One Coin Reads 21: The Visitor How & Why He Stayed, by Chris Roberson and Paul Grist

The Visitor How & Why He Stayed, by Chris Roberson and Paul Grist

2017

I thought this was an Abe Sapien book. It wasn't.

I bought this in December for ¥330 and it's been sitting on my pile for months. There's a hairless blue guy with no pupils on the cover of a Hellboy series book. I've been thinking it was an Abe Sapien comic since then, and I was half way through the first issue before I checked to see that "The Visitor" is the main character, and there is no Abe Sapien in this.

I'm not a huge Abe Sapien fan, so it's fine with me, I was just surprised when I started reading.

I read my first Hellboy book in 20 years in February, and my first Abe Sapien book shortly after that, so I'm familiar with the Mignolaverse, but not steeped in its mythology. The Visitor How & Why He Stayed is about a character that was dropped into early Hellboy comics like the polar bear was in Lost; as an interesting detail to pique readers interest, but never really followed up in a satisfactory way. So Roberson and Grist made a five issue series to tell his story.

It was around here that I clued in that this wasn't Abe

The Visitor is a mystery man, an alien in human clothing, sent to protect earth from demonic invasion. He's shown to be assigned to earth initially to kill Hellboy, but upon observation deems Hellboy a non-threat, and more likely to be on the same side. As he spends decades on earth, he goes native, gets married, and starts to reclaim values that have been mostly lost to his species.

There's a lot of lurking in this book

Each issue takes place in a different decade. We see Hellboy age in the background, and we see the Visitor adjust to human life. He marries a black woman in the 60's, so the book tackles an alien's view of America's race issues. It's not a book about race, but the acknowledgment of how stupid racism is from the outside looking in is a nice touch on The Visitor's perception of humanity.

There is some action dropped in most issues, though the Visitor isn't much of a fighter. Rather, he has a floating card which does most of what he needs to do.

The humans summoning demons for their own power are not fleshed out characters, but shown as people duped into thinking that giving super powered demons access to earth will benefit them in the end. People can be quite gullible.

I enjoyed the whole book the way I would a brisk lunch or a satisfying episode of Twilight Zone. The story was clear, the art was clear, and stuff happened in each issue. The Visitor as a character was sketched out nicely and I knew what he was about at the end. 

The book wasn't heavy, but it still had ideas and concepts in it. The relationship between the Visitor and his wife is shown over decades and we get to see this alien reflect on it. The fourth issue has a pseudo-scientific cult describe their own objectiveness, which is always a red flag. Objectivity is borderline impossible and those that claim it are usually less trustworthy than those who acknowledge their own subjectivity.

Don't trust objectivity claims

The appearances of Hellboy with the Visitor lurking in the background, have the vibe of Michael J. Fox trailing himself in Back To The Future II, or similar scenes in Avengers Endgame. Not connected to time travel, but in that it's giving a story to a person in the background watching the main story, adding a layer to a story we already know, like Hellboy's discovery in the 1940s.

Grist's art wasn't doing it for me at first, but once I got into the rhythms of the book, I liked it a lot. It is clear and consistent, and has a human touch to it. I enjoy seeing a slight wobble in a "straight" line. I'd seen his work before, but this was the first series I've read by him.

All in all, it's not a ground breaking book, but it was thoroughly enjoyable, and I'm happy to see that the Hellboy universe makes space to tell an intimate story about an alien sent to monitor the earth. It was a good read.