It’s a hard knock life, being a robot.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Dustin Nguyen
Letterer: Steve Wands
What They Say:
Learn the terrible secret origin of the vicious doppelgänger Tim-22 and what secrets shaped him into a monster.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Over its first eleven issues, Descender has done a lot of great stuff that has kept me fully engaged with it in a big way. Which made me a little wary with the break that it took after the previous issue a few months ago as I always worry about being able to reconnect with it well. Thankfully, Lemire and Nguyen work things well here by essentially giving us a standalone tale to flesh things out before reconnecting where we were. This makes it easier to get back into the groove of the series without running hard into the events that were going on and finding it not resonating as much because of the break. Narrowing the focus down as much as they do here works better than I thought and just letting Nguyen dig into the character of TIM-22 has its own wonderful flow.
Shifting us back ten years prior to current events, we get to see how TIM-22 was brought into service with a middle-aged son taking it to his elderly father and insisting that he let the robot help him out because he needs it. There’s plenty of anti-robot mindset about the elder Crup for a range of reasons and watching how he treats TIM-22 is pretty rough. Setting him so that he can’t talk and is kept out of sight, it shows the way that the robots obey orders to the letter. While you cringe at him being stuck in a storage closet for three weeks, you feel for him even more after eight months in there. These incidences are where we see the traces of emotion surfacing in him because his programming has him stuck in this terrible situation. Crup’s beratement of him is rough, but the loneliness? That’s even harsher.
When the story moves forward more, it’s definitely exciting to get these snapshots of how things change, such as the event that changed everything and how TIM-22 ended up doing his best to survive while the scrappers are out and about looking for as many as they can to collect fees on them. Watching how bleak it is, made even worse by his being a child robot of course, is chilling. It reinforces his mindset evolution even more so that when Psius ends up finding him during one of his sweeps, TIM-22 is a very willing convert to the cause. Which makes the time in the present resonate all the more as he sees TIM-21 as a threat to his position with Psius, which has him going the distance in trying to take him out. It’s intense yet almost comical simply because of their nature of child-like robots.
In Summary:
Descender fills in a little more backstory this time around as it eases us back into the larger storyline. Lemire delivers a good look at why TIM-22 is as he is and it’s very easy to feel sympathy for him considering what he’s been through. There’s a lot to like here in getting a look at the events that changed everything and how some survived. Dustin Nguyen brings this to life in a really great way as there’s such an air of loneliness about TIM-22 before it all goes wrong and then seeing the way he has to struggle after that is compelling through the decay that he’s going through. Nguyen is delivering some of the best work of his career here and the passion shines through with how it’s presented across the board with detail, color, and layouts. I can’t get enough of the world he’s bringing to life.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Image Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: June 15th, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
