Low #2

Issue #2 of Remender’s “optimistic” dystopian undersea sci-fi adventure shoots us forward in time. The mother and son of the family are left without their father or sisters and are reasonably certain that the girls are in some form of torturous captivity. The son is the one who has resigned to wallow in grief and take his anger out on other people, but fortunately there is a job tailor made for such poorly adjusted anger mongers, he’s the undersea equivalent of a cop. The mother is the optimist of the family, still. But this issue is all about setting up the son as the angry fuck-up of the family and putting those two into a clash.

The cover image is a reference to the opening scene which shows the son acting out some holographic pornographic Centurian fantasy with a prostitute, while on duty, so clearly Remender is setting him up as the worst, which probably means he’ll find some great redemption later, maybe in issue 15 at the pace this book is moving. I’m not complaining. I think the slow pace is deliberate and is an interesting reveal of the world. It was kind of a shock to leave a pretty intense cliff hanger at the end of issue one, but then jump ahead probably ten or fifteen years in issue two. Now that I have typed out that sentence, I realize that “slow pace” and “jump ahead ten or fifteen years” doesn’t really sound like the same thing, but it really is. The events that we actually see unfold are kind of nebulous in their temporal relationship and could happen in a very compressed time frame or not. We aren’t really given any clues about that. Which is kind of interesting because the whole colony seems to be pressed for time. The lifespan of the colony is an overarching dillemma and there are references to its time running short, but that just lingers in the background as we watch the characters deal with their own shit instead of figuring out the solution to the whole human life possibly ending thing.

I don’t know if this is the time period we’re going to see most of the story unfold in, or if this is just another place to grab some exposition before we move on, or maybe we’ll do some back and forth time hopping while we watch this whole thing unfold. I guess I could find out pretty easily as issue three is in my house somewhere, but as loyal readers know I am way behind on my comic reading and I haven’t been able to kick my comics from the library habit yet. So I’ll get to it eventually…

Comic read on 09/29/2014. I can’t remember where though. Certainly looks like a CTA floor in the photo though.

Originally published at comicbookaday.tumblr.com.