Review by Karl Verhoven
Ascender is a complete story over eighteen chapters and best read that way either in hardcover as Ascender Deluxe Edition or the paperback Ascender Compendium.
However, for anyone on a limited budget used copies of the four paperbacks come reasonably priced, and if you’re continuing from The Haunted Galaxy you’ll know ten year old Mila is now in the company of Telsa and Helda aboard a boat heading for a spacecraft. Meanwhile the galaxy’s ruler Mother practices the personal approach to oppression, and has heard a prediction to beware a dog with a backwards tongue. She’s made the connection with a robot dog.
Moreso than the previous volume, Jeff Lemire mixes past and present for The Dead Sea, somewhat a literal title, by the way. In the present there’s a prolonged chase across that sea, and for the first time we see the odious Mother as somewhat vulnerable. That applies even more in the past, where we see what formed her. Or was she always that way and just biding her time? It’s cleverly written. “Magic was everywhere. It was everything”, we learn, “It wasn’t just a secret that had to hide in a shack conjuring minor spells”. And now it’s back.
The visit back to Mother’s past occupies near enough an entire chapter, and whether by Lemire or Dustin Nguyen’s intent it’s portrayed as a murky place for murky deeds, often bereft of colour. Just, look, though, what Nguyen does with the sample art. So few lines, yet such powerful expressions. So little colour, yet so precisely applied, and a magnificent impact. So many other pages here are more immediate, but nowhere is the accumulation of Nguyen’s skills better represented.
That page also drops a fundamental revelation spurring the bigger story forward. What else do we have? Several moments of heartbreak, a couple of transformation and brilliance throughout. Descender fans will love the final page leading into Digital Magic. Actually, though, Ascender reads better as a single volume, and your choice is the hardcover Deluxe Edition or the paperback Compendium.
