Jed McGowan

The POV character is a small alien that was born and raised solely to act as a research tool for its manager. In this one's case, it's meant to observe humans in their natural habitat. It releases microscopic scouts into the air that attach to the brains of nearby humans and allow it to know and experience their thoughts, memories, and emotions, without affecting them in any other way.

It starts with Will and then expands to his family, but it gets distracted by its own curiosity and feeling show more of connection to Will's home and family and is seen by them by accident. Being seen by humans, and thereby tainting the manager's research, must never happen - it's the kind of thing that could get the alien killed by its manager. Not knowing what else to do, it tries to calm the humans down and realizes that, despite what it's always been told, it can somehow use its scouts to control humans.

This was another book that surprised me with its size - it's almost 12 inches tall, plenty of room to show off the full-color artwork. I particularly liked the little alien main character's design. Something about it reminded me of the game Rumu.

It didn't have the words for it, but you could definitely feel that the little alien was lonely, or it wouldn't have taken the risk that resulted in it being discovered. At the same time, it's spent its entire life alone and separate - it knew others of its kind existed, but its manager never allowed any of them to interact. Each little research alien is sent to a planet alone, to watch and record in secret without ever interacting with anything or anyone else. It didn't really know how to interact with others, and what it did came across as horrifying and creepy. Its idea of a close family unit, for example, involved arranging Will's family around a table and having several of them say "We're so glad you're here."

Although Will was a bit of loner, he still had friends, and they naturally started to get suspicious. While I wanted Will and his family to be free (it wasn't immediately clear whether that was even an option, or whether the mind control had completely wiped their brains clean), I also wanted something better for the little alien. The little dude was cute and didn't actually mean to be horrifying.

All in all, this was a nice, short graphic novel. I wouldn't have minded seeing more of the little alien's adventures, but this volume at least gave me a relatively satisfying ending, considering how things could have gone.

Extras:

A couple pages of concept sketches.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

In a Nutshell: An unusual story with decent artwork. Wasn’t memorable for me though.

A little alien has been sent to Planet Earth to research humans and send back daily reports. He chooses one target human named Will, a nerd video-game designer, and begins observing him. However, one day, Will discovers his unknown stalker and in response, the alien ends up controlling Will’s mind so as to not put his own future in jeopardy. This leads to disastrous consequences, and before he knows it, show more the alien is controlling a whole load of people. How will this end? Will the humans be able to regain control over their own minds? Will the alien end up destroying everyone?

The story took me by surprise. While certain parts were somewhat guessable given the flow, some elements were quite unusual, and even bizarre. The direction taken by the alien’s character and the ending were definitely the high points of the plot. I love how the alien wasn’t given a typical clichéd role to play. His cute appearance also helps; he reminded me of Mike Wazowski from ‘Monsters Inc.’ movies. The story proceeds at a quick pace, the 96 pages almost breezing by due to many panels having only graphics and no text.

But I found it somewhat weird that not a single human being panicked at the thought of aliens controlling them. The reaction was almost a casual, “There are aliens around”, “Oh, let’s go get them”. Surely at least one person would have screamed in shock or disbelief. If you tell me that there are aliens around me controlling fellow humans, I am gonna freak out for sure; you can count on it!

Moreover, as a reader, when you read of an alien coming to the planet and controlling your mind, you would want to feel sorry for the humans involved. But the writing is such that I felt no connect whatsoever with the humans. (Rather, I had a greater understanding of what the alien felt.)

The graphics are pretty simple. They seem to be digitally painted. The hues are subtle and don’t pop out much. But this works to a minor advantage as the story doesn’t get overshadowed by the illustrations. That said, I wasn’t really a big fan of the human characters who seemed very stiff.

Overall, an interesting graphic novel, but not mind-blowing. Good for a one-time read if borrowed from the library.

3.25 stars.

My thanks to Oni Press and NetGalley for the DRC of “My Life Among Humans”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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The art in this was fantastic! At first I thought the plot, while cute, was very simple, but ultimately it was also crazy good. A superb little graphic novel.