Author: Jeff Parker
Publisher: Oni Press

On a summer night, Alden Baylor sits in a field watching the largest meteor shower in human history. What begins as teenage adventure becomes something more - the celestial event brings travelers who will change the world completely, and Alden discovers a connection to one of them. How does a young man who had to grow up fast handle the invasion of his planet? Can Alden keep humanity from oblivion? From writer Jeff Parker (Aquaman, Hulk) and artist Sandy Jarrell (Batman '66) comes this story of adolescence, friendship and hard decisions.

Teenage Alden joins friends to watch a meteor shower but discovers after the event that the meteors carried an alien race in the form of skins, which live off of the brains of hosts—including Alden’s workmate, Wilton. While authorities scurry to learn more about the alien race in order to destroy it, Alden learns that the aliens are simply trying to survive and are offering their hosts the opportunity to participate in a communal consciousness, linking them with the minds of hosts across the universe. After attempting, unsuccessfully, to mediate between the FBI and the alien race, Alden realizes that humans will always live in fear and greed and decides to become a host to an alien skin and join the alien race instead.

Meteor Men is an action-packed graphic novel with believable characters and an intriguing concept of alien occupation through a skin that feeds off of human brains. Targeted at a YA audience, the book offers eye-catching graphics throughout. It raises questions of how humans organize themselves and fail to work together for peace, brings into question the value of individual liberty, and invites the enticing alternative of being part of a communal consciousness.

As a political statement about the human predicament, it would leave much to be desired, suggesting there is no hope without relinquishing individuality for an alien consciousness much like the Borg from Star Trek. But the story offers a thought-provoking escapist alternative to human politics, suggesting the inevitable implosion of greed and fear and the need for new ways of thinking about community.

- James Steeves