Welp, one of the comics I've been most looking forward to is out this week: Jeff Lemire's Trillium.
It's two stories in the pulp tradition: in one, The Soldier, a PTSD-suffering WWI vet searches for a lost Inca temple; in the other, The Scientist, one of the last survivors of the human race attempts to make inroads with an alien civilization, hoping to find a defense against a sentient virus.
It's a flipbook -- two front covers. Hold it one way and it's The Soldier; the other and it's The Scientist. And as you might expect, the two stories meet up in the middle.
(Seeing as you can't exactly duplicate this technique in a digital comic or a trade collection, it gives the individual issue something unique to set it apart.)
The conceit is a good one and it fits the premise of two worlds unexpectedly coming together well. But the work is good enough to stand on its own without the extra format tricks. I find Lemire at his best when he's creating his own worlds and writing, drawing, and coloring them himself -- he shares a color credit with Jose Villarubia, and the colors look fantastic; they're an improvement over Sweet Tooth, and I thought Sweet Tooth looked great.
This is cool stuff, and well worth checking out.
