Remember when you were younger and you swiped one of your dads Coors Lite’s from the fridge and took a swig? Remember how you almost threw up and hated the taste of beer? But as you got older you found your taste buds had changed and your quite enjoyed a frosty cold one after a long day of work? Where am I going with all this?

Well, Jeff Lemire is the Coors Lite of comics.

You see as youngsters we read comics because we liked seeing our favorite hero beat up the bad guys and swing from skyscrapers in awesome two page spreads, but as we got older those simple stories just weren’t enough to sustain our interest in comic books and we needed something “stronger” to wet our appetite. We started turning to the Alan Moore’s and the Grant Morrison’s to intoxicate us with their dazzling stories of those same heroes we loved as a kid but with a new, fresh outlook on them – a new “formula” so to speak. These writers could appeal to our adult sensibilities and at the same time massage that inner-child ALL comic book collectors have. We soon become addicted and couldn’t get enough and sought out other like-minded comic writers to satiate our urges.

Enter Jeff Lemire. He has, in his relatively short time in comics, produced some of the finest works to be found out there in your Local Comic Book Shop – Sweet Tooth, Essex County, Animal Man, and the extraordinary graphic novel The Underwater Welder – these are big boy comics. These are, you could say, an acquired taste – something that if you were 12 would repulse you, just like that first drink of beer.

If Justice League is in your Top 5 best comics then you may want to steer clear of Trillium – this isn’t for you. But if you own a copy of the movie “Crumb” and think “Dark Night Returns” is THE greatest comic book to ever be produced, then you will love Trillium.

The story Lemire tells here is being billed as “the last love story” which already peaked my interest – What do you mean The Last Love Story? Well in the opening pages of this comic we see the year is 3797 and mankind has been pushed to the outer reaches of space, fleeing from something called The Caul, which as almost eradicated the human race. There are only four thousand human beings left in the universe – our Extinction Level Event is here! But there is hope in a flower called Trillium. The Caul is unable to break down the chemical properties of Trillium and therefore may be the key to saving the Human Race.

This is heavy shit. Our guide in the very far future is Dr. Nika Tensmith and she is one of the few people left determined to make a last stand against The Caul and do whatever it takes to save mankind. Through a series of events Nika finds herself ingesting some Trillium at some kind of ancient looking temple. She enters the temple and comes out on the other side – quite literally, ON THE OTHER SIDE – you gotta flip the comic over and read the second story and see how Nika’s story intersects with this second one that takes place in the year 1920 and is about a scientist name William who is on an expedition to the Amazon rain forest. There he hopes to discover the forbidden temple of the Incas! This forbidden temple looks a lot like the one we saw Nika wonder into during the first story. And yeah, you guessed it, at the end of William’s story he crosses paths with Nika.

Whew, this is awesome and I can’t wait to see the love affair blossom between these two time-crossed souls. In just 28 pages Jeff Lemire manages to impart on each of his two lead characters a sense of legitimacy and heartfelt urgency that we find immediately compelling and want to stay in their two worlds for an extended period of time – its just too bad this is only an 8 part series cause I am already in love.

So, pull up a bar stool and order up a round of Trillium – it goes down smooth.

POTW!