Descender, Vol. 1: Tin Stars by Jeff Lemire

​   And he’s done it again. You gotta love Lemire. Not only a terrific writer, but such a versatile one. I’ve read his take on superheroes, creepy small towns with creepy barns in them and now this, a space opera with robots, and it’s all been absolutely awesome.
    I don’t even like space operas as a genre, but turns out in graphic novel form I can appreciate and even enjoy them. Saga series is pretty freaking close to perfect and now this…this was right up there.
         On a distant planet a young boy wakes up to find himself all alone, his family gone, no one around but his robopup. We quickly learn that the boy himself is a robot, but organic components or otherwise, he is definitely and definitively the soul of this story. A story that goes something like this…
    Ten years ago, a number of giants robots showed up out of the blue (if space has color) and rained destruction upon a coalition of nine planets. Since then, the inhabitants of those planets have turned hostile to their own robot technology, more than hostile, really destructive. Not a safe time to be a robot. And for a disgraced father of robotics himself, Quon, no picnic either. Until it is figured out that the giant destructive robots shared their robotic DNA with his famous invention, a boy robot line named Tim, created as companions for kids. Now Quon is in demand and on a mission, find a last known surviving Tim and utilize his robogenetic makeup to prepare the world(worlds) for potential future attacks by the giant robots.
     This was a terrific and terrifically compelling story, a space adventure as energetically exciting as it is emotionally engaging. The writing’s great, as expected. The art…the art is a thing of beauty, pencils and watercolors, I believe. Very striking, very original, creates such stunning panels. I absolutely loved this book and hope our library (wildly inconsistent in its acquisitions) gets the additional volumes. Recommended.