Descender & Ascender

Intro to Descender/Ascender & Creator Spotlight: Dustin Nguyen

For the next season of Storied Arcs, Mike and Alex are revisiting the works of Jeff Lemire (aka Mike’s literal favorite creator in comics) as they plan to dive head first into a pair of books by Lemire and superstar artist Dustin Nguyen, Descender and Ascender from Image Comics! The guys give a quick tease of this epic, two-part space opera and give you some insight on why love these books and why they want to discuss them. Then as usual, they give some background on the creative time, focusing this time just on Dustin Nguyen since they previous covered co-creator Jeff Lemire (and letterer Steve Wands) back when they discussed The Underwater Welder (which you should definitely listen to).

Given the length of these series (32 issues for Descender, 18 issues for Ascender), we’re going to be covering it similar to how we covered The Unwritten aka two trade collections at a time. The breakdown looks something like this:
-Descender
Volumes 1 & 2: issues #1-11
Volumes 3 & 4: issues #12-21
Volumes 5 & 6: issues #22-32
-Ascender
Volumes 1 & 2: issues #1-10
Volumes 3 & 4: issues #11-18

So, go pick up Descender Volumes 1 and 2 ( or issues #1-11 if you’re reading single issues or the deluxe editions) wherever you get your comics and join us back here next week to kick off the conversation!

Listen to our spoiler-free introduction to the series and its creators. Tune in next week for our discussion of volumes 1 and 2!