Written by: Jeff Lemire
Art by: Dustin Nguyen
Publisher: Image
Only five issues in, Descender is already my favourite title on the market right now and with 23 more issues planned it is sure to win many more readers over with its intriguing mystery, loveable characters and breath-taking art.
The plot revolves around Tim-21, a companion droid (think David from the film A.I.) that may hold the key to uncovering secrets behind the attacks on the core worlds of the United Galactic Council (UGC), that occurred ten years ago by the Collectors (mysterious, behemoth robots that vanished after their attack). Unfortunately, the UGC aren’t the only ones looking for Tim as after the Collector attacks humanity turned on robots and mercenaries called Scrappers, who are responsible for destroying most of the robots in the UGC, have been ordered to hunt Tim and his companions down.
In the penultimate issue of the first arc Tim-21 et al. are taken by the scrappers that captured them in the previous issue to the planet of Gnish, which consists entirely of robot hating pig men (seriously, their leader looks like a cross between Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda and Porky Minch from Mother 2 & 3). Tim-21, Telsa and Dr. Quon are then all taken away for interrogation while Driller, Bandit and the still unnamed UGC piolet are taken to fight in the arenas for their lives. It’s a cool, dramatic sequence studded with action and revelations but I find myself getting tired of Tim-21 not doing anything. This might be because when I started the series I thought of him as Astro Boy (the original super fighting robot) but really, when you get down to it, Tim-21 is just a young boy how’s recently lost his family; he’s scared and alone.
The story then cuts away to focus on matters at planet Niyrata, the capital of the UGC, and we learn of a war that has been going on between the UGC and Gnish since the Harvester invasion. The focus here is primarily on the commander of the UGC and shows him to be a stern no-nonsense man and he lays out the reason why the UGC are so interested in Tim-21 which shocked me. Here we also got more insight into how the UGC makes decisions, through predictions made by a race of trained psychics and it’s telling us little details like this that I enjoy Descender so much. I really like that in this issue we finally get to see some of the planets that were always mentioned in the back of the first three issues (until they were cleared to make space for the fan mail section- Lost In Transmission). By far the most interesting point in this issue for me, when the presence of a mole in the UGC was revealed that wasn’t reporting to Gnish but a third party altogether, makes me look forward to future arcs that we have ahead.
I’m afraid I can’t go into any worthwhile character development or interactions that occur this issue without major spoiler so I thought I’d focus on one of the main characters, namely Driller.
Driller is by far my favourite character in this series, despite having the least variety in lines (‘Driller a killer. Driller a real killer,’). Driller seems ridiculously fast for someone his size and has all the strength of a bulldozer. Unfortunately Driller is very dim (a hammer hardly needs to be able to ponder secrets of the cosmos), and it is this that gives it its charm; it balances out Driller’s violent temper, it causes it to have short and succinct speech which gives rise to the line I love so much, ‘Driller a killer. Driller a real killer.’ ’ Furthermore, Driller is aware of its short comings, which it constantly chastises itself for and this gives credence to his hatred of the ‘hrrmans’ that made it this way as well as making it dependant on Tim, who he recognises as being more intelligent. However, In the hostile environment of Gnish Driller comes into his own, especially in the arena where he works hard to protect bandit and the unnamed ‘ugly hume’ pilot despite his prejudices. I’m also a big fan of Driller’s dry humour and would agree to anyone that aligned him alongside The Thing from Fantastic Four.
The art is what initially got me turned onto this series and it has only got better as it goes on, to the point where I would feel comfortable holding most of it to the same level as Alex Ross’ art. Dustin Nguyen’s line art conveys emotions perfectly and his skill with water colours is able to make a nearly entirely white room have character and texture. I live for Dustin Nguyen’s illustrations of space and they are something to behold; I was hooked with the first double spread in #1, showing the collector towering over a planet. Due to the nature of the medium, however, detail is quickly lost from characters (sometimes to the point of them appearing as crude doodles with blobs of paint) once we move a few meters away from them, such as when focus is on another character. The beautiful, subdued water colours often clash with the bold, striking text used for onomatopoeia throughout this series, although these are both minor issues.
Overall I think Descender is a great read, which I believe is under appreciated and would widely recommend as it is only going to get better as the story and characters develop.
