Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Greg Toccini
Colourist: Dave McCaig
Release date: OUT NOW!!!
Price: $3.50

In Rick Remender’s new science fiction opera Low the title refers to Earth’s population living deep underwater. But the next meaning of low is despair, which is the ironic match of the series’ emphasis on hope. After all, hope and despair go hand in hand.

Heroine Stel and gladiators, Mertali and Zem, head to the surface to retrieve a space probe pointing the way to a habitable planet and salvation for Earth’s increasingly suffering populations. Hope at last! Elsewhere a threat called the Golden Swarm, made of insect-like beings, is preparing for something big.

Along the way Stel psychologically torturers herself over the death of her son, over actions of her daughter, who destroyed a city, and over her resulting wavering faith in the Church of Quantaumolgy, which preaches hope. “My hope was a hoax,” she tells herself.

Greg Toccini deserves every bit of praise he gets. Toccini’s style is fluid, graceful and expressive, very-Gene Colan-like and that is no bad thing. The details are small and the impact is big. Figures move like dancers from one exaggerated pose to the next. The view of the abandoned city Misalt is a first-class design and has beautiful lines. And when Zem, an avid follower of Quantaumology, confesses to an unspeakable crime, Toccini’s facial expressions and body language speak volumes.

Low is not something to read if you want light-hearted, fun fare. The story is serious, the threats real and the outcome bleak. And hope is Low.

Reviewer: Joe Lovece
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker