Comic Review: Trees: Three Fates #2

Trees: Three Fates #2

Image Comics

Writer: Warren Ellis

Art: Jason Howard

Image Comics drops another issue of its new mystery series which reminds the readers of a Stephen King-like story, but with an imminent Warren Ellis spice and twist to it. Along with Jason Howard, the series starts to take its direction in this second chapter.

This issue picks up where the last one left off with Klara leaving the train station, except this time we see it from her perspective, being unaware of the sinister discussion taken at the place she’d just been at. Klara heads off to meet Doctor Osin who was to perform the autopsy on the recently found dead body. On her way, Klara meets another of Toska’s peculiar characters who seem to dislike Osin and to know about some sort of unclear prophecy.

However, Warren Ellis is conducting the story at a controlled pace. Each page handles a new perspective on Toska and its inhabitants. Everyone has a strong opinion about the others and about the town and it all comes into Sergeant Klara’s radar. What’s new in this issue is we get a little bit of background on both Klara and Sasha, Klara’s boyfriend/husband.

Weirdly so, we still don’t get to discover much about the Trees themselves. Where did they come from? Why are they there? Are they responsible for the twist at the end of this very issue? I’m trusting Ellis, who is one of my favorite writers to give us a worthy and interesting explanation when the time comes since there’s a strong feeling of foreshadowing in a philosophical discussion taken place at the end of this chapter.

The artwork for this comic is charming, to say the least. Regarding character design, every one of them looks like your next-door neighbor, very grounded and yet unique in their own manner. The art contains some dashes along with most elements in every scene in order to provide a rather stylized and pleasant kind of shading. Another thing worth noting is the weird and unnatural landscapes that appear in this chapter (in the upcoming ones, I hope) which are mesmerizing, to put it mildly.

As the story goes so far, Trees: Three Fates may not interest every reader, but, as I mentioned before, I trust Ellis has some good cards up his sleeve which should be even more powerful with the artistic team involved in this project. I look forward to the next chapter!