Trees vol. 3: Three Fates

Warren Ellis has said in his newsletter that this will be the last volume of “Trees” for a while, if ever.  That’s because he’s got a number of other projects (mostly TV) in the offing and artist Jason Howard has his own thing that he’s been working on.  Unlike Ellis’ other ongoing series at Image, “Injection” (which is on hold because its artist, Declan Shalvey, is very much in demand as a writer and artist of comic books), I’m actually fine if this is the final volume of “Trees.”  That’s because it’s a series that never lived up to its potential.

The idea behind the series was a good one.  What if intelligent life existed elsewhere in the universe, but didn’t recognize us as such.  Which is why they dropped several gigantic pillars on Earth one day and left us to go about our business around them.  It’s also what Ellis has done over the course of the series.

While there have been moments where titular objects have taken precedence in the story, they’ve largely been a background concern as the writer and artist have spun up stories around them.  The quality of these stories has varied a bit, though the better ones usually involve a greater focus on these Trees.  In the case of “Three Fates,” you could take them out entirely and not have the story be affected by their absence one bit.

This goes for the only direct impact they have on the story:  Crushing the boyfriend of police sergeant Klara Voranova the day they arrived after he ran out of their house after a fight.  Klara has been brooding over his death as she waits out her days as the ranking officer in the backwater Russian village of Toska.  Then she gets word one day that someone in town has been murdered and their body dumped by the nearby Tree.  It only gets worse for Klara from there.

Worse for her, not really that much more interesting for us.  “Three Fates” is an unfortunate example of Ellis in one of his lazier modes.  The kind where he figures that he can throw together a bunch of characters talking ominously clipped sentences to each other, sprinkle some talk about metaphysical concepts here and there, and give us an action scene or two and call it a day.

That’s basically what the plot here amounts to as the small-scale criminal concerns feel VERY small-scale and not all that interesting as a result.  Don’t expect any surprising plot twists or revelations to liven things up either.  I will admit that Klara’s ruthlessness in dealing with matters was a bit interesting to see in action, but it’s not a real focus for her character.  That would be her lingering feelings over her dead boyfriend and whether or not his sudden reappearance is just guilt speaking to her, or an act of the Tree.

Howard makes the village of Toska look appropriately grimy and run-down.  He also works mostly in a morose shade of purple to really drive home that backwater town at the ass-end of nowhere feeling.  It’s fine for what he’s being asked to draw, it’s just that what he’s being asked to draw isn’t all that interesting.  Even when the bullets (briefly) start flying.

In all honesty, Toska village feels like one of the zones that Mike and Grace from “Cemetery Beach” would’ve blazed through with the latter remarking that this is where they put the depressives so that their whining wouldn’t bother anyone.  That miniseries stands as the best thing I’ve read from Ellis and Howard, and not just because it was a high-energy action series.  It had character, wit, humor, and an impressive sense of worldbuilding in spite of how fast the narrative was moving along.  “Cemetery Beach” was an expert bit of construction from two pros who really knew what they were doing.

“Trees,” at the end of these three volumes, feels like a series that was always vaguely casting about for direction.  It may have notionally been about the mystery of these titular objects, but it was actually about those living in its shadow.  The stories of those people were, unfortunately, kind of boring more often than not.  If Ellis and Howard ever do decide to collaborate again, then let’s hope whatever they do has the spark and fire of “Cemetery Beach” as opposed to the spent ashes of this series.