Ascender #5 Review

Writer: Jeff Lemire / Artist: Dustin Nguyen / Image Ascender continues it’s less is more approach as Lemire and Nguyen reintroduce us to some characters of from the past while subverting our expectations for what’s to come in the series. I’ve said this before, but Jeff Lemire really knows how to write comics well. He knows what needs to be said and what you need to see. Reading his comics never feel clunky, and they always let the artist shine with more room to tell the story visually. It’s gotta be incredibly difficult balancing refraining from writing too much and leaving so much space for the reader to fill in. I can understand how this might be frustrating in a world where a comic costs $4. Ascender is always a rather quick read. But I’d rather have a quick read that values a consistent formula for storytelling than a 5,000 word 22-page comic that fills each panel with unnecessary dialogue. Plus, like I said, this approach really allows Nguyen to take the driver’s seat and tell the story more visually.  This issue catches us up to what Captain Tesla’s been up to over the past few years and let me tell you…it doesn’t look like much. She seems to be a shell of her former self who buries her problems at the bottom of a bottle. But she’s still a captain of sorts. Just not of a sleek space vessel. Now, she helms a raggedy regular boat. She’s still a badass tho. As it seems a lot of her rigid reservations are a thing of the past. She’s middle-aged, jaded, and she’s seen some …