Pages

Saturday 18 July 2015

Resident Alien, Volume 1: Welcome to Earth! Review (Peter Hogan, Steve Parkhouse)


A friendly alien crash-lands on Earth. Using his psychic powers to make everyone see him as human, he establishes himself as a semi-retired doctor called Harry in a small American town. One day a serial killer begins a murder spree and Harry decides to crack the case. 

Everything about Resident Alien is inoffensively ordinary. It’s neither a great or bad comic - it’s just ok. Peter Hogan’s script and Steve Parkhouse’s art are both fine. Not bad but definitely nothing extraordinary either. Making their alien a decent chap instead of some psychotic killer like Predator is hardly going to blow anyone’s mind! The story itself is the most average murder mystery in a lil town story. It’s like an episode of Murder, She Wrote! 

Hogan continues down the least challenging path for readers by throwing in some flashback scenes where we see men in black recovering Harry’s wrecked spaceship and ominously talk about a search. There’s a scene or two from Harry’s home planet. And then most of the time we’re in comfortably generic murder mystery territory. 

There is basically nothing original about the comic and the simplicity of the concept was definitely underwhelming. The resolution itself is barely worth mentioning but, like so much of the book, I was mentally shrugging once the killer was revealed. 

There’s really nothing else to mention! If all you’re looking for is a simple murder mystery story whose only curveball is that the protagonist is an alien (which in no way affects the story), Resident Alien is for you. It's a pleasant read but I wouldn’t go out of my way to look for it.

Resident Alien, Volume 1: Welcome to Earth!

No comments:

Post a Comment