Ascencia parts 1 - 4

Written by John Dolmayan
Art by Tony Parker
Colors by Blond
Lettering by Taylor Esposito

Covers by various artists.

Buy them HERE.

This future's been written already.

I've read through these four comics twice and I can't really say anything new about them or their concepts. What I can say is there's an obvious display of an extreme disparity of wealth and comfort between the haves and have-nots. There's an elite city-scape: Ascencia. And there's a dump-city outer fringe: Bethany.

There's a series of unsolved murders which brings in a detective to solve. There's a para-military force represented by a jump-suit leotard wearing Strong Female Character (Captain Carpenter).

It's kind of boring.

It would be harsh for me to repeat this, especially when it's obvious John Dolmayan has spent a lot of time in developing his world.

This is kind of boring. Been there, done that...

Logan's Run
The Time Machine
the 2nd Planet of the Apes movie (Beneath the...)
the third prequel Star Wars movie (Attack of the Clones)
hell even Digitopia...

...which I reviewed a few weeks back -ALL of these stories showed an elite people vs. low level people. It's not new. Ascencia spends a lot of time dwelling in that, the disparity thing. I get it. Let's move on. Where's the story?

Unfortunately, the story part is where John drops the ball. There's a lot of 'hinted at' things... lots of people nodding to each other "It will be done." What will be done? These books could have been written in Swahili and still have had the same entertainment value.

BUT, if I stop for a second and don't try to follow the story, whatever it is, and talk up the highlights it's here:

Where Ascencia ascends:

The details of the first few pages of part 1. I really dig the gritty, low-level existence shown up by hooded and masked characters.

The distinctive scenes of torture with the antagonist (hidden in the background, natch) and his victims were very well done. Scary details and the showings of an inventive writer!

I liked the stranger parts of Ascencia: like the twin boys who seem to be the ones in charge. There was an odd surreal element that kept me off guard. I liked the bad-ass girl in the robe who just strides right up to the rebel enclave.

To sum up, I'm glad John, Tony and company did the effort to make this comic come to life. The Elites vs. Troglodytes angle is a well-worn trope that I wish most science fiction writers would steer away from, at least as far as using that for the main part of their story telling. What Ascencia needed was a sequence of events happening to a specific character that I could get invested in, to care about.