Life on Another Planet (comics)

This powerful graphic novel confirms Will Eisner as a master of the genre. In this graphic novel, Will Eisner’s pen cuts an expansive swath through all aspects of the human condition. Life on Another Planet places American life within a broader perspective, chronicling the lives of scientists, politicians, spies, and nobodies as they come to terms with the discovery of extraterrestrial life: in reaching out to other galaxies, Eisner’s characters ultimately find themselves focusing within.

What's going on out there? Will Eisner uses the idea of extraterrestrial contact to explore the weird happenings right here at home in Life on Another Planet. Serialized in the late 1970s and collected in the graphic-novel form that Eisner both invented and perfected, the story follows scientists, politicians, spies, and nobodies as they struggle to reach their own goals amidst this international crisis. The author paints his characters with broad strokes, and though his science is a little off base and his political satire dated, the novel still mines that same vein of deep truths that Eisner can find running through any subject.

Born in New York City, Will Eisner (1917–2005) created The Spirit as well as fifteen graphic novels and three influential drawing textbooks. The comic industry’s top awards, the Eisner Awards, are named in his honor.