Saucer Country #6, 7, 8 and 9 (Vertigo)

writer: Paul Cornell
artist: Jimmy Broxton (#6), Ryan Kelly (regular)

(via vertigocomics.com)

The news recently came down the pike that Saucer Country has been cancelled.  There are probably a number of really good reasons why this happened, the most of them being low sales, and perhaps another that some of the target audience assumed things like The X-Files already covered this same material effectively enough.  There's also the problem that the book itself never seemed to click for readers, as any successful Vertigo series should, develop a cult audience either of fans or critics.

I came to Saucer Country because of my great respect for Paul Cornell, developed over the course of Captain Britain and MI:13, Action Comics, and Knight & Squire.  I've seen him become one of my favorite comic book writers.  When the New 52 came around for DC, he launched both Demon Knights and Stormwatch.  Notably, neither was a leading property, and both very much versions of the team book he did with Captain Britain.  Only Demon Knights seemed to tap into the rich mythological vein running through Cornell's best work, however.  He was off Stormwatch quickly enough, and his uncelebrated Knights was given to someone else, too.  Part of this is that Cornell doesn't stick around any one series for very long, and he'll soon be writing Wolverine, and this is not a time where a writer can write for both DC and Marvel at the same time.  I thought Saucer Country would stick around.

Yet I'm pretty sure its end has mostly nothing to do with the Marvel business.  I never found other readers as eager about this series as I was, and even though who sampled it seemed more confused than anything, which is a reaction I can sympathize with.  Other than lead character Arcadia Alvarez, I still can't remember anyone else's name.  The series does have a distinctive cast of characters, but they're important so far as how they relate to Arcadia and the general plot, not so much in themselves.  Arcadia's ex-husband, or the staff researcher who does her investigating...I quickly determined that Saucer Country would reward loyalty, and as of the issues in this review, it does so much more than that.  But first it had to prove that loyalty was worth it, and I think many readers decided early that it wasn't.

The basic plot of the series is that Arcadia Alvarez is a presidential candidate who was possibly abducted by aliens.  The fact that the reader doesn't know with any more conclusiveness than she does was always meant to be the hook to draw their interest into the ongoing story as it explored the mythology of aliens as we know it.  In The X-Files Fox Mulder's kid sister's abduction was used as a prop to explore all manner of strange phenomena.  What some people liked to refer as its ideological offspring, Fringe, figured out that getting to the heart of the matter was more fascinating and ultimately rewarding.  No, Fringe wasn't about aliens but rather the aliens among us.

Arcadia's dilemma was always two-fold.  As governor of New Mexico, "aliens" meant illegal immigrants as much as extra-terrestrials.  Saucer Country never really got around to exploring that metaphorical irony.  Arcadia herself is not just a strong woman, but part of the story of illegal aliens, being of Latino descent.  In a lot of ways, even though she's closest to the abduction arc, Arcadia was also the least affected, most dispassionate about the whole business.  It's everyone else falling apart around her.  She just wanted to know what happened.

Well, as I said, Cornell to me is known as someone who knows his way around mythology.  Yet Saucer Country took its time getting around to that.  I almost abandoned the series myself waiting for it to happen.  Then I heard that it finally did, and so I had another look, and not only did it happen, but Cornell threw himself at it, much in the way he threw himself at Lex Luthor's quest for power in Action Comics (an arc that happened just before the New 52, right before the Doomsday arc, culminating in #900).

Well, let's have a look.

#6 is all about an outline of the history of flying saucers and close encounters.  It's just the tipping point.  #7 peals back an additional layer, exploring the equally familiar claims that the government knows far more than it lets on, with the military being the source of experiences that become the first obsession with UFO phenomena.  #8 is about the Men in Black, not the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones variety, but another familiar layer.  #9 continues that one, actually, explains who they actually are.

All while Saucer Country also functions as a look at the political process, by the way.

Maybe the problem is that Cornell tried to do too many things at the same time.  I know that G. Willow Wilson's Air, an equally ambitious Vertigo series I twice named to the top of my annual QB50 review of my favorite comics, had a different take on the traditional Vertigo look at mythologies.  Books like Sandman or Preacher or Fables find audiences because at their core they're easy to explain.  Sandman was about Neil Gaiman's love of storytelling.  Preacher was about Garth Ennis and the best representation of his typically cynical nature.  Fables is Bill Willingham exploiting fairy tales.  Air, meanwhile, was Wilson attempting to explore current international relations.  Saucer Country was Cornell's attempt to explain a topic that still exists in the ether, and may just as well always stay there.  And also about aliens.

The more complicated it became, the more Cornell made it difficult for a wide audience to appreciate Saucer Country.  The smaller audiences weren't biting, either.  Yet it was a fascinating experiment.  These are some flashy issues that caught my attention and reminded me of everything I appreciated from Cornell and my own expectations for the series, but the truth is it was always what it set out to be, and unfortunately most people either crave more explanation from the start or want something flashier to help distract from the lack of immediate resolution.

There are five issues remaining.  Cornell has said he won't rush the ending, that he hopes to finish the story somewhere else.  If nothing else, hopefully these issues will find an audience who will appreciate what he's already done.