Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group is set to release the debut graphic novel from renowned comics illustrator and cartoonist Jed McGowan (Gonzalo, Uninhabitable), My Life Among Humans, on February 7, 2023.
My Life Among Humans is an evocative, melancholy, and ultimately hopeful story of a solitary alien’s misguided search for connection among its human subjects. McGowan’s unique art style lends to the very emotional experience of the alien and the community he inhabits.
“In My Life Among Humans, I play with a classic science-fiction setup: an alien comes to a small town and slowly takes it over. But my story is told from the perspective of the alien, and it was very important to me to take the alien seriously and portray it with care. It’s a bit of a sympathetic monster story, a kind of story I love. I wanted to show why the alien does what it does,” says Ignatz Award nominee McGowan. “That’s one of my favorite things about comics and stories—they help you understand others by putting you in their heads, showing you things from new perspectives. By using science fiction, I can show the reader some very strange and extreme perspectives while making them feel real and relatable.”
My Life Among Humans follows a nameless alien data compiler who comes to Earth to study humans, setting up shop on the outskirts of a small desert community in North America. Working under forced labor, it must watch humans in complete secrecy while sending regular reports to its manager back home. Using spore-like technology to read the minds of his hosts, the alien quickly takes a special interest in Will, one of his early subjects. That interest proves to be a problem when the alien is accidentally revealed to Will’s family and takes desperate measures to save its own life. In doing so, it discovers a forbidden ability…it can control human minds.Now, the alien struggles to keep this secret from its manager, deal with a growing number of suspicious humans, and come to terms with its ethically questionable decisions.
My Life Among Humans will be available in hardcover via Simon & Schuster at both digital and physical retailers everywhere on February 7, 2023.
About the Creator of My Life Among Humans
Jed M. McGowan writes and draws in Los Angeles, California. His previous comics include Gonzalo (nominated for an Ignatz Award), Uninhabitable (included in Best American Comics 2019), and Lone Pine (published with a grant from the Xeric Foundation). He’s also designed backgrounds for animation and created illustrations for the New York Times, Vice, and other publications.
