writer: Rick Remender / artist: Greg Tocchini / Image Comics
Welcome back! I was starting to wonder when Low was coming back and lo and behold — here it is!
It’s certainly been a while, the series finally collected into its first (and hopefully many more to come) trade paperback and I’ve been so hyped to get back into reading this gem of a comic. If you need to, read up on past reviews of older issues here before you jump into the newest one.
I opened the first pages of Low #7 to a a jarring start, looking for familiar faces and finding none. Instead we find new ones, a new location but the same mindset of hope being squashed out and people being at the complete mercy at others and finding none. Welcome to the Second city, one of the last underwater cities remaining on Earth. It is named Voldin and it’s a frozen world that is going through its own similar slide downward, as did the city that Stel and her family called home once upon a time.
We are also introduced to one Della Caine. Della, who is featured on the cover (What a cover! I’ve missed Tocchini’s art and I’m glad to know others have been stunned by it as well — read the fan letters in the back), is crouched high up on an impressive robotic bear that she uses as transportation (and hunting criminals?). She is lithe and deadly. Volatile without an ounce of grace.
And while she’s not Stel, she’s made a hell of an impression on me this first issue out. Our first story arc has ended with Marik dead, Tahjo deserting her mother, and Stel in complete despair over her still very much broken family while the remains of a destroyed utopia burns behind her. This new story arc opens to Della and the awful constraints that are put on the society she lives in, and the absolute awful things she does as her position as a “Minister of Thought” or Hunter-Of-Any-Thing-That-Inspires-Hope.
There’s death and ruin and a lot of bad decisions in this issue but it’s still Low. Next issue we get back to seeing Stel and what looks like will be her arrival to the surface. I’m so curious about Della and who was she before she lost hope and started policing in the Second City. I’m moreso curious on where her story is supposed to intersect with Stel and if she becomes a friend or foe. It’s great to have Rick and Greg back together for this fantastic comic once again.
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Terance Smith
Della is Tajo’s sister from the first issue and Stel’s other daughter.
pondscum
Omg I completely forgot! And yes the art is… Max beyond words. At first a was stopped wondering what happened to Marik. But noe I’m interested in the almost forgotten member of the family.