Zeb Larson reviews Descender #12…
Critically-acclaimed, bestselling DESCENDER is back with “SINGULARITIES,” its next exciting arc. Learn the terrible secret origin of the vicious doppelgänger Tim-22 and what secrets shaped him into a monster.
Descender is back with its twelfth issue and it feels…brief. It’s not that the issue is necessarily bad, but there really isn’t a lot that happens here. Not only that, what does happen is drawn out to such an extent that you could cut it in half, and the basic narrative would still work without any problems. After the excitement of last issue, which managed to end the second arc on such a strong note, this can’t help but feel anticlimactic. I will be avoiding spoilers in this review.
To illustrate just how brief this issue is, here’s my synopsis. Tim-22 experienced a lot of abuse at the hands of his first owner, and the years after the Harvester attack were no better. Thus, it’s made him into a dependent, violent, and paranoid little robot, and he’s now taking all of it out on Tim-21.
That’s it? That’s it. While most stories can be reduced to a few simple elements, there’s usually enough back-and-forth between characters that something else happens in the book. There’s no B-plot to speak of here, no other characters, and no interactions from Tim-22’s past that could have some ongoing role in the pleasant. All of the abuse is unpleasant to witness, but it isn’t even the worst thing we’ve seen in this comic, and it’s not as though it’s going to win a lot of emotional support from the audience after what we saw him do last time. Maybe if the abuse had been revealed first, this would have carried some more impact.
Perhaps I had mistakenly assumed that the height Tim-21 fell from would appear terminal to Tim-22, or that the machinery Tim-21 fell into would finish the job. The fact that they’re fighting in this issue undermines some of that prior tension. It makes what looked like a major development appear much smaller. What’s the outcome of this attempted murder going to be? Tim-22 tries to pretend like he got attacked? Or this somehow all gets forgotten or forgiven? In the short-term, I have very little faith that this will be an interesting read.
Oh well. Maybe we can move past this plot thread quickly and back into the bigger story of the Harvesters.
Rating: 6.5/10
Zeb Larson
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published June 15, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
