Review by Frank Plowright

Earthling spotlights the three women of an unhappy family. Mother Doris has regrets about paths not taken, while her elder teenage daughter is beginning to discover that life can be equally disappointing once school is in the past. Youngest daughter Mädchen is pretty well left to her own devices, but a studious observer of what’s going on around her, and she’s smuggled an alien into the house.

Detachment, lack of understanding and selfishness inhabit almost every page of Aisha Franz’s début graphic novel, with almost no character capable of putting themselves in someone else’s place, down to the supporting cast. It makes for a gruelling experience, heightened by Franz underlining the sense of people trapped by squashing the panels together in a grid with no space between. She takes the opposite approach with their features, which are similarly squashed together, but surrounded by space. At one point Doris imagines what she might have become, for which Franz adopts a more conventional style of portraiture.

Each of the main characters fantasises about something better, and there’s no clear demarcation between fantasy and reality. Is the alien Mädchen’s imaginary friend, or a touch of the fantastic intruding into a dreary life?

Franz is highlighting the discontent so many feel. She’s German, but Earthling could be set in any European or North American suburban community, as so many people feel life won’t improve for them. However, it can be assumed her two daughters represent Doris at earlier stages of her life, so her particular intolerance and detachment is puzzling. Perhaps she resents the possibilities they still have, but this is never clarified.

What’s here is well observed, but it’s a dreary parade with claustrophobic art offering no relief, and difficult to work out who it’s aimed at. Do readers experiencing much the same want their lives reflected back at them?