Advance Review: Trees #4

Price: $2.99

REVIEW

Warren Ellis continues to build the suspense and mystery in Trees issue 4 from Image comics. Tensions are running high as the storm promised in the solicitations build with our characters in this issue.

Ellis devotes a great deal of time to Shu, the character in the Chinese city as he begins to find himself, and integrate into the wonders of this city. One thing that the writer and artist do really well is bring out the sense of isolation that the character feels which transitions to a sense of wonder as his eyes are opened to the limitless wonder that presents itself by the time his section of the story is over for this issue.

As with the previous issues the one thing that permeates the whole book is the mystery of the trees, this is a different type of alien invasion one that is slow, insidious. We are treated to a small revelation in this issue that still does not give us any clue as to where these trees come from but, Ellis gives us just enough information to make the reader want to get the next issue.

The art in this book by Jason Howard has a very sketchy quality to it that only serves to deepen the sense of mystery in this book, everything looks very run down in this world even the future tech thanks to this alien invasion and the very muted color palette only serves to add to this.

Trees is an intriguing book, the slow burn of the plot may serve to put some readers off the book but, having read a lot of Ellis’ work those that stick with this book will be richly rewarded with a truly great story, I just feel that we need over the next few issues we need some more information to give us hints of where the overall story is going.

3/5

By Matt Deery

Follow Matt on Twitter: @brujah69ad