Instead of a worldwide mystery to unravel, “Trees” #3 follows Eligia as she pursues the enigmatic Professor Bongiorno with a brief cutaway to the young artist Chenglei from issue #1. The scope of this issue is so drastically different from the previous two I had to read it twice to make sure I hadn’t missed any pages. However, I enjoyed this character-centric issue a great deal.
WRITTEN BY: Warren Ellis
ART BY: Jason Howard
PUBLISHER: Image
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE: July 23, 2014
Reviewed by Epic Switzer
The best thing about slowing the pace in this issue is that my attention was drawn to Jason Howard’s fantastic art. Last month I wrote about his detailed character work and kinetic figure drawing and this issue really puts the focus on his talent. I tend to focus on the narrative qualities of a book and there are not many I read specifically for the art, but in this case, “Trees” has me completely hooked on Howard’s work.
I was pretty taken aback by the brakes being thrown on this issue and it led me to think a lot about story structure and audience expectations. At first I was disappointed; this issue wasn’t at all what I expected from this series, despite only being three issues in. But on second thought, I don’t know Warren Ellis’s grand design. I don’t know how he has structured this story or the benefit of slowly things down at this point in the narrative. I have to assume it will all come together and read as a well paced arc, so I am reconsidering how turned off I was initially. After all, subverting expectations is a lot of the fun in storytelling. Never the less this issue was missing a great deal of what I initially loved about “Trees”.
For me this issue really reads as a call to action for Eligia, who seems to have met her Yoda in Professor Bongiorno. I look forward greatly to whatever it is that he is training her for, but I also have to assume the resolution to this plot line will be quite a ways away. There are half a dozen other plot lines that have been introduced and, up until this point, Eligia hasn’t necessarily been positioned as our protagonist or main character. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see her in the spotlight, as long as it isn’t for too long. The scripting and art continue to stand out in this series, so I look forward to seeing where things are going. I just hope the tempo becomes consistent.
Epic Switzer AKA Eric is an aspiring filmmaker and screenplay writer living in Los Angeles. His work tends to focus on the lighter side of entropy, dystopic futures, and man’s innate struggle with his own mortality. He can be found on twitter @epicswitzer or reached via email at ericswitzerfilm@gmail.com.