What are the cornerstones of a great graphic novel? The concept, obviously. The script and the artwork, of course. But, like a book we can’t put down, a tv series we can’t miss, or a movie we have to rewatch every time we’re having a bad day, the very best graphic novels have something almost indefinable about them. Personally, this writer think it’s a connection that goes straight to our heart.
Matt Mair Lowery and Cassie Anderson’s debut work Lifeformed: Cleo Makes Contact does exactly that.
On the surface, it’s not a particularly original story: Cleo is your standard eleven-year-old who’s grouchy and insecure and having an especially hard time because her father was killed within moments of an alien invasion (a sequence that’s made especially touching because of the father-daughter details that are laid in at the start of the adventure). When one of the alien invaders witnesses Cleo’s father’s death, it shapeshifts into his likeness and takes Cleo on the run, where they plot to fight back against the featureless alien forces. Cleo isn’t sure whether she should trust the alien, but she’s aware enough to know that without its protection she is probably dead – but as their bond deepens, and as they take their rebellion to the streets, Cleo is forced to realise that even killing an enemy takes an emotional toll she never expected. Cleo must grow up fast, and take the battle back to the invaders…
Lifeformed: Cleo Makes Contact doesn’t exactly break any new ground in the alien invasion genre, but the small tweaks it makes are hugely effective. There’s something refreshing about a young heroine who doesn’t immediately pick up a weapon and become a bad-ass Buffy or Katniss, but who has a genuine evolution towards the moment when she has to stand up for herself. And her confusion over the split-second loss of her mortal father, and the morphing of the alien into her father’s likeness, is a touch that gives the story genuine emotional weight. Cleo can’t trust the alien interloper and neither can we, and that keeps the reader (and Cleo) off balance for a good part of the tale, as well as making the eventual pay-off even more satisfying. There’s some welcome stylistic playfulness here as well, especially in the frames when Cleo tries to master an alien technology by speaking the alien’s own language. There’s a subtlety to the way fonts are used that literally speaks volumes for the care Lowery and Anderson spent in bringing Lifeformed to the page. The script is smart, the artwork has a storyboardish Archies Comics quality that suits the subject very well, and although the design of the faceless golem-like aliens makes it look as it the Earth has been invaded by clay figurines, that also makes a disconcerting sort of sense when you consider their shapeshifting capabilities. We’re still not sure about the alien big-bad’s head, though – he’s kind of like a cross between Casper the Unfriendly Ghost and something with a tail and an ovary obsession that Woody Allen played in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex… but maybe that’s just this writer…
Very highly recommended.
LIFEFORMED: CLEO MAKES CONTACT / WRITER: MATT MAIR LOWERY / ARTIST: CASSIE ANDERSON / PUBLISHER: DARK HORSE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
