“I – I need help.”
The story of a boy and his robot is one of the common structures within science fiction. Kind of like the “boy and his dog” trope (wherein sometimes even the dog is a robot), we often see it as an investigation on how far that companion robot will go to in order to be human, protect their flesh and blood companion, and in many cases sacrifice themselves in a situation where they prove their real emotion/worth. Descender – Volume 1: Tin Stars from Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen, and Steve Wands takes a different approach, giving us the robot without his boy, the search for his human, and a technological mystery that is bringing the universe to its doom.
Descender (and its follow-up sequel series Ascender) is kind of a slow burn serial. Although it does arrange itself into a series of arcs, for the most part the series is one long narrative that is most satisfying through reading the entire thing. That means cliffhangers and unanswered questions at the ends of many of the collections, but I feel like this propels readers forward as they delve deeper into the story. Like old school comics and sci-fi serials that played in theatres or on the radio. Which I think is part of the charm of the book. It embraces old storytelling techniques that elevate the overall feel and momentum of the story.
This world is richly developed by Dustin Nguyen’s artwork. The style that he’s developed over the past few years is endlessly fascinating. The base of his linework, from as far back I think as Wildcats, reminded me a bit of artists like Leinil Francis Yu. Detail and refinement, but he changed his approach around the time of Detective Comics and really branched out with Descender and beyond. The attention to detail is still there, but he’s simplified his lines, giving us a nice frame to characters and settings, and then applied what look like watercolors for depth and shadow. It gives everything more of a moody, impressionistic feel that’s almost dreamlike. Not something that you’d normally think would fit with science fiction, but it helps everything feel unique.
Descender – Volume 1: Tin Stars by Lemire, Nguyen, and Wands kicks off a science-fiction adventure that looks into the secret origins of advanced technological life, but does so through the heart of a little robot looking for his human. It takes ages old sci-fi tropes and approaches and gives them a fresh and beautiful perspective.
Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Dustin Nguyen
Letterer: Steve Wands
Publisher: Image Comics
One young robot’s struggle to stay alive in a universe where all androids have been outlawed and bounty hunters lurk on every planet.
A rip-roaring and heart-felt cosmic odyssey that pits humanity against machine, and world against world, to create a sprawling space opera from the creators of Trillium, Sweet Tooth, and Little Gotham.
Release Date: September 9, 2015
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