Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Descender #1
Image Comics
Lemire & Nguyen
Descender is a science-fiction, mystery comic book that delivers an over-sized, compelling first read, all for three bucks. The book has good ideas and is backed by fantastic artwork as it plunges the reader into the world from the first page. The book offers more questions than answers but the comic is an entertaining enough to bring the reader back for more. This is definitely a good book to pick up.
The book gets to the meat of the story in the first few pages. In a universe with nine planets, each gets a surprise visit from a massive robot. This is a time and place where helper-robots are the norm so this development this isn't all that odd but it is unexpected and therefore alarming. The giant robots eventually start "harvesting" people but suddenly vanish. This sparks an anti-robot panic where the people left begin purging the robots.
While this is occurring, a child-companion-robot wakes up on a distant moon unaware of the events of the ten years that has elapsed, thus missing all the harvesting and purging. His humans were wiped out by a mining accident and he has no idea what's happened to them, let along what's going on in the core worlds. By tapping into the news feeds others become aware of him. This is an issue because his "kind" was wiped out years ago. This is how the book's plot is launched.
The comic is a fast paced comic. I found that reading the planet descriptions in the back helped prior to reading the issue as it sets the stage and provides some explanations when it comes to the dialogue. The book covers an awful lot of ground. It introduces two main characters, sets up the status quo of the universe, blows it up and establishes the new status quo. Not bad for a first issue.
The artwork is beautiful. This is not the Nguyen that I'm accustomed to seeing on pencils. This book has a lighter touch. The characters all seem to have a realistic, but dreamlike quality that works for this type of story. The book uses a lot of close-ups of the characters and that also caters to the finer pencil work in this comic. The book definitely has an artistic look that seems futuristic.
Descender is a comic book that throws a lot at a reader in the first issue. It's not often you find a first issue that establishes a baseline then completely changes it, establishing a new baseline in the same issue. The comic book is beautiful to look at and if the story can continue to engage and surprise then this will be a big hit. So far, so good. This is worth giving a look. I recommend it.
4 out of 5 Geek Goggles
