Popverse's top stories of the day

• My (pseudo) apology to My Dress-Up Darling
• The Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont has come out of retirement for Stranger Things' final Netflix season
• Why both Louise Simonson and Chris Claremont "weren't sure" Marvel's New Mutants was a good idea

The sci-fi AI epic Descender by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen is one of my favorite comics of the past decade, and if you're like me, you'll soon have even more ways to enjoy it.

Lemire and Nguyen have announced they're self-publishing a new companion edition to the 50-issue Descender/Ascender series in the form of a behind-the-scenes art book. Titled The Art of Descender, the duo will be sharing not only artwork from the series, but various pieces of behind-the-scenes lusciousness in the form of process art, preliminary illustrations, and more. Lemire will be writing a new foreword for the collection as well.

The Art of Descender will be crowdfunding using the popular comics platform Zoop, with an exact launch date to be announced. If interested, you're encouraged to sign-up for email updates on Zoop's The Art of Descender landing page.

For those that missed it, Descender follows robotic life form named TIM-21 (a young teenage robot, as it were) as he discovers he's the last of his kind after being eradicated by the galactic government. This puts him on the run from the government, and running towards the truth about why AIs like him were destroyed - and their extraterrestial origins.

The Art of Descender book comes as development remains underway for a Descender TV Series, announced back in 2020.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out our guides to upcoming movies, upcoming TV shows, upcoming comics, and upcoming comic conventions. If you're looking for specific franchises or genres, we have all the upcoming MCU, upcoming Star Wars, upcoming Star Trek, and upcoming DC movies & TV for you. If you're a fan of superheroes and not specific to just Marvel or DC, we have overall guides to all the upcoming superhero movies and upcoming superhero TV shows (and new seasons) as well.