Low Review

Low

writer- Rick Remender

artist- Greg Tocchini

Low is a fantastic voyage into the minds of writer, Rick Remender and artist, Greg Tocchini. In our distant future, the sun will expand and consume the Earth long before it goes super nova. Radiation and heat will destroy the surface and cities will be built beneath the sea to accommodate our continual existence. Rick Remender knows this, and Low is his answer to such apocalyptic, yet scientific notions.

Sel Cain is the main character of this epic undersea adventure. With her husband dead, her daughters lost to pirates, and her son sinking into his own depths of personal desperation, Sel continues to have faith that her family will be reunited and that humanity will carry on. She's the harbinger of hope in a world that is destined to die, and that hope is likely to get her killed.

Currently, Image is home to some of the most creative and innovative titles in comics today. And in an industry where we've been reading the same old heroes and villains for over 70 years, Low is a cool glass of water in the melting heat of summer. Image made a very smart move bringing Rick Remender in. His work on Marvel's Uncanny Avengers and Uncanny X-Force is among some of the best work that company has ever seen, and The Last Days of American Crime from Radical Publishing has gotten Remender astonishing praise.

It's easy to consider that Low might be the best thing Remender's done so far. Half way through reading issue #1, I could tell that this isn't just a comic book. This gifted creator has fabricated a saga. He's fashioned a world from the idea that the people of Earth are going to need a new home and that the ocean could be a temporary solution. He's given birth to the people and the various societies and cultures that could grow within that world, and all their diverse problems. Rick Remender has given us a story so expansive and so complex that it rivals epic tales like Dune and Game of Thrones. And his attention to the detail of the world his characters live in doesn't distract at all from the detail invested into those characters themselves. They are as developed as any character could be. He's given them love, life, religion, desperation, fear, death, and most of all, hope. In the Low trade paperback vol.1, our writer explains that he's never written an optimistic character before, but the pages of this book show us that if there's one thing he can do, it's write characters with cause, determination, and passion. That's why we love them. That's why we relate to them. It's why we can't get enough of Low once we start reading it.

However, Low isn't rising above with just top notch writing. Greg Tocchini's art is as complex as the world demands it to be. In Tocchini's work, panels are a thing of the past, as art bleeds from on area of the page into another. Scenes of gorgeous under-seascapes flow like liquid into displays of debauchery- sex, violence, and political corruption. The style is unlike most in many ways, but something you'll notice right away is that the quality of the detail in Tocchini's art doesn't degrade the further away the character is. I recall an old favorite Marvel mega-event in the 90's where the core series brought together nearly all the heroes and villains in the universe. The artist of that series gave most of the detail to the characters close to the reader. The characters in the background were only recognizable by their body shape, as their faces were reduced to nothing more that two short lines for eyes and one longer line for a mouth. Tocchini is nothing like that. His art is true and infinite in its quality and it'll have you searching for more of his art in comics.

So that's the review for Image Comics' series Low. We're giving a big hand to the creators and the publisher for giving us a book that we hope will be around in 70 years, either in print or in cinema.

For your information, Low #1-6 is collected in Low vol.1 trade paperback and Low #7 just hit the stores. That way, it'll be easy to catch up and love the book.