"Descender: Vol 1 Tin Stars" is sci-fi at its most intelligent and daring

Tim-21 isn't your average boy.  For one, he is surprisingly intelligent, and capable of processing tons of information in mere seconds.  He is also very considerate, compassionate, and can empathize with those he cares about.  When he wakes up from a 10-year long sleep and realizes that everyone he knows is dead, he realizes that the world he's known is no longer that peaceful haven it once was.  Such are the growing pains of a young android robot.

In Descender Vol 1: Tin Stars, writer Jeff Lemire and illustrator Dustin Nguyen create an ominous and colorful futuristic world, brimming with technological advancements far removed from our own, and they at once capture our imagination and attention.  Evoking (and perhaps having somewhat been inspired by) such movies and TV series as A.I., Battlestar Galactica, 28 Weeks Later and even Prometheus, Descender intelligently presents us with a conflict between man and machine in a most fascinating way yet.  Tim-21 happens to have the same codex in his mechanically designed robot DNA as the mysterious alien robots who destroyed most of the Earth's population a decade earlier. With the aid of Doctor Jin Quon and the red headed Telsa (her hair is literally RED), Tim-21 will try to figure out the meaning of the aforementioned Harvester Attacks, and how he fits into it all.

Nguyen's artwork is murky, giving it a look of a faded time and place, and this style, something that often dooms other comics, works well here.  The countless bounty hunters and assassins, who roam the universal landscape in the world he and Lemire have created, looking for remaining androids and robots in order to capture and destroy them, are as ruthless and cold as any paid killers we've had in American comic landscape recently, and this includes Saga's The Will.  The journey of little Tim-21, kind of an updated and improved version of Pinocchio, will put him in the middle of a scuffle between his saviors - Quon and Telsa - and virtually everyone else who wants to see him exterminated.

Descender is everything that good comics should be: engaging, smart and visionary. Lemire's characters resemble real people rather than paper thin characters, and their quest feels like an honest, grand one.  If this first Trade Paperback is any indication, this should be a very interesting sci-fi epic to follow in the months and years to come.  Here's hoping the ideas and storylines remain just as fresh and fascinating as they have been so far.
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