Dark Horse Comics
Spoiler Alert
Release Date: November 23, 2022
When Organisms from an Ancient Cosmos appear on earth, the revelations will send humanity to where no man has gone before. That’s because the war is futile. That’s the gist I get from the huge first act by S. Craig Zahler, and to read through the second, that’s a movie in itself! This adult graphic novel, available in hardcover, has a lot to digest–pardoning the joke–as the Earth gets consumed by some biomechanical entity! And no government can figure out why this alien craft is here.
Sometimes we’re not humbled to know. Although this work doesn’t directly reference particular pop culture invasions like War of the Worlds, I feel there’s more to it in the sense of what the movie Independence Day revealed. The aliens are parasites, and they’ll wander the cosmos to find mineral rich planets to feast upon. My guess is that they’re as old as Galactus from the Marvel Comics Universe.
After the first attack, billionaire industrialist Carlton Land loses his wife and he wants revenge. Regarding what he learns from Biologist Aimee O’Donnell and USAAF Chief Scientist Kenneth Yamazaki is that they must do something else instead of continuing the fight.
Humanity has to survive; the threat regards people as ants, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of Rocky Horror. Instead of focusing on the music, we’re thrust into trying to figure out what the act of consumption means. Zahler imbues this tale with a deeper meaning. As for his artistic approach, he treats the framing with an abundance of box and medium shots. Unlike a superhero comic with lots of splash pages, he handles this tale with the traditional serial comic format. Narrative-wise, everything that must be considered as the next step towards defeating this foe moves like the Shin Godzilla film. That is, there’s a lot of bureaucracy to shift through in order for Land to achieve some kind of victory. But what he has to do is a zinger!
This alien invasion story is not the type of tale Hollywood usually dreams up, and it’s certainly a touch more fantastic. After watching Nope, (movie review) I’m thinking we need more tales like this than the tradition of us versus them for the sake of saving the Earth.
4 Stars out of 5
