Descender vol. 1: Tin Stars
It’s written by Jeff Lemire. It has art from Dustin Nguyen. It’s a sci-fi story with an epic scope and with a story that looks to have the fate of the universe at stake. These are all things that interest me, yet this first volume of “Descender” wasn’t nearly as involving as you’d expect from putting them all together. The story begins in earnest ten years after eight giant robots, which come to be known as Harvesters, appeared in orbit around eight planets key to the United Galactic Council and left them devastated in their wake. Humanity was helpless in the attack and has been dreading their return ever since. Their only lead is in the giant robots’ recently cracked base machine codex which shows that there is one other series of robots in the galaxy that shares their information. That would be the “Tim” series of companion androids, of which there is only one left in the galaxy: Tim-22, who is currently stuck on an abandoned mining outpost on a remote planet.
Even though they’re nothing alike, I wind up using Lemire’s “Sweet Tooth” as a basis for comparison as it’s the writer’s only other long-form, creator-owned comics work. Both series use a lot of off-the-shelf story elements, but Lemire did a much better job of making the characters in his previous series interesting and ultimately appealing. With “Descender,” there are a lot of familiar character types ranging from the take-no-guff female special forces commander Telsa, her grizzled subordinate Tullis, the dim-witted construction robot with a one track mind Driller, and a host of figures of galactic importance with their one-note personalities.
While Tim-22 is meant to be our protagonist and point-of-view character, he’s not all that interesting at this point. Though the story makes it clear that he’s of critical importance to the plot, and he’s an android who can actually dream (not of electric sheep, however) he spends the entire volume following events rather than driving them. Yes, he’s programmed to emulate a child’s personality, though his actions in that regard don’t come off as endearing. At one point a member of the cast asks him to turn down his emotional responses and Tim-22 responds with an on-the-nose declaration that he was programmed this way to better empathize with his human companions. It’s not working.
So far, the only really interesting character is Tim-22’s creator Dr. Quon. He’s introduced as the Union’s foremost expert on robotics prior to the Harvester attacks, before sinking into a pool of self-pity in the following decade. Though his character type is pretty familiar too, Lemire throws us a curve towards the end of the volume that reveals him to be something of a fraud and more interesting as a result. More than the mystery of the Harvesters, I’m interested in seeing how Dr. Quon comes to terms with his actions over the course of the series.
This is assuming that Lemire can get over his penchant for overly expository dialogue in this volume. I get that he has a lot to set up here with the narrative and worldbuilding. The problem is that a good 90% of the dialogue here feels like it’s dedicated to conveying specific information to the reader. It gives the proceedings an *ahem* mechanical feel in that Lemire is doing nothing more than setting out infodumps as opposed to having his characters interact in a normal manner. With most of the setup out of the way, maybe this issue won’t be as prominent in subsequent volumes. That’s my main hope for right now.
As for Nguyen’s art, it’s a mixed bag as well. He adopts a painted approach for his work here, giving the series a distinct look compared to other sci-fi comics. The man has also showed with his “Batman” work that he’s capable of being effortlessly stylish, and that skill serves him well here. Mainly in the one and two-page spreads meant to showcase either big dramatic moments like the appearance of the Harvesters, Tim-22’s robotic nature when he’s surprised, and the dismemberment of a cast member under torture. However, there are plenty of scenes where his art just looks unfinished. I get that everything in the future is meant to have a clean look suggesting sleekness, but there’s a thinness to the lines that suggests the artist was just putting in minimal effort here. Between this and his commitments to DC, I can’t blame Nguyen for wanting to take some shortcuts here and there. Still, the book suffers for it in parts.
“Descender” isn’t an out-of-the-gate smash for its creators. Right now they’re bogged down in setting up all of the details of this future world that they’ve created. Ideally, this should mean that with all of the setup out of the way, subsequent volumes should be much more entertaining and up to their usual standards. So if you want to just skip this first volume and wait for the inevitable hardcover collecting the first two volumes, that might be the smart thing to do based on what we’ve got here.