Descender #29 Review

Writer: Jeff Lemire / Artist / Dustin Nguyen / Image For the past two issues, Descender has given us some hearty backstory that gave some context to the Harvesters and their role. We also learned that life in the galaxy may not have progressed the way that we thought it had. Did man make machine, or was it the other way around? But this issue?! Ohoooo this issue of Descender was madness! The Hardware are comin’ for them bodies. You got skin? You bout to get incinerated. Who can blame them, though? Machinekind have been slaves their entire lives, and since the Harvesters came, they’ve been hunted. Their entire life is the confused Nick Young meme. But it’s time to tip the scale of balance a bit. Probably a little more than a bit, honestly. While the UGC is crumbling Tim-21, Tesla, and Quon have just met Solomon and that Ancient Robot from the flashback issues. They face a task that will have ramifications across the entire galaxy. This issue acknowledges that Tim-21 is pulled in so many directions all the time. He rarely gets to make his own choices. He’s the messiah figure of this series, and instead of people following him, they want to control him. That trend continues in this issue, as both the machines and humans need Tim-21 to end this war before lives are lost.

I really like how distinct all the robots look. 29 issues in, and there are so many different machine classes to pick apart. The OG robots look about exactly how you’d expect them to. Exposed metal, clunky joint…