September 14, 2015
About halfway through this graphic novel, it’s pretty clear that the book won’t go too far beyond the “Invasion of Body-Snatching Pod People” tropes it readily embraces. And maybe that’s fine. Coauthors King (Double Feature) and Poirier (Modern Ranch Living), both novelists, may have some grand, genre-defying scheme in mind, but aside from some adult language and brief LGBTQ themes, the story of college-invading insect aliens rarely transcends its B movie source material. Debut artist Ahn’s work doesn’t help matters much—the minimalist linework shows occasional glimmers of cartoony inspiration but mostly feels rushed, doing little justice to the gory action scenes and doomed red shirt background characters.
July 15, 2015
Novelists King (Double Feature, 2013, etc.) and Poirier (Modern Ranch Living, 2004, etc.) team up with debut artist Ahn for a graphic novel that's a madcap tale of college cliques, girl power, and oversexed body snatchers. When a sleazy college professor smuggles a sack of soil out of a notorious meteor-impact crater in Siberia, he figures he's a shoo-in for a Nobel Prize in astrobiology. But soon the microscopic alien life forms embedded in his pilfered permafrost thaw out into tiny blue bugs hellbent on infecting or devouring all human life-a scenario first played out in a Siberian village near the original meteor crash site in 1923 ("They made us pregnant," the lone survivor claimed. "They filled us with jelly!"). As the aliens spread across the professor's liberal arts college in Vermont, a hurricane strands a cross section of the student body-goths, bros, arty chicks, young Republicans, theater kids, Greeks, trustafarians, and the professor's star pupil, Stacey-who must grapple with classmates turning into towering humanoid insects or swollen egg sacks. Spurred by her superior intellect and a secret crush, Stacey takes the fight to the invaders. While the trajectory feels familiar, the story is told with energy and a subversive charm somewhere between Edgar Wright and Eli Roth. Small quirks like a claim that chicken nuggets grow in water ("Big as a Christmas ham!") win the day, while depictions of various college stereotypes (particularly a pair of bros with backward baseball caps and popped collars) are delightful grotesqueries. Ahn's illustrations have the clean, fat lines of animation stills as they depict tidal waves of goo and alien assaults, and her details (the stippling of a weak mustache) are enjoyably offbeat. Bookish Stacey's instant and unflinching acceptance of her role as alien-killer (and killer of infected humans, who mostly accept their doom) deflates some emotional heft, but the fun is too infectious to resist. An enjoyably irreverent diversion.
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September 15, 2015
When a fame-hungry professor smuggles a sample of Siberian permafrost on campus, he doesn't consider the consequences. But when blue beetles emerge from the sample and begin to literally get under students' skin, it's clear that there are stranger things afoot than an unscrupulous instructor at Fenton College. Further, a freak hurricane has cut Fenton off from the rest of the world, and Stacy and her friends have to band together to fight off bad boyfriends, evil instructors, and the possessed corpses of fellow classmates as they defend the planet from an alien invasion. A highly successful spoof of B-list monster movies, this story ticks all the boxes: horny college students, damsels in distress, megalomaniac evildoers, and aliens that are simultaneously cheesy and convincing. Though the thick-lined, cartoonish illustrations are largely unembellished, Ahn's attention to detail amps up the antics of a madcap story full of genre tropes and clever pop-culture references. The lovely twist here is that the damsels save themselves and almost everyone else, using both brains and brawn. Campy sci-fi fun.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)