TL;DR – The final volume in a trilogy about the end of the world that is flatly disappointing.

Summary (warning: spoilers)

Click here for reviews of previous volumes and what has happened so far.

Meg has turned into a tree. Her ‘spiritual’ human form resides in a giant mystical world tree where other human spirits reside. These individuals have either also turned into trees, or they are those who believed the transformation had to happen and defended those who could not defend themselves from chain saws and axes.

The story jumps from past events soon after Meg’s transformation where she is defended and kept safe by Meg’s mother and brother, Loretta and Josh, to the present where much of the world has transformed into forest and the remaining humans are either looking to protect Meg (the first human-turned-fully-tree) or are trying to find Meg and destroy her.

In the present, Loretta and Josh are still alive though now much older. Josh has a wife and child, and together this small unit has kept the many remaining human hunters at bay from finding and tearing down Meg.

In the final confrontation, there’s plenty of death, destruction, blood and fire. But in the end, the world will live on.

Review

I enjoy short stories, and I enjoy shoestring stories where you’re thrown into the middle of something and you have to try and figure out why and what is going on. Graphic novels are a perfect medium for this type of writing because you have to be economical with your words and allow the pictures to help tell the story.

Family Tree started off in this way. An ordinary single mother and her two kids witness the beginning of the end of the world when the daughter starts having branches growing out of her and her skin starts turning into bark. There’s a mysterious group of people looking to destroy all humans-turning-into-trees, and the artwork conveys the body horror with enough oomph that you want to know where it is all going to go.

And the answer is: it all goes downhill.

There is nowhere near enough in the plot. If you’re not going to explain why people are turning into trees (which they don’t) then at least explain why certain people are affected by the seeds/pollen that come out of Meg. When inhaled, they instantly turn into trees. But do they explain this? No. If you’re unlucky enough to be susceptible (and the chances are you will be) then you better be wearing a hazmat suit, otherwise it’ll be instant bye-bye.

However, what makes things even more confusing is that certain people are not affected by the spreading seeds/pollen that come out of Meg. Both Loretta and Josh are somehow immune, which is interesting when you consider that both Meg and Meg’s father transformed into trees. So, why doesn’t Loretta and Josh? If it is somehow genetic from the father’s side then you’d think, at least, Josh would also succumb to the transformation but he doesn’t.

And then there are the other select few that remain human. Josh meets a man and his daughter while hunting for food at an abandoned grocery store. Josh and the girl eventually fall in love and have a child. Neither Josh, nor the girl transform, yet in the final pages we see that their baby has a small twig growing out of his hand. It’s all random and unexplained.

As for the “bad guys”, nothing is revealed in the final volume that explains their mission to destroy Meg other than they believe somehow the world will right itself once this happens. Their dedication is bizarre and futile given most of the planet has turned into forest and jungle. There is no real depth provided to these characters. Their leader, a woman in glasses, believes this is the right thing to do because her own father transformed and she killed him.

Even in the end, when Meg-the-tree is successfully put to the flame by a bunch of men with flamethrowers, and you see the spiritual version of Meg perish, it’s hard to feel anything. Because you know that even in Meg’s death, the world has reclaimed itself. An environmental coup to usurp power from humanity.

Flat and disappointing given its promising premise. Is Family Tree seeking to be a cautionary tale on climate change? Maybe, but I doubt writer, Jeff Lemire, had any intent to be that deep. To me, it seems he wrote this story purely for the body horror.

1 out of 5.

TL;DR – the journey continues as Loretta tries to stop Meg’s transformation from happening. Pieces start coming together as the story jumps between past and present to unveil the full apocalyptic picture.

Summary (warning: spoilers)

Click here for my review of Family Tree (Volume 1) and what has happened so far.

Young Meg is fast turning into a tree. Leaves, bark, and branches. The full caboodle. Meg’s mum and brother, Loretta and Josh, are riding in a car with a doctor (who comes off like a voodoo witch) in the driver’s seat trying to outrun some pursuers looking to hunt down Meg and capture (or kill) her. They eventually stop on the side of the road, rain pouring down, and manage to move Meg to the edges of a forest. Her feet have transformed into roots and though she tries to tell her mum that she’s okay, Loretta watches in horror as her daughter turns into a full fledged tree.

The story then jumps to the future where the world has been overrun by vegetation and an adult Josh is wandering the wilderness trying to survive.

It then jumps again to the past prior to Meg’s transformation where we see the events of Meg’s father, Darcy, reuniting with Meg’s grandfather at a bar, and Darcy revealing to his father the same vegetative affliction (i.e., Darcy was also turning into a tree).

We are brought back to the present where Mr. Hayes (Darcy’s dad) is tied to a chair all beaten up after defending Loretta and the kids against a group of thugs seeking to hunt Meg down. Thanks to Mr. Hayes, he was able to provide enough time for Loretta and the kids to escape with the good witch doctor but was captured as a result. Here we learn, that the organisation hunting down humans-turning-into-trees is being led by a mysterious woman whose father also suffered from the same transformation. She believes she is protecting humanity from sort of disease, but Mr. Hayes believes that her mission is wrong because no matter how many her organisation has killed to date, the transformation keeps happening to others.

Review

The second volume of Family Tree goes deeper into a war between two opposing factions. There is the faction that is seeking to destroy the humans that have turned into trees, and there are those who believe the transformation is meant to happen.

While the second volume conveys the turmoil and horror being experienced by Loretta in seeing her daughter turning into wood and leaves (and the illustrations convey this horror very well), the story itself does little to progress from the first volume.

Nothing is revealed as to why or how this is happening. There is no explanation as to why the faction seeking to literally uproot and chainsaw all human-turning-trees is doing what they are doing. Do they perceive the transformation to be a disease? A curse? Or something else?

All we know is that certain people are experiencing it, and there appears to be no cure. So, while the story jumps between past and present, little light is shed on why the hell it is happening in the first place.

By the end of the second volume, Meg has turned into a giant tree and is able to communicate telepathically to her mother that everything is going to be okay, and she knows what is going to happen. To demonstrate this belief, when their pursuers appear on the scene with chainsaws in hand, Meg releases a pollen from her flowers and everyone not wearing a mask suddenly bursts into vegetation. Of particular note, none of Meg’s family is effected. Loretta and Josh get to witness first hand the instant eruption of more trees that were once human.

This is meant to be shocking but loses its lustre because the story hasn’t progressed enough to keep me engaged. For what it’s worth, there are only three volumes to Family Tree so it’s not like it’s being dragged out, but there isn’t enough in the story to make me think it is anything amazing. I’ll pick up volume three from the library only because I want to see how they explain the mystery, but I’m not expecting any monumental twist.

2 out of 5.

TL;DR – an apocalyptic tale with elements of fantasy and horror about a young girl who starts to turn into a tree and her family seeking to save her.

Summary (warning: spoilers)

Loretta is a single mother working at a convenience store, trying to support her two kids, Josh and Meg. When Josh’s high school calls, she needs to pick him up because he’s in trouble for being found in possession of marijuana, Loretta drives by and picks Meg up from her school first. In the car, Meg complains that her skin is itchy and shows her mum a nasty rash. Loretta intends to take her to the doctor, but they have to pick up Josh.

While Loretta meets with the principal, Meg is left waiting in the hallway outside the office and an old man comes up to her and hands her a bag saying she is going to need it.

After a somewhat heated debate with the principal, Loretta takes her kids home and Meg shows her that her back now feels itchy. When she lifts her shirt up, to their horror, they see Meg has a tree branch growing out of her and other parts of her body now look like tree bark.

Loretta and Josh attempt to rush Meg to the hospital but a van collides with their car. A group of men with weapons jump out and try to grab Meg, but the old man appears with a shotgun and starts firing away at Meg’s assailants. The old man turns out to be Josh and Meg’s estranged grandfather.

Thus begins a journey to uncover the mystery behind Meg transforming into a tree, and whether it can be prevented. Why are there people looking to kidnap Meg? What happened to Josh and Meg’s father (Loretta’s husband who abandoned them)? And what does the grandfather know?

Review

Family Tree is a graphic novel series about a mother seeking to save her daughter from turning into a literal tree. The first volume – Sapling – is comprised of the first four issues and mixes current events of Loretta trying to understand what is happening to her daughter with past events involving Loretta’s husband who was cursed with the same fate.

Turns out Meg’s father also succumbed to the horrifying transformation, which is kept a mystery in volume one as to whether it’s a disease, some mad scientist experiment gone wrong, or something else.

Past events show Meg’s grandfather on the run with his son and being hunted down by a group of people whose origins are unknown. Who are they? Who do they work for? How do they know about Meg’s father’s transformation? What are they after?

While the premise sounds ludicrous, the writing of Lemire combined with the effecting art of Gapstur, Hester and Cody create a surprisingly atmospheric story that has just enough mystery that you’ll want to find out what is happening.

Lemire instills emotional pull, especially with the short scenes of dialogue we see between Meg’s grandfather and practically-turned-into-tree Meg’s father in a motel room that you can’t help but be drawn into their predicament.

Meg’s grandfather then sets off to find Loretta and the kids knowing somehow that Meg will be soon suffering the same change. There are hints shown in an other-worldly scene where Meg spiritually connects to her deceased father, and they speak of living together within the confines of a giant tree (a tree so large that it is another world unto itself).

But volume one focuses primarily on the family being hunted. The ending strikes a brutal chord as we witness the grandfather go down fighting against the group of thugs hunting Meg to give Loretta and the kids the chance to escape.

Overall, the first volume gives the feeling there is no messing about. There are three volumes in total to Family Tree so story and art are not given the luxury of diving more in-depth into backstory like other lengthy graphic novel series such as The Walking Dead (which gave me a similar sense of that apocalyptic dread even if The Walking Dead has a completely different story).

Without that luxury of extra pages of both text and art, Family Tree has not grabbed me around the neck from its opening foray simply because you’re thrown right into the thick of it without much exposition. This is both a strength and a weakness in the first volume.

Probably the most glaring omission are the group of individuals hunting Loretta and the kids down. There is no glimpse into their motives or who they are, so you get no feeling other than they are the ‘bad guys’. They might as well be one-dimensional robotic mannequins programmed to hunt.

I assume volume two and three will provide that detail and build up to make it an effective trilogy as a whole, but that is yet to be seen.

Time to pick up volume two.

3 out of 5.