Descender #28 Review

Writer: Jeff Lemire / Artist: Dustin Nguyen / Image Comics Descender is one of the most consistently great comic books I’ve read in a while. Granted, I’m behind on a lot of different series, but that shouldn’t take away from my praise. This story is as seamless and smooth as the warm butter they bring to you for your bread at the Cheesecake Factory. And I’m both jealous and in awe of how effortless it seems to create. This story doesn’t feel like it’s being written, it feels like it’s being told. Does that make sense, or does it seem faux deep? Whatever. It’s just good. This issue wraps up the “Old Worlds” arc. It was a short arc, but some really important things were addressed that will inform the landscape of the rest of the series. One of the biggest questions that it begins to ask is: What came first, human or machine? Expect to chew on that for a while. Lemire will no doubt take his time in giving us a definitive answer if we even get one. But that’s how it should be. It’s not only good storytelling to leave your audience a short distance from the answers, but this technique also puts us in the same shoes as TIM-21. Even though he’s the main protagonist, he’s also the vessel for the audience. We learn everything from him as he learns.

This feels like the end of the first arc of a film, where the conflict is fully realized and the characters start to figure out how they can stop it from progressing. It’s nowhere near the end, but there’s a shift in agency coming. Our lit…