Saucer Country #12 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (story), Ryan Kelly (art), Giulia Brusco (colors)

The Story: You decide—man who may be an alien or woman abducted by aliens?

The Review: This is the big downside of serial fiction: if it manages to get some momentum, having it suddenly halt almost guarantees a major derailment that leaves the plot in smoking, broken heaps on the ground.  The best thing that can happen in these cases is if the story’s near some kind of end anyway and can semi-neatly wrap up.  The worst-case scenario is for the creators to give up and phone in the rest of the series.  And who can blame them, really?

What usually winds up happening lands somewhere on the middle ground: the story will desperately try to jump ahead to what should have been its long-term conclusion, squeezing in every last plot thread it can along the way.  In most instances, this well-intentioned move usually results in a haphazard, rushed, and implausible jumble that has almost no chance in satisfying anyone.  In the hands of a skilled storyteller with experience in the art of forced resolutions, the result is usually just rushed.

Saucer Country #10 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (story), Ryan Kelly (art), Lee Loughridge & Giulia Brusco (colors)

The Story: And now the presidential candidates confront the real issues—alien abduction.

The Review: Here at the ten issue mark, Cornell would be, if precedent means anything, about a few issues away from calling it a day on this series.  And if that should turn out to be true, it would be the absolute worst decision he ever made.  Given all the major events of our nation in recent days, Saucer Country as a political story, a social commentary, and just as a work of comic book fiction is more important, more relevant, than ever.

I will try to keep my real-world extrapolations to a minimum; it’s always risk to draw comparisons to a story when none are intended by the author.  But I wonder.  Even if Cornell couldn’t have predicted what would happen yesterday morning in an elementary school of Newtown, Connecticut, surely he had other similar atrocities in mind as he made gun violence a focus of this current arc.  Here, however, the shootings are not senseless; they mean something.