3 out of 5

Pitched as War of the Worlds told from animals’ perspectives, that’s… exactly what it is.  And, hate me for saying it, but it’s cute, with an instantly endearing set of lead characters, an easy-to-hate villain, and a casual myth building approach that keeps it truckin’.  It’s also pretty clunkily edited, and hasn’t yet really done anything new with an alien invasion setup; you could easily swap in humans for the animals and not have to adjust much beyond scale of the environment.

Smartly – because it would only drag prior to the inevitable invasion – there’s no buildup: aliens are here nigh from panel one, the animal kingdom learning of it through salvaged radios / TVs or the ole’ fashioned grapevine.  Two otters and a turtle hitch a ride via deer to talk to some wizened critters, and creator Matthew Petz nudges us into further fantasy  / genre territory with a jersey devil appearance, a history of prior alien invasions, and in the first series’ most awesome section, Wolverine proxies via attack badgers.  The classic comic book visual nods are a lot of fun.

…Which results in something perfect for digital consumption: the amateur edge to it might make me hesitate perusing it in store, but a cheap price point in cbz format allows me to gobble it up quickly, and now I’m looking forward to volume 2.