Low #2

Writing: Rick Remender
Art: Greg Tocchini
Publisher: Image

As of late, anything Rick Remender touches turns to gold. Successful runs for Marvel have become successful runs for Image and those successful runs are turning into some well deserved praise that has Remender’s books like Black Science garnering the attention of comic fans everywhere.
 

Now, we have Low. A story about humans living the last years of Earth out from inside of its oceans as the sun gets ever closer, hotter and brighter, a dark and desperate situation to say the least. The twist? The main character (at least I’m going to assume she’s going to be, we’re only 2 issues in guys) is overly optimistic even the face of losing her husband and two youngest kids and, that optimism is actually kind of working for her.
 

Remender’s slow burn started in issue one continues here. We aren’t officially introduced to characters, we still don’t know the history of how people got below the surface of the oceans, what it was like when the sun got closer, what it was like building the cities they live in or any other real history of this immersive world.
 

It’s kind of like Saga, you’re thrown into this obviously expansive and thought-out world but you don’t get a crash course, you’re expected to keep up. It’s part of the fun of books like this and works incredibly well here in Low.
 

As Stel and Marik are fleshed out in this issue you get a hint at the ideas Remender is playing with here, balancing pessimism and optimism and how people react to the literal end of the world.
 

The writing is crisp, succinct and interesting as you get little tastes of the world of Low.
 

The art brings that world to life.
 

Tocchini’s art is, honestly, a revelation. It’s vivid, bright, both loose and tight, it draws you in and you can spend several enjoyable minutes unpacking even a single frame. Making a world in its last years this beautiful and bright in the face of the more recent black and grey dystopic universes is a treat, a gift.


Low itself is just that, a treat, a gift, a chance for us to experience a world that is both broken and hopeful.