Descender Volume 1: Tin Stars cover provided by Image Comics.
Reviewed as “your new sci-fi obsession,” it’s no surprise that I felt like some higher power was drawing me to the recently published epic premier volume of the series Descender. In a world inundated by complex science fiction graphic novels, finding a series without barriers to entry, such as genre-specific jargon, can prove a lofty task. For those who wish to dabble in the universe of beautifully imagined worlds with robots and impending astronomical doom, Descender was a magnificent and captivating read that nearly brought tears to my eyes. No single component of Descender can be isolated as the main contributor to what makes the entire composition magnificent. Descender is written by one of my own personal favorite minds of the industry, Jeff Lemire, who has once again demonstrated his versatility by crafting a world completely different from his other renowned works. With masterpieces such as Sweet Tooth, The Nobody, and The Essex County Trilogy, the Canadian cartoonist managed to once again infuse a seemingly common fictional trope with his own concoction of humanism and fear.
Published by Image Comics in September 2015, Descender is still being slowly discovered by the community and is a wonderful lesser known secret of 2015 literature. Illustrated by Dustin Nguyen, the cover’s distinctive use of watercolors demonstrates the unique style contained within its pages. The cover image depicts the young android Tim-21, a child companion bot, staring out into the infinite void of space with a curious pose, indicative of his ambiguous understanding of the world around him. Coupling nicely with the innocent adolescent protagonist, the vibrant colors and soft outlines throughout the story contrast nicely, ultimately creating scenes with harsh white-lit laboratories and desolate caves devoid of any colors outside of the grayscale.
Descender takes place in a futuristic universe where robots have been outlawed due to an earlier attack by gargantuan robotic entities known as Harvesters. The comic opens when young child companion bot Tim-21 awakes to find his entire planet entirely uninhabited. Apart from his robot dog Bandit, Tim-21 seems completely alone. Unbeknownst to Tim, every nearby bounty hunter in the galaxy has been informed of the presence of a robot recently powered on, for which they will be paid handsomely if they can successfully capture him. However, a small group of adventurers sets out to rescue Tim-21 and utilize his unknown capabilities to learn more about the Harvester machinery, thereby saving the universe from the possibility of future attacks. Descender features lovable companions such as Driller, the drill bot who speaks quite poorly and harbors a hatred for humans due to his previous role of being a mining robot, and Bandit the robo-dog, whose face is an ever-changing monitor of emoticons. While the main characters are primarily robotic entities, Lemire explores what it means to be human beyond anatomical boundaries. In short, this graphic novel will make you laugh with its innocence, cry with Tim-21’s hard drive flashbacks and emotional depth, and cheer when Driller’s mining appendages are covered in bounty hunter blood.