They haven’t attempted to communicate with humans. Apart from some defensive measures and the occasional toxic waste dump, they haven’t overtly done anything.
But their mere presence has destabilised the world. And one day, they might just decide to act and break it completely...
Trees was written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Jason Howard. As per Ellis, it’s structured as a set of three limited series. The first two arcs were a world-spanning story connected to each other and numbered sequentially. The third, Three Fates, is a smaller and self-contained story.
Trees contains examples of:
- Aliens in Cardiff: In Spitsbergen, Cefalu and Puntland - but also in New York.
- Anyone Can Die: Don’t get too attached to some of the main characters.
- Attack Drone: Used by several police forces and governments.
- Corrupt Politician: Vince
- Descriptively-Named Species: The Trees. Except that we have no idea whether they’re actually the aliens, their robot servants/probes, or their ships.
- Foul Flower: The black Blindhail poppies.
- Inscrutable Aliens: The Trees. The Appropriated Appellation that named them is a comparison between trying to make First Contact with them and "talking to a tree and asking it to talk back".
- Loyal to the Position: British civil servant Ridley Calderwood, ‘Permanent Undersecretary of State to the Home Secretary’. He even describes himself as “politically immortal”. He might be right.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Eligia kills ex-spy Professor Bongiorno once he’s finished teaching her, because “nobody can know”. An ending which he expects - and accepts.
- Mundane Utility: Since the Trees don’t seem to care about human actions, Somalia’s president Rahim decides to use the Puntland Tree as a gun tower, placing artillery on top of it for a better field of fire.
- Sole Survivor: Dr Creasy is the only person to get out of the Blindhail incident alive.
- Species Title: Subverted Trope. Not actually about the plants. It's just what the humans call the huge alien towers that landed on Earth.
- Writing for the Trade: More so than most Warren Ellis comics, as each issue leads directly into the next one. There are no chapter headings in the trade paperbacks.
