If you’ve missed out, you can pick up this entry in the series from the start, and discover just why Harry is a unique alien, even in the world of comics. Hogan and Parkhouse’s comic has always stood out for its careful pace and its gentle humanism the mysteries Harry solves are often less about the thrills and more about the regrets we rack up in a life and how none of us ever quite fits in perfectly. After years of hiding in rural Washington, and thinking he’s stranded on Earth for good, Harry finds out that he might not be alone, and a trip to New York is in order. Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse return to their country doctor/stranded alien/amateur sleuth Harry with a new mystery for him to solve. Resident Alien: An Alien In New York #1, Dark Horse Eternity Girl may only be up for a six-issue run, but it’s likely to stick with you for a long, long time.

The result is something refreshing, a superhero comic that takes the tropes and styles we’ve come to expect and tell a personal and relatable story with them. Asked to spoof the grandiosity of ’60s and ’70s cosmic comics, he does a note-perfect riff on Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, right down to Ditko’s bizarre galaxies and Kirby’s elaborate zig-zag-covered style. Liew, meanwhile, probably best known for his spindly figures and attention to detail, gets a lot more creative breathing room than he’s generally allowed outside his personal projects. It’s a more confrontational look at these issues than comics publishers generally allow, and it’s refreshing that Eternity Girl is a person we can feel for but not always like, even as it weaves together some larger metaphors. She’s depressed, she’s suicidal and if the only way to die is to destroy the linchpin holding the universe together, then so be it. Eternity Girl is pretty much beyond being a hero, here. The second issue, though, has VIsaggio writing something spikier and frankly more honest.

The first issue of Eternity Girl was a bit of a whole-plot reference to a classic issue of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, where Element Girl, in a similar situation, is eased into the afterlife. DC’s Eternity Girl, whose second issue is out today, has Magdalene Visaggio, Sonny Liew, and Chris Chuckry asking a question that never comes up in comics: What if a being of sheer power, one who can shatter planets, one who can laugh off nuclear weapons, is suicidal? How far would they go to die? And who would they take down with them?

Superheroes never die, and if they do, they don’t stay dead for long.

Eternity Girl by Magdalene Visaggio