Or “The day Fox Mulder ran for president.”
Arcadia Alvarado has problems, and they are neither little, nor green, although most of them do involve men. She’s divorced, she’s Hispanic, and she’s female, and despite all of this, she’s running for president of the United States of America. She’s also convinced that she was recently abducted by aliens (the outer-space kind), and that they plan to invade. This will probably not help her campaign plans.
After last September’s groundbreaking New 52 initiative, DC Comics seems dead set now on revitalizing their Vertigo line of comics, with three brand new ongoing series and one limited series launching this month. Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child and Fairest are both written by very well-established authors, and while Paul Cornell, the writer and co-creator of Saucer Country has been in comics for several years now, his name will still probably be an unknown to most. After starting with several short-lived but acclaimed runs for Marvel (Captain Britain and MI13, Black Widow: Deadly Origin), DC took a chance by hiring him exclusively, and attaching him to the last 14 issues of Action Comics, arguably their highest-profile book, prior to its relaunch last September. With The New 52, Cornell was given two different books to write (Demon Knights and Stormwatch), and sales on those two were stong enough to warrant DC allowing him to finally tell the story he had always wanted to tell with Saucer Country.
Billed as “X-Files meets The West Wing” by DC prior to its release, Saucer Country roars out of the gate with one of the Vertigo imprint’s strongest first issues since Y: The Last Man shocked audiences 10 years ago. The dialogue is sharp and concise, giving the reader a strong sense of the world Arcadia habits, even with little to no context for American politics or the New Mexico locale (Cornell himself is British). In just 20 pages, Arcadia Alvarado is a fully fleshed-out character – a strong, stubborn woman with intense family ties and a strong moral foundation, but who is ambitious enough to bend those morals when the situation calls for it. Regardless of whether you agree with her politics, or are even comfortable with what she represents, Alvarado is a character strong enough to really get behind.
This is all helped immensely be Ryan Kelly’s artwork. Kelly has done a number of odd jobs and fill-in issues for Vertigo over the years, but Saucer Country is his first major assignment, and he’s the perfect man for the job. Bold is the word that immediately jumps to mind when describing Kelly’s work – strong, well-defined lines that suggest a world built upon the real and the ordinary, which make it all the more unsettling when the aliens start showing up.
Speaking of aliens, its worth mentioning that the ones who seemingly abducted Alvarado are not your garden variety big-eyed probers and cattle-mutilators. Cornell and Kelly are working to make these the kind of alien abductors who are terrifying because they are so completely inscrutable. They tear lives apart, often in insanely convoluted and tortuous ways, for no discernable reason at all. These are the aliens from the best years of The X-Files, who can’t be stopped, can’t be reasoned with, and are probably coming for you.
If there’s any justice in the world, Saucer Country will be DC/Vertigo’s next surprise hit. The writing is strong, the art is rock-solid, and the premise is pure gold. If you’re a fan of science fiction, political drama, or just plain good comics, do yourself a favor and put this one on your pull lists while you can still get in on the ground floor.
As published on examiner.com
