Resident Alien Volume 1: Welcome to Earth!

Michael Pusateri recommended the comic book Resident Alien on an episode of Gweek last year. A few days ago I received a review copy of the paperback anthology that collects the first four issues and loved it.

Resident Alien Volume 1: Welcome to Earth! is about an alien who crash lands his spacecraft on Earth and must interact with human beings in a small mountain town. The alien can uses his formidable mental powers to block his appearance so that the townsfolk see him as a human (with one interesting exception). But as readers, we see him as a purple skinned, bug-eyed, pointy-eared spaceman.

In the afterword to the anthology, writer Peter Hogan explains how he came up with the idea for the series:

I blame Elvis Presley. Many years ago, I edited a book about the man, and got fascinated by Alfred Wertheimer's photos from the early days of his career. He showed Presley in everyday settings like diners and hotels, traveling on trains and hanging around in stations –- and the truly remarkable thing about them was the fact that all the other people in those photographs were completely ignoring Elvis, despite the fact that he looked nothing like anyone else in the room (or on the planet, for that matter). It was like there was a Martian in town, and they just couldn't see him.

The alien is friendly. He is fascinated by human behavior, and when the town doctor is murdered, the mayor asks him to step in as a temporary replacement until they can find a permanent doctor. He agrees, somewhat reluctantly, because he is still unaccustomed to the ways of humans, but his curiosity wins out. The story develops into a good old fashioned murder mystery, with the twist that an alien disguised as a doctor is involved. Steve Parkhouse's art is excellent, and I'm looking forward to the next volume, which will be called "The Suicide Blonde."

Resident Alien Volume 1: Welcome to Earth!

• [Garymon]

  From ’86 – 89′ I was in a band named Resident Aliens. I need to go check out this anthology. 

• [Edward]

  Sounds great will have to find a copy.

• [Slartibartfatsdomino]

  I actually bought this when it was coming out in single issues. Fun story and I’m looking forward to more. 

• [Thad Boyd]

  I’ve been enjoying Resident Alien since they ran the first few chapters in Dark Horse Presents (and I highly recommend Dark Horse Presents; it’s a reasonably-priced monthly 80-page sampler of 8-page stories and probably my single favorite comic right now).  Glad to see it getting some press.

• [Halloween_Jack]

  That’s an interesting comment about Elvis. One of the things that isn’t appreciated about Elvis is how transgressive he was for 1950s Memphis and the South in general because of the way he dressed, acted and sang–in particular, he would go to high school dressed in clothes from the Lansky Brothers, a Beale Street establishment that catered exclusively to young black men, and would get the crap kicked out of him, and he’d keep it up. I wonder if the indifference people showed, or made a point of showing, toward him has to do with the old idea that some people just filter out things that don’t fit in to what they expect to see, in the manner of the Gorillas in our Midst experiment. See also Lydia from Beetlejuice: “Well, I’ve read through that handbook for the recently deceased. It says: ‘live people ignore the strange and unusual’. I, myself, am strange and unusual.”

• [Prezombie]

  They said the second ‘season’ would start last fall, but there’s been no mention of it yet, is the series dead?