A month or two back I was invited to participate in the upcoming Aliens Among Us black & white anthology by the fine folks at Elevator Pitch Press. They’ve self-published several anthologies already, including Don’t Be Afraid, a horror-themed book, and three volumes of Great Zombies in History, which is pretty self-explanatory. Comprised of folks who participated in Andy Schmidt’s Comics Experience classes, I was actually the first non-CEx-er to take part in one of their anthologies, but given that I started my comics career as a Marvel intern under Andy’s cruel tutelage, I like to think of myself as a de facto part of that growing alumni group.

Aliens Among Us is, probably pretty obviously, an alien-themed book, and to help bring my story to life, I brought in the obscenely talented Enrique Rivera. I’ve wanted to work with Enrique for a really long time, as I knew he was a talented guy, but he really stepped his game up for our story “Living with EDO.” It’s a jokey, modernized take on ALF, with a goofy alien that lives with different families as part of a reality show and Enrique absolutely killed it with incredible character design and exaggerated facial expressions that are reminiscent of the great John K. of Ren & Stimpy fame. (In case you aren’t aware, that’s one of the biggest compliments I can give a cartoonist, as Ren & Stimpy was a formative experience for me.)

“Living with EDO” is definitely going to be one of the more comical stories in the anthology, as most folks involved went the more dramatic route. Since I was working with Enrique, however, I really wanted to play to his comedic strengths, and also I’m kind of a huge closet ALF fan, and the idea of spoofing the show (with a kind of grotesque twist, natch), really appealed to me. Check out the splash/title page two for “Living with EDO” below, and make sure to head over to Enrique’s DeviantArt page, where he has pencils and inks for page one and page three, as well as character designs for EDO and some family members.