Written by: Paul Allor
Art by: Juan Romera
Published by: IDW
Strange Nation is a story that can be summed up best by describing its opening two pages; It’s midnight in the middle of a forest, a reporter, Norma Park, walks gingerly over gnarled roots as she approaches a clearing and hides in the shadows behind a tree so as not to reveal herself to the hooded figures standing there, arms raised. These are the members of the doomsday cult Norma is investigating for her respected newspaper, a cult composed of high-ranking officials such as senators and CEOs. Suddenly a horde of sasquatches burst into the circle from the opposite end of the clearing and start savagely striking at the cultist as the hooded figures retaliate and gunshots are heard. The fighting is stopped as quickly as it had begun when the scene is pierced by a blinding green light and UFOs descend from overhead as Norma furiously takes photos.
Obviously Norma’s editor, her Dad, doesn’t believe her and fires her due to her insistence to release the truth,which is pretty much Norma’s one motivation throughout the entire story. So Norma packs up and leaves but instead starts working for a tabloid newspaper called Strange Nation, which is the sort of newspaper that would run a ‘Lough Ness Monster In Love’ story (no seriously they do that). It was the only paper that would take on Norma’s story, which she has been following since being fired, and has led her to investigate Duma Group, a large organisation that funds lots of projects but produces nothing. It’s here that Park meets hyper intelligent Gorilla-man, Joe, who more or less confirms that something fishy is going on. Unfortunately Joe knows very little, being only a guinea pig for experiments, but provides Norma with the name of the ex-lead researcher of Duma Group, Dr. Milo. Now, spoilers ahead as I say what the conspiracy actually is, I mean I’m not saying it’s aliens but…
So yeah, aliens, the book has a very Men in Black feel to it with a bit of Welcome to Nightvale mixed in for good measure, it takes place in a world where every conspiracy theory is the truth; bloodsucking Vampires in journalism? Of course! Roving tribes of Sasquatches? Sure! Those in power are all aliens or in service to them? Well, why else would I have had that microchip inserted into my brain? Mermen living in our waters? No, mermen are not real, that’s stupid. It’s up to Norma and her accomplice Jesse Vernon (a familiar face who faked his death and got a new life in 1977) to expose the truth of all of this and save humanity. This is a bit of a problem with Norma, outside of ‘revealing the truth to the public’ she doesn’t have much of a personality other than she doesn’t get on well with her parents (mainly because she feels they’ll stop her from exposing the truth) this really shows in the third act where every other line spouted by Norma is about the importance of the truth, even when it doesn’t matter. This does work to the book’s favour in some cases, although as Norma is portrayed as a being that only cares about the truth no matter the cost to herself or others (although she seems blind to the cost other pay saying she has only made, ‘small sacrifices’), this helps drives across a comparison with the villains, who only care for their goals. Meanwhile, some of the side characters, Dr. Milo and Merc most notably, show themselves to be more human than that, even though not all are human in species, through their compassion to their fellow living beings and the emotional ties they share.
The relationship between Norma and Jesse is never really shown well ever, I mean we know that they do trust each other but what sort of relationship they have and who’s in charge is never expressed, we’re told it’s Norma but Jesse, for the most part, Jesse acts completely independently of her and seems to just be there as a joke not as an actual character.
All that being said the characters are not the focus of the book in anyway, nor should they be. Who cares if Characterisation takes the back seat while Setting and Plot sit up front, take a firm grasp of the wheel and make rude signs to other facets of story. The mystery and end of the world cataclysm that the story eventually reaches is amazing and does have you turning pages quickly to see what’s happening next as the aliens carry out an evil scheme that mirrors what we may begin doing ourselves in the future. Norma’s interactions with her parents are also pretty interesting as we see their strained relationship due to Norma’s belief that they are ashamed of her and their need to withhold the truth from her due to its danger. One nice touch I enjoyed is when we first meet Norma’s dad he tries to dissuade her from writing for Strange Nation and take up Public Relations, leading to an argument with Norma and she spills wine on his tie and he goes up to change but ends up looking at editions of the Strange Nation that Norma wrote in while she leaves the house. The real golden coin sitting at the bottom of Strange Nation’s pocket is its plot twists, apart from a couple telegraphed early on, you’ll never see them coming and the last one? ohhhh man that last one is one hell of a stinger that completely changed the ending for me from being just ok to one of the best conclusions of a GN I have read and actually saves the message of the book that the truth, no matter how outlandish it is or how few it reaches, matters.
The art is pretty good, it’s nicely stylised in a manner that looks pretty cartoony but frankly I don’t see how else it could have been portrayed and the covers are awesome, being portrayed as either covers of an edition of Strange Nation or a poster for an old Cold-War era SciFi film. The cover of issue three stands out especially for me as it leads into one of the best jokes in the book (and the humour in the rest of the tale is at a gold-standard) which is just very meta in the way that it uses how our expectations are coloured by what a cover can show, much in the way that DC used to back in the bronze-age (I really want them to do that again more often). The only problem with the art on any level is that characters faces from panel to panel will sometimes change in proportions and minor character’s designs sometimes look very bland and similar to those that belong to different characters which can lead to confusion.
I thinks that Strange Nation is a colourful romp that would be enjoyed by any fan of weird fiction and having a laugh at the norms of invasion stories being turned on their head. It’s seemed recently that IDW is focusing on releasing comics connected to series from times past such as Godzilla In Hell, The Ghostbuster Get Real and The X-Files and although most of these have been great Strange Nation has brought in a breath of fresh air into what felt like a season of reused ideas. I hope that Strange Nation does well enough to prompt a continuation and I, for one, can not wait to pick up a physical copy on Wednesday.
