Descender #4, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen
(illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer and designer) – Looking at Driller’s hand,
I wonder if his fingers can split into smaller fingers. That’s what the furrows
suggest, and it could always serve as a way to do things requiring a fine
touch. What that would be I can’t say.
Dr. Quon patches TIM up while Telsa asks him about what he
knows, and tries to get his help by promising to find Andy (the boy TIM was a
companion/brother for). Of course, Quon and Telsa both know no shuttles are
recorded as having actually escaped the mining colony, but Telsa has a personal
grudge against the Harvesters, and a dad that’s way up in the UGC hierarchy, so
she’s in one of those “by whatever means necessary” mindsets. But her
willingness to lie to a robot that looks like a little kid will have to wait to
bite her on the ass, because the ship is attacked by some unsavory types who
quickly incapacitate all three robots and plan to take them to Gnish, where
they’ll apparently be thrown into a giant vat of boiling, molten metal. Actually,
I was wrong. I went back and looked up that description of Gnish from the
backmatter in issue 2, and it says the Melting Pots are gladiatorial combat
arenas for robots. So TIM’s going to be torn apart by some other big robot.
Unless this turns out to be where all those “Harvested” he saw in his dream
are.
It seems strange to me that if this were such an important
mission, that the UGC sent one small ship with only two soldiers and one
scientist (who will be useless in a firefight). Telsa mentioned the UGC must
have a rat pretty high up for the Scrappers to have beat them to TIM, maybe it
just has people who don’t want the truth about the Harvesters found? Either
because it would lead back to them, or because there’s more to gain in keeping
the populace scared of a boogeyman they don’t understand or know anything
about.
I liked that page of Telsa remembering what happened to her
mother. The way the robot (and also the buildings) are these vague shapes,
little more than light or dark outlines, but her mother is in sharp detail.
Also how the robot’s head is at the top of the page, with these white spaces
for eyes that draw my eyes down to the ray beam, which naturally leads to Telsa
and her mother. The white eyes for the robot contrast with Telsa’s dark eyes,
and also give it this impassive, emotionless look. Which is interesting, because
if we take it as Telsa’s memory, it means she doesn’t imply any personal motive
in the robot’s act. She doesn’t see it as breathing fire or laughing as it
kills her mom. It’s this barely defined shape acting from motives she doesn’t
know. All that matters is what it did, which is kill someone she cared about.
Roche Limit: Clandestiny #2, by Michael Moreci (story), Kyle
Charles (art and cover), Matt Battaglia (colors), Ryan Ferrier (letters), Sarah
Delaine (flora and fauna?), Tim Daniel (design) – It would help if they would
put the credits on a page where the illustrated background doesn’t make it so
damn difficult to read some of these people’s names. Cripes, go to the trouble
of starting to try and give credit where it’s due, and they want to make a game
of it. It’s like one of those activity book pages where you find the 5 apples
hiding in the barnyard.
OK, no first issue at this time, but based on what I read
online, this is set 75 years after the pervious mini-series, and we’re
following an expedition of sorts to the colony to determine what’s happened.
And things have basically gone Aliens on said expedition. The odd shadowy
creatures that were probably what we saw crawling out of the Anomaly near the
tail end of that last mini-series are loose and killing people, and there’s an
odd forest where people see what they want, which as the android left over from
some prior attempt at this same thing observes, is very dangerous. I’m sure it
will be, now that one fellow overheard this and went there straight off, and a
lady named Kim has suffered a head injury and doesn’t remember why she would be
here, or why she would have left her son, which we saw in flashback she
promised not to do. So obviously the kid is dead, she just doesn’t remember it
right now. That’ll end spectacularly badly, I suspect.
I’m cautiously optimistic. At least this doesn’t look like
it’s going to be a bog-standard detective story like the last one. That just
felt like a waste of a perfectly good setting. Of course, now it’s more survival
horror, and the setting is somewhat different, more wild and bizarre, but
that’s fine. I think that better suits my interests at the moment. At the
moment I can’t say I care about any of the characters yet, outside of perhaps
the android Danny, and that’s just a reflexive response to a) his tale of woe
about why he’s there, and b) how rudely Elbus (the tough sergeant type) treated
him after he saved Elbus’ butt in the city. Of course, it could turn out he’s
still alive because he’s working with the creatures. They might be very
interested in an artificial life form, and how it fits into their whole
“nothingness” idea. Assuming there is some sort of intelligent mind at work
somewhere in that world.
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