about the book
Alden Baylor is a quiet kid, bright and introspective…far more mature than his sixteen years. After he lost both of his parents to a drunk driver a couple of years ago, he had to grow up fast, figure out everything himself. Uncle Phil, a linguistics professor, came to live with him on the family farm and, though he’s a great guy, he’s not very good at the parenting thing.
Since Phil dates an astronomy professor, they invite his college friends, Alden’s classmates, and locals to view the Perseid meteor shower, the largest in history. It’s a spectacular show until the meteors start hitting too close. So close that fires start in the woods and a meteorite the size of a medicine ball crashes right in Alden’s creek.
The astronomy professor tries to claim the space rock for the big bucks and scientific acclaim, and soon the feds are sniffing around, too. Meteors have hit all over the world, and something strange is going on. The news channels and the social media are exploding with all sorts of stories and blurry photos of strange aliens. The world is torn between curiosity and fear, and the world’s governments aren’t sharing a thing. People keep disappearing, including Alden’s one of his friends, and others get strange thoughts.
When Alden checks out the meteor himself, he is shocked to discover that it has split in two and has a hollow center!
Days later, Alden has also begun seeing and hearing things. The images seem to be coming from the woods. When he wanders among the trees, he comes face to face with a tall, white and black octopus-like alien. It does not speak, but communicates through mental projections. Though the government seems intent on capturing all the aliens, Alden is more curious than scared.
He ends up making a new strange friend, one that shares a mental link, a collective intellect, and a long, long history with every other alien. They travel through the universe gathering information and plan to do so forever. And they are co-opting humans, covering the host bodies with their own.
Friend…or no friend? Are they coming to learn from the human race…or eradicate it?
about the author
In the comic industry, Jeff Parker has done it all. He has been a penciller, an inker, a letterer, a colorist, a character creator, and now a prolific writer. Credited with more than 657 comic issues, he has worked with all the big companies: Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, Virgin, Wildstorm—the list goes on and on. The number of superheroes he has worked on is even more impressive, including Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Aquaman, Hawkman, X-Men, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, Justice League, Agents of Atlas, and Dark Avengers.
When Jeff was a kid in Burlington, North Carolina, his dad’s grocery store had a spinner rack full of comics—and Jeff got first crack at each and every one. Unfortunately the supplier wasn’t big on Marvel comics, so Jeff had to sneak down to the local 7-11 for those! It wasn’t until he was in high school, reading The Saga of The Swamp Thing, that he suddenly was hit with the idea that SOMEONE ACTUALLY WROTE AND DREW THESE COMICS! It was a huge moment for him.
When Jeff got to college, he started doing cartoons for the school newspaper. While still an undergraduate, he met Al Williamson at a comic show. This living legend liked Jeff’s drawings and invited him to sit awhile and talk, spurring Jeff to take his comic career much more seriously.
Jeff began with just drawing, but he always knew that he would both write and illustrate his own creations. He tackles the work very professionally, studying tempo, tone, arcs, plot twists, cliffhangers, conclusions, humor, and so much more. He is a visual thinker who always strives for variety in his work. Adhering to a tight schedule, he tries to meet a quota of panels if drawing or pages if writing.
Besides comics, Jeff also works in television animation and writes graphic novels. In Meteor Men, he included quite a few metaphors, which he hopes readers will figure out in their own way. He is interested in how people interpret his graphic novel and what they take away from it.
Jeff currently makes his home in Portland, Oregon, and is a member of the Artamus illustration studios.
By the way, Jeff really did see a meteor show like the one described in Meteor Men. It was near Pittsboro, North Carolina. Don’t you wonder if he actually found a hallow space rock!
Sources:
Author interview: Comic Book Resources
Author interview: Paste Magazine
Author biography: Comic Vine
Author biography: Periscope Studio
Also by Jeff Parker:
Justice League United : 3. DC Comics. July 2016.
Adventures of Superman : 1. DC Comics. 2014.
Fear Itself : Hulk. Marvel Entertainment Group. 2012.
Fear Itself : Thunderbolts. Marvel Entertainment Group. 2012.
Incredible Hulks : World War Hulks. Marvel Entertainment Group. 2012.
Red Hulk : Mayan Ruin. Marvel Entertainment Group. 2012.
Red Hulk : Haunted. Marvel Entertainment Group. 2012.
Red Hulk : Planet Red Hulk. Marvel Entertainment Group. 2011.
Underground. Image Comics. 2010.
Hulk : Fall of the Hulks : The Savage She-Hulks. Marvel Entertainment Group. 2010.
Hulk : Fall of the Hulks : Red Hulk. Marvel Entertainment Group. 2010.
about the illustrator
For nineteen years, Sandy Jarrell worked at Nice Price Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was busy managing the shop, taking care of his wife and two kidlets, playing in the band Slurpeeeee, and drawing comics at night. He kept sending his sketches in to the big comic book companies and was pretty much ignored. Then one day in 2010, his old friend Jeff Parker, sauntered into the store and asked him if he would like to illustrate a graphic novel…and Sandy’s life changed!
Sandy met Jeff at East Carolina University where they both produced comics for the East Carolinian, the school newspaper. After they graduated, they stayed friends in Raleigh. Even after Jeff moved to Portland, the two stayed in touch.
Now here’s the thing. The book is about aliens and Sandy isn’t really a sci-fi fan or into spacemen. He draws trees! But that worked out just fine. He got to include a forest in the story and turned to ocean creatures for inspiration for the alien. He enjoyed throwing a lot of curveballs into the drawings and intentionally turning standard sci-fi conventions upside down. Both Jeff and Sandy brought in a lot of the North Carolina locale into the graphic novel, though they never say the story is set there.
Now Sandy has 34 comic issues (including Batman, Flash Gordon, and Jungle Jim) under his belt as well as the award-winning graphic novel, Meteor Men. He finally left the book store to draw full time and has moved out to Portland, Oregon, a comic book mecca.
Jeff and Sandy continue to work together occasionally. They ended up doing two Batmen comics together and a “Howtoons” story where kids build a playground out of found materials.
Sources:
Illustrator website
Illustrator biography: Monkey Brain Comics
Illustrator interview: News Observer
Illustrator interview: Indy Week
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The Griff : A Graphic Novel by Christopher Moore
When griffin-like aliens invade the planet intent on destroying all humankind, three quirky New Yorkers, Mo, Steve and Curt, set out cross country to meet up with other survivors (including a chain-smoking squirrel) in Orlando. But they need to do more than just survive: they need to take down every last Griff and save the world!
Incredible Hulks : World War Hulks by Jeff Parker
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