Saucer Country Vol. 1: Run

Amazingly weird doings set around a new Mexican Governor's campaign for the presidency, complicated by the candidate's unexpected abduction by aliens. She resolves to keep her experience secret, but intends to use the power of high office to discover the truth and prepare for a possible alien invasion. This is an awesome comic, even though unfortunately the series was cut short, there is one more volume which hardly seems enough to develop and conclude the ideas set up here, but what the heck, bring it on.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2085325.html

Paul Cornell takes us to New Mexico, where the governor has just announced her candidacy for President, and at the same time she and her husband are mixed up in a peculiar incident of apparent alien abduction. It isn't utterly dissimilar to his London Falling, which also has establishment figures from unusual backgrounds (his varied police squad) having to deal with the unexpectedly sfnal in their work.

Cornell deconstructs the lore of UFOlogy entertainingly (largely through a massive infodump in the last of the six issues collected here, issued by a character who talks to the Pioneer plaque people); meanwhile sinister political forces which want to bring down the governor are at least partly show more aware of what is going on, and conspiracies simmer. It's good fun. show less

Won this via First Reads.

The Democrat Governor of New Mexico, Arcadia Alvarado, who is also running for President of the United States, has a very trippy experience while driving home from a party. Did she and her ex-husband, who was also in the car, get abducted by aliens? Or maybe it was all in their head, all a dream? Or perhaps the truth is somewhere in between the two ideas?

Then there's also a former Harvard professor who has two miniature people, a man and a woman who are very naked and human looking, who talk to him at semi-inconvenient times. And that's one of the things that makes this an Adult Graphic Novel more than one that a kid could read, there are quite a few naked people depicted in this story (not judging, just stating show more a fact).

According to the PR about the book it's supposed to be a cross of the X-Files and The West Wing. Except that I thought it wasn't so much an even split at all, but more of a 90/10 split. Much more of the aliens than the politics appear and I do wish that there had been more of the politics in it.

I also was surprised how much I liked the character of Chloe the Republican on the Democrat's campaign. It could have been done badly, but instead her character got some of the best lines in the entire book.

All in all I liked it and I hope that there's more TPBs in the pipeline so that maybe I can understand this TPB and what was happening in it a bit better. show less

Intriguing premise and definitely a strong start (even if it's a little too layered with "I've got a secret!" characters and almost too many antagonists compared to the protagonists herein. Still, solid enough that I want ot read the next collection.

My friend Mac Tonnies would have either loved our hated this comic, passionately. Me, I'm admiring the ideas more than the execution (though the art is pretty great).

This is another one of the Hugo nominated graphic novels and it is something I don't think I would have read otherwise. The author is trying to work within the UFO mythos while at the same time telling the reader that it is all wrong and humans can't process it at all. The story seems well written but it just wasn't my cup of tea.