Descender, Vol. 4: Orbital Mechanics

Generally, I loved the entire story (even though it's technically not over). I think the characters are well-rounded and all have well developed motivations, the plot twist was unexpected and the overall pacing of the story was great.

But I was a bit annoyed with one thing, and since that thing is a huge spoiler, I decided to hide the entire review.

The whole idea that the destruction caused by the “Harvesters” is supposed to be a warning is utterly ridiculous. How do you do a “warning” without an actual warning? Isn't the point of warning to tell people that bad things are gonna happen if they do something? What exactly did Descenders expect by killing a bunch of people?

My main argument is this - they are acting irrationally and are basing their actions on emotional judgement.

Humanity are mistreating machines, but we're never shown any resistance from them, no one is speaking up. For a human who grew up not knowing that machines have feelings and that treating them like things is wrong, this is not an obvious conclusion to reach. Empathy to other life forms can be easily severed by stereotyping, objectification and promotion of a supposed benefit of the current arrangement for both parties involved. These are some of the reasons why so little people opposed slavery in the 19th century US.

Now back to the story. I'm going to make an assumption that Descenders wanted humans to stop abusing machinekind. The issue of AI rights is one of my favorite topics in sci-fi and I love stories that go deeper into the feelings and experiences of artificial people, which is one of the things I love so much about this comic. This is also the reason why I am appalled by the method Descenders use. How in the world would an intelligent, rational beings ever think that killing millions of people would help save machinekind from oppression, when you don't give them any clue that that is the reason you're killing them? Isn't retaliation the most obvious response from an emotional and irrational creatures who already treat machines as lesser beings? If Descenders really wanted to help machinekind, they would never do anything like that.

This, then, brings me back to one of my original statements - that Descenders are not as rational as the reader is led to believe. Otherwise their actions make no sense.

Alright, so let's say they are irrational and they are angry at humans for mistreating machines. They don't have to be rational and bad choices of characters is one of the things that moves the plot forward and creates drama. So normally, I wouldn't even complain about this, if the whole situation wasn't presented as humans' fault.

Most stories with a moral have a character, whose point of view the reader is supposed to agree with. In this case, our moral compass is Tim 21. So the problem is that the moral compass never actually argues that what Descenders did (and what they were about to do!) was inhumane. Instead, he agrees that humans are at fault and promises that they will do better. And this is exactly what I hate about this comic. It is the only thing I hate, but it's a huge disappointment.

The moral message is super annoying, and it isn't even original. It's the same moral fallacy that appears in the Bible and because we as a culture decided that the Bible is for some reason a suitable moral guide, this kind of f*cked-up crap appears everywhere. The simple and obvious idea that just because someone is “all-wise” and “all-powerful” doesn't mean they have the right to kill people suddenly becomes less obvious when we deal with characters that present themselves as gods. And that's what the Descenders are presented as. And that's why so many readers might easily forgive them the genocide they caused. The Abrahamic God does all sorts of crimes against humanity, abuses his power any time he can and cruelly punishes humans for petty things, but we as a culture decided that was ok because he's “God”.

Ugh, all this ranting made me forget about another thing I wasn't too happy about - the addition of magic into the universe of Descender. It is something that Jeff Lemire is super excited about, but I am not a fan of magic and if it's gonna be the central point of Ascender, I'm not too enthusiastic about picking it up.