clever way to tell this story (or stories), more important, it succeeds. Lemire does not take a 'less is more' approach; instead he shows how working within a prescribed fourteen page narrative structure allows for creativity and experimentation. Page layouts of twelve panel grids and inset panels on double-page spreads are a couple of techniques Lemire employs, but his greatest strength as a creator is his ability to imbue emotion in his characters and set the stakes from the first page. With words and without, Lemire gets the reader to understand (and take on) William and Nika's anxiety, anger and frustration over circumstances neither of them can control and so each must search, must go on because neither will accept the alternative. As William says to his fellow explorers, ''that's why we're bloody here …'' Trillium traffics in hope.

 

Lemire's cartooning and watercolors are his signature -- only Jeff Lemire draws and paints like Jeff Lemire. The emotion he is able to create on William and Nika's faces is intense, weary and serious. The same deep fatigue carries over in their frames as well, rawboned bodies, worn thin, but still alive, survivors with a persistence born (almost) out of spite. Lemire's watercolors give Trillium an ethereal aspect especially in the scenes set on the alien Atabithi, but also on the battlefields of WW I. For all the harshness of these environments, Lemire makes them look like worlds worth living for, worlds worth the trouble to try and understand.

Trillium posits great purpose. As William and Nika navigate across time and space and as the influence of the alien Atabithians and the Incan Temple expands, the search for meaning (for resolution) is sure to take on a greater gravity. Pike's party may have become pin cushions, black holes may be visible from the surface of Atabithi and humanity may have one foot in the grave, but not today, not yet and that makes all the difference.

Review: It Girl! and the Atomics #3

All(red) The Small Things

''Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,'' so said Einstein, maybe. It's Occam's Razor; you know, that idea that the simplest solution is usually the best. Occam's Razor? Right? It Girl! and the Atomics is simple, but no simpler than it needs to be. ¶ The candy colors and sugary Saturday-morning cartoon buzz of It Girl! and the Atomics lifts it above its competition with the dour and serious superhero set where even jokes about lattes are served with a scowl. Writer Jamie S. Rich and artist Mike Norton know the sweet spot between comedy and camp, silly and surreal. As a critic himself, Rich has developed a strong criterion for knowing how not to insult the audience (reader) with 'wink-wink-nod-nod' storytelling. Writers are writers not telegraph operators. ¶ Norton's art engenders such loopiness that when the script calls for a flying car to zoom into frame or crooks and costumes courtesy of the mustelidae family, it all makes sense. Like Rich's writing, the simple lines and uncomplicated backgrounds that Norton creates contain all the information the reader needs and nothing less. It's not so much that there is an economy of thrift to this objet d'art as much as Norton gets where the details need to go in order to add restraint and weight to this meringue and madcap milieu.

Look no closer than the TV in the villain’s hideout, it has dials. Dials! The 'thunk-thunk-thunk' of those big clunky kinds of switches went out of style with Underoos and $ale of the Century. Details like this 'shimmer' with the retro chic that one would expect from IG!atA. On one hand, it's a gag, on the other, it's information that serves the story -- an important distinction that's easy to overlook.

 

Later on it's 'revealed' that Ferret probably liberated the TV from his mom's garage, the gang's old den before they moved out (and down) to new digs, in a sewer. I use the word 'den' for two reasons: 1. it's an appropriate word choice for where one should expect to find characters named Otter, Ferret and Hedgehog and 2. because it's another example of how Norton (and Rich) create mood and atmosphere with the exact amount of simplicity and verve that can get easily overlooked i.e. dismissed when done with such subtlety. It Girl! and the Atomics is a clubhouse writ large. Rich, Norton and the gang are all inside and they're waiting for you.

The superhero identity crisis has been done to death, resurrected, retconned and reimagined so many times that it has gone from cliché to comic book SOP. Rich is so familiar with this trope that he is literally playing with the idea of what it means to be a superhero in the first story arc, ''Dark Streets, Snap City.'' In issue #3, It Girl is back on 'Dark Streets,' the videogame that she was playing when the series kicked off. Her domino mask can't hide the fact that she's frustrated and unsure of who she is and what she's supposed to be (aren't we all). 'Dark Streets' is a balm, a refuge, a place where, as It Girl says, ''being a superhero has clear goals. If I don't know what's going on, point totals tell me.'' Rich has made the real and the ideal -- and the blur between the two -- a central theme of this story. This dark night of the superhero soul in a comic like IG!atA is unexpected (fizzy) new wine from an old jar.

 

It would be nice to imagine a world in which more comic books take place in discos. Colorist Allen Passalaqua brings a shine and sheen to the second-half of It Girl! and the Atomics #3 that, I hope, is as painstaking to do as it looks; and if it is some digital filter with a cute nickname like 'Studio 54' than it's smart-thinking on Passalaquas part. It's another of the small things, the simple things that make this comic book about breakable ice men and atomic space slugs stand out.

They say 'good' comedy is a stickier wicket to navigate than middling drama. With so many disposable and dreary heroes crowding the imaginary multiverses, it's good to know there's an It Girl out there on patrol of those dark streets. Don't let the (sometimes) unbearable lightness mask the fact that for all its candyfloss and froth, It Girl! and the Atomics is serious comics. Simple, no?

 

Review: Conan #8

Interpretation all the way down

 

Eight issues in and Brian Wood's watch on Conan the Barbarian continues to be about something else. This 'elseworld' that Wood crafts is less an alternate reality and more a loose constructionist's take on a well-worn (and well-loved) character. Wood wants to examine the psychology (pathology?) of the barbarian, to overlay a scrim of reality on the fantasy. In Wood's interpretation Conan the Barbarian is a story in which actions get subsumed by motivations -- not a 'what if,' but a why and a how.

 

The narrative voice contained within its now familiar, torn and ragged dialogue boxes talks about Conan's ''bad feelings,'' and concerns that he is ''loathe to admit'' to himself about the distance that continues to grow between he and Bêlit as the two lovers trek across the wastelands of the north; Cimmeria, it's a relationship killer.

 

When Conan does talk it's to teach Bêlit about the ''fatalism'' of the North and how its people ''struggle'' and are ''resigned'' to hardship and to death -- call it the Zen of the Cimmerian or a kōan for Conan. Navel-gazing aside, Wood's interpretation of Conan is not an attempt to turn this warrior into a worrier, which has become an irritation for those inclined to a more adventurous and less brooding barbarian. This 'Conan crucible' that Wood has constructed presents the facts and challenges readers to figure out the how and the why for themselves. Perhaps Wood is taking a page from the director Ernst Lubitsch, who said, ''Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.'' To put Conan 'on the couch' so to speak is to examine what is implicit in his actions, what underlies the overt and what to infer from what is left unsaid, heady stuff, indeed.

 

Like a couple of grim Marlows in search of their Kurtz, Conan and Bêlit slog through devastation and deprivation as they track a killer (an imposter) calling himself Conan of Canach. In a snowy forest glade they are ambushed (if you call three arrows an ambush). On Conan's command, Bêlit flings dagger into the surrounding canopy and brings down the brigand. The rear-guard is able to croak out ''… waiting for ... you …'' before he … well, croaks. Now, for two characters so out of their depth, so hounded by the black dog of depression that each regrets the others presence they remain far from fatalistic or resigned to their miseries. If nothing else, Conan and Bêlit are born survivors.

 

The Queen may be far from her Black Coast, but she still calls the shots. She tells Conan to go off ahead of her to the ice fields in search of his quarry -- later the narrator will describe Bêlit's call to arms as ''the gift of freedom she had given him.'' As the lovers embrace, Bêlit, on the tips of her toes, says, ''The things I know, barbarian could fill this world and many more. Postpone your departure for a while longer, and come back to bed.'' It's here where the story gets weird, but with sexy results.

 

What follows is a sequence of a nude Bêlit as she rides bareback on a black horse across desert plains to the sea. Colorist Dave Stewart bathes Bêlit in tangerine and muted honey tones. At first this seems like a tasteful and un-Chaykin like way to show a sex scene, except that it isn't a sex scene or a metaphor, sort of. It's a dream or a memory (maybe) or a memory of a dream that Bêlit has been having. Wood has been playing with dreams (mostly Conan's ) from the jump, but this is the first time the reader looks in on Bêlit's interior life. Like N'Yaga's prophecies and Conan's motivations, these dreams are another aspect that Wood asks his reader to explain -- it's interpretation all the way down.

 

Not to mix my sports with my comics, but like Conan, I too am resigned when I admit: Becky Cloonan is not walking through that door. The 'sexy people' drawn by previous artists Cloonan and James Harren have been sawn off and become weedy, spindly and crimped. Artist Vasilis Lolos is not helped by the fact that due to the cold Cimmerian climate, Conan and Bêlit have to spend much of their time cloaked and under cover. Even if that's 'what the script called for,' why draw them like unmade beds with hair that looks like an inversion of the 'iron throne' from Game of Thrones? Lolos looks to have the potential to bring sexy back -- his interpretation of Bêlit's dream is very sensual -- and his hard-edge style works for wolves as well as a way to meet Cimmeria on its own terms and yet, it falls far short of the standard set by Cloonan and Harren.

 

There's been more frustration and little fury in this latest tripartite tale, the wolves and the last panel in issue #8 hint at a ferocious reckoning, but not yet. Some readers may find that this second act of Border Fury leaves them … umm … well, furious. Others, however, should take a page from those hard-won denizens of the north, from Cimmeria itself: don't give up, instead, inquire within for the answers to questions that writer Brian Wood continues to ask.