In the far distant future, the sun’s premature expansion has irradiated Earth, sending humanity to the lowest depths of the seas, hidden within radiation-shielded cities, while probes scour the universe for inhabitable worlds to relocate to. After tens of thousands of years, a single probe returns, crashing on Earth’s surface, a now-alien place no human has seen for many millennia.

Low #1, the new aquatic sci-fi adventure courtesy of writer Rick Remender and artist Greg Tocchini follows two teams from the last remaining cities undersea as they race to the most unexpected alien world of all—the surface of Earth.

Reading the description above, the series sounds really cool right? Well, even with an issue packed with solid 30 pages very little of the above is touched upon. There’s the sun expansion and water world, there’s looking for probes out in space, but the rest, not so much. Instead we get pirates and family heritage and an introduction to a lot of characters and an interesting world. But then there’s that description… that the comic didn’t quite deliver.

What was inside as far as story is pretty decent. There’s lots of tropes, and some are twisted around, which is nice to see done. But, I couldn’t help thing that the first issue might have been helped with a little decompression, which is something coming from me, since I usually hate that.

The art from Tocchini is interesting but, like the story it’s too muddled with two much to look at, and some things not clear enough visually. Some of it is beautiful though and like much of the book as a whole, I’m torn with some of it I really liked, and some of it being a let down.

The first issue almost tries to do too much on its own, but once the first arc lays out, I’m hoping things will be clearer and expect the whole to be stronger than the individual parts.

Story: Rick Remender Art: Greg Tocchini
Story: 7.5 Art: 7.5 Overall: 7.5 Recommendation: Read

Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review