Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse return to Patience with Resident Alien: Your Ride’s Here from Dark Horse Comics, which poses the ultimate question: will Harry Vanderspeigle finally be going home?
The familiar cast of characters from the little ol’ town of Patience is back, and with a title that teases our titular alien’s return to his home planet, Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse’s next chapter is sure to up the ante on the mystery, romance, and finely spun conflicts we’ve come to expect in this wholly original series.
Arriving back to Patience following the events of ‘An Alien in New York’, Harry Vanderspeigle is warmly welcomed home by his friends and already has much to do, including a wedding to attend and patients to check in on. Meanwhile, the police chief and his deputies have their hands full catching what they believe to be a kid sniper who turned his BB gun on a delivery person. And as the complicated romantic tensions between Harry and Asta heat up, Asta’s father pays her a visit in a shamanistic dream bearing some potentially disheartening news about the man with whom she’s fallen in love.
With that, the stage is set for the subsequent issues in this sixth story arc of the Resident Alien saga. In this premier issue, as with each of the previous arcs, we are reacquainted with the main players and given hints as to the nature of the major and minor conflicts that will run their course (and more than likely intersect) through this four-issue storyline. In keeping sync with the other books in this indie franchise––from ‘Welcome to Earth!’ to ‘An Alien in New York’ ––Hogan and Parkhouse’s storytelling is paced with meticulous patience (no pun intended), much to the story’s benefit.
The slow-burn progression of scenes and sequences allows Resident Alien to unfurl as an atmospheric meditation on the nuances of Southwestern life as viewed through the oval-shaped eyes of a protagonist who is not of this earth. Both Hogan’s dialog and Parkhouse’s gorgeous renderings of small-town life are a treat for the senses, and it’s apparent that Parkhouse’s work especially has only gotten better over the eight years he’s been illustrating Harry and the folks from Patience.
As with every first issue of each arc of Resident Alien, we can’t really glean all that much except characterization and subtle hints to the larger story about to be revealed. That said, if you’ve enjoyed Resident Alien since it first hit the pages of Dark Horse Comics Presents back in 2012, then pick yourself up a copy of Resident Alien: Your Ride’s Here #1 (and the other issues in this arc) and enjoy the ride that Hogan and Parkhouse no doubt have in store for us in the months ahead.
Peter Hogan (W), Steve Parkhouse (A/C/L) • Dark Horse Comics, $3.99
Review by John T. Trigonis
[…] • John Trigonis reviews the meticulous meditations of Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse’s Resident Alien: Your Ride’s Here #1. […]