The grittiest gritty reboot to ever reboot a gritty franchise even more grittily.

“Lee, I got the pages you dropped off.”

Good stuff, right? This Invaders from Space book is going to drive the kids wild! I can’t thank you enough for this shot, man. I won’t let you down.

“Yeah, hey, great. Really excited to see it. Just have some notes from the editor on these pages.”

Sure, sure. I’m just grateful for the opportunity to really recapture the wide-eyed wonder of the Golden Age comics, you know?

“Definitely. Us too. Listen, the publisher wants a grittier origin story.”

For Invaders from Space? But they’re goofy-looking aliens who move in straight lines. The hero is a space captain and a 10-year-old boy who discovers the aliens when they crash land on his dad’s barn.

“Yeah, about that. Everyone knows heroes can’t really be motivated without a horrible loss of innocence. So now the alien ship actually destroys his farm in a hail of ionic-cannon fire.”

But, well…I guess maybe we can show the farm being blown up and just hint that his dad was in there. That might work, right?

“Well, no. The publisher was pretty insistent on their desire to see the protagonist weeping skyward while holding his father’s smoldering corpse.”

But…but comics are supposed to be about innocent escapism. Not everyone wants black leather and broken bones and blood. This kid wears a colander on his head for a helmet for cryin’ out loud!

“Hey don’t blame me, blame the market. Kids want realism.”

Realism? What’s realistic about that?! How many people do you know whose fathers were incinerated by aliens?

“So we’ve given the aliens a new look, kind of a Matrix/Terminator/District 9 vibe. Very gritty, very dark. We love it. And then there’s the love interest.”

Well, Sally Stillman isn’t really a love interest per se, she’s more a faithful friend.

“No, the publisher’s pretty clear on this too: they need a love interest to move books, but by issue five she’s got to be brutally murdered.”

WHAT?! She’s a nine year old girl!

“Well, they did say if you preferred we could, y’know…”

What?

“You know. The R word.”

WHAT?!

“Your choice, of course. Just make it gritty or we’ll have to reboot the whole damn thing next month.”

Wear this shirt: As a silent slap in the face to your stupid roommate who’s always up in your space.

Don’t wear this shirt: While defending your city from the blocky menace moving parallel to your street.

This shirt tells the world: “Innocence is only good for losing.”

We call this color: We’re under alien asphalt!

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