Comic book review: Trees #3- Male guilt bullshit from the 1970’s

Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Jason Howard
Publisher: Image comics
Released: 23rd July 2014


Issue #1 of Trees was intriguing to me, as it appeared that writer Warren Ellis had the perfect allegory for the modern banking system, a toxic alien tree rooted in the middle of the city that periodically spat poison at the people. In other words the boom and bust cycle. Or, as it is in modern times, the austerity and bust cycle.

Issue #2 was slow, very slow, and I was starting to get worried that this book wouldn’t be quite as interesting as I thought it might be. There was nothing developed about the trees themselves, and the main protagonists were largely unlikeable.

Issue #3 develops the main protagonist, and as is usual in comic books of today she is a feminist liberal pretty young girl. A girl standing up for herself against evil men, you know the sort. The sort of girl that only exists in comic books because in the real world everything in the west is set-up to empower females. This would not be the case if the girl were living in a western backed Hell hole like Saudi Arabia, but no way is Warren Ellis going to touch anything to do with our corporate fascist ‘friends’ in Saudi.

Our heroine appears to be living in a future version of Italy, but as there are no details about the societal structure at all (it looks like now, but with big trees) it’s impossible to know anything else about where she is, or what kind of society she lives in. All I can do is compare it to my own world, as writer Warren Ellis hasn’t given me anything else to contextualise the half-world he is building.

Comic book writers like to pretend that Islam and countries like Saudi Arabia don’t exist, so their silly little feminist heroines end up being all aggressive and empowered in the very western cities that bend over backwards to accommodate their every whim. It’s ridiculous, purposefully ignoring reality as it is in 2014, but that’s what the liberals are all about. Ignoring reality and patting themselves on the back for their politically correct ‘bravery’ which of course in reality is not bravery at all, but the easiest sort of lazy conformity imaginable.

I don’t hate all liberals you know. They depress me more than anything else. The way they appear to be stuck in the 1970’s, unable to connect with the times as they are today and how they are being used by the elite’s, in terms of the mind control system that is political correctness and a childish obsession with race, gender and sexuality.

Tree’s #3 has a 1970’s feminist warrior doing it for the girls, stalking an elderly professor, moaning about her bad boyfriend, and then letting herself be used as a personal project for the elderly professor, but making sure it’s not about sex. Because sex is the only important thing, not whom the professor works for, what he represents or what his agenda is of course.

The girl in this book might as well be a Marvel super hero government spy/agent. You know the sort, a Black Widow, empowered because she is all tooled up and punching people in the face, but totally clueless about who she is working for (the state) and the slavery agenda that every modern state is all about. It’s stupid, it’s childish, it’s politically correct, it’s ignorant (it deliberately ignores reality) and the writer needs a kick up his feminist liberal backside.

Wake-up people. The year is 2014, not 1977. We should be more aware of what is going on in the world by now, and we need to leave this race, gender and sexuality nonsense behind. It’s a control system, where the liberals think they are changing the world because a female is now allowed to serve the control system as well as men. This is not equality; it is just the state further tightening its control system by bringing all groups into its orbit. Females are allowed to be Bishops in the Church of England now. Do you know why? Because it makes no difference to the elite’s that this is happening. The liberals think they have gained more freedom, when all they have done is sink further into the statist quicksand.

Writing a comic book about an empowered female in 2014 is bloody stupid unless the female is living in an Islamic country that is suppressing women’s rights. In Trees #3 our feminist heroine is walking around a western city in skinny jeans and a breast enhancing T-shirt, but when she talks she sounds like a 1970’s women’s-lib activist. That is ridiculous. I’ll say it again, put her in Saudi Arabia and we are talking.

In western countries of 2014 females are largely in charge. They are put on female only short-lists for employment opportunities. Laws are written to empower them, to take men out of their children’s lives and to have them reliant on the state. Abortion is endorsed by the state. Birth control is free, again endorsed by the state. The state wants females as corporate enforcers, and they will pat them on their heads and tell them good doggie whilst further tightening the corporate statist choke-chain around their necks. That’s how it works now, and I’m fed up with writers like Warren Ellis who are woefully out of step with the times.

Do you want to know where writer Warren Ellis is in terms of his understanding of the corporate statists control system that is being built up around us? Check out the words he’s put in his elderly professors mouth, words that say everything about his anachronistic world view, and how he still believes it’s a male/female power struggle that is the biggest problem of our times:

“Do you know why old men like young girls? It’s guilt. An existential horror at having crushed out female intelligence for our own amusement.”

He couldn’t be more wrong if he tried. What year is he living in? What country is he living in? Unless it’s at least way back in the 1970’s or he’s living in Saudi Arabia right now, this is nothing less than feminist liberal male guilt bullshit. I will no longer be having anything to do with this ridiculously dated and irrelevant comic book. How old is Warren Ellis? He must be in his late 80’s and housebound, right?
Rating: 2/10

Review: Trees #2- Watching Trees Grow

Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Jason Howard
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 25th June 2014

Writer Warren Ellis is putting a lot of trust in his readers in this issue. Is he that big a name in comic books that he can get away with this? Will people still read his books, much like a Stephen King novel, just because it has his name on it? I’m not sure, but this is a risk in my opinion.

 Issue #2 of Trees does next to nothing to hook the reader or make him/her want to stick with this book for the long run, unless you are a fan of the writer and trust him to tell a decent story after this extremely slow and uneventful start.

How can anybody rate this book when very little happens? It’s impossible, because all you get is some very slow character building and hints about what is going to happen next. The hints include the origin of a plant, leftist revolutionaries, a magic old man, political questioning about the motives of the trees and that’s it. Nothing exciting happens, at all. Everything is subtle and slow, building for what will happen next.

Is this going to be enough for the attention deficit generation that wants instant drama, action scenes and clearly defined heroes and villains? This book is dangerously close to real life, in that it’s very slow and people are just moodily doing their jobs whilst swearing a bit at each other in a half hearted attempt to appear ‘cool.’

I’m not even sure who most of the people are, or whether or not I like any of them. This book is more like the real world than is healthy. Will people enjoy this? Will they have the patience to hang in there? What the hell are average comic book reviewers who read and enjoy stupid Avengers and Batman books going to make of this one? I tell you this much. I can’t wait to read their utterly confused reviews.

My own opinion is that this will probably read better in trade. It’s intriguing, and things are obviously being set up for a bit more excitement later on, but it’s taking its sweet bloody time, and at the moment everything is up in the air. It could be good, or it could be bad.

There’s nothing great about issue #2 though, and don’t believe anybody who says otherwise. This is a set up book, and reading it as a single issue is a very underwhelming experience. That’s not to say that it’s horrible, because it isn’t. There’s a story developing here, just don’t expect too much from it at this early stage. At the moment it’s walking at a very slow pace, and it’s not particularly bothered if anybody is waiting around for it. Rating 6/10 (Rating is for the single issue, not an indictment of the overall story that has yet to develop).