DescenDer

Imagine a parallel universe where people were just as enraptured by the release of a new comic as they were a summer blockbuster. In this universe Descender, the ongoing sci-fi comic from writer Jeff Lemire and artist Dustin Nguyen, would be everywhere you turned. I’ve been thinking about this more since the release of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2, a film about a group of intergalactic misfits. Descender has a similar vibe, with characters that are just as vibrant and a setting just as dazzling. The main character is TIM-21, a young android who was created to be a companion for lonely children. He is joined by Bandit, a robot dog that has a screen with flashing emojis for facial expressions (squee!), and a huge industrial robot called Driller, whose size belies fierce loyalty and a tender disposition.

The world that Lemire crafts around these characters is a honeycomb of planets and different species. After years in cryosleep, TIM wakes up on a former mining planet to discover that all of the inhabitants are dead. And this isn’t the only danger. In the years that TIM has been asleep, androids have been outlawed and routinely executed after giant robots almost wiped out the planets of the galactic federation. Elements of Descender are liberally borrowed from Spielberg’s AI, from the child android trying to find his family to a planet where robots are forced to fight to the death. But the characters are created with such heart, it’s easy to forgive the similarities. TIM soon teams up with Captain Telsa, a blue alien with a rebellious streak, and the cowardly scientist who created the TIM model. It’s as strange and ethereal as The Wizard Of Oz in space. Just as importantly, Lemire asks pertinent questions about the future of AI. Will we respect the new life that we’ve created or feel threatened? And what is our responsibility to a machine that we’ve designed to love? Lemire’s writing is spectacular, and he finds the perfect partner in Nguyen, who paints Descender in a soft palette of dreamy watercolours and shapes that swish on the page. This isn’t a style that’s associated with dystopian sci-fi, which often tries to evoke the hard angles and cold sheen of technology. Yet this aesthetic perfectly captures the whimsy at Descender’s heart, of a little boy who just wants to go home and ultimately find a family who will love him.

Scientists built a Kimberley robot once. It was boxed for being too evil.