2 out of 5

Aliens live among us!

From this generic premise comes the pretty standard ‘Strange Nation,’ which mines something of a Men In Black concept to slightly doll up some new ideas, but mostly seems to just exist to have a character who is a Sasquatch with an eyepatch.  Norma Park – besides certainly being a candidate for Most Generically Named Character – used to be a top investigate journalist, until, in that way that seems to happen mostly in TV shows and comic books, she’s disgraced in the public eye for pursuing some conspiracy story regarding a cult.  “Bury the story,” her editor said, but I guess it got published anyway, much to the seeming shame of her well-to-do family.  But Norma is a truth-pursuitist at heart, and so joins the ranks of Strange Nation, a tabloid publication that, of course, only publishes the truth.  In a winky bit of Fables-ness, Allor has a vampire working at the paper, along with some other oddities that show up along the way that are never called out, and that is part of the sort of campy charm for which I think Allor was hoping.  And played with a dash more dark humor or even dumb humor (like Umbrella Academy, or the aforementioned MiB), this could’ve played out, but instead we get mired in that tagline with which I started this here review, and ‘character arcs’ that feel a bit too heavy for the fairly simple story.  Again, there are some quirks here that make it a new spin, but nothing so inventive that it demands your attention.  Plus, Juan Romera’s stiff art and the very web-y, flat colors (this is a Monkeybrain digital, originally) just can’t service the intended Big Ideas; having an artist with a better sense of scope may have made this feel more fun than meh.  Finally knocking it down to a 2-star peg is the lettering, which is truly just atrocious, with some horrible break points in the dialogue bubbles, characters speaking from off-page, and most ridiculously, randomly negative-colored bubbles (white text on black) to show another character is speaking.  This technique was used with no rhyme or reason that I could tell.  These amateur visual marks hamper the reading, unfortunately, and make it hard to separate the look from the read, which is nothing special, but not un-entertaining.