TRESPASSER: YOU ARE NEVER ALONE
Trespasser presents the suspenseful tale of a man and his daughter who are living in a postapocalyptic wilderness, and meet an alien and deal with the consequences of that encounter. As the world crumbled around him, Hector Ramos retreated into a life of solitude to protect his family.
A veteran is living a hermit life while raising his daughter. He was living a hard but simple life until one of his animal traps gets something unexpected, a trespasser. Their hard but simple life is disrupted by the presence of this strange visitor. Whether the trespasser is a treat or simply a lost wanderer, one thing is obvious, maintaining their simple existence will come with a sacrifice. Alone and afraid, how far will one father go to protect his child from an unknown and potentially dangerous visitor?
THE CREATIVE TEAM
The Trespasser stories were written by Justin M. Ryan with art by Kristian Rossi (Moonshine, Chambers, Miss Capi) and letters by DC Hopkins. The series was published by Alterna Comics in 2017. Alterna Comics was founded in 2006 by publisher Peter Simeti and has gone on to help produce over 100 titles since then. Alterna Comics titles are distributed to readers and retailers worldwide from their online store.
THE BOOKS
The Trespasser limited series is a science fiction thriller story released in 4 single-issue formats printed on colored newsprint with approximately 32 pages each. This terrifying thrill ride for teens and up also comes in a 100-page graphic novel/Alterna giants-sized edition titled “You are Never Alone“.
TRESPASSER: THE STORY
The story starts in a single house in the woods, we meet a father who lives alone with his daughter, Maria, and their dog, Belle distanced from human contact because of some unnamed past cataclysm. Nuclear war or some other unknown global catastrophe left behind the scars of radioactivity and traces of dystopia everywhere, from Maria who bears an eye deformity, and their dog Belle, who bears a vestigial third set of paws, to the Geiger counter used by Hector which indicates whether the hunted animals in the area are safe for consumption.
Hector’s parents build the house after spending years working their hands to the bones for people who treated them like shit. They starved and saved until they could run away from it all. He never understood what was so great about owning your own home until he joined the army. By joining the army, he traveled the world and from the day he set foot on someone else’s soil he yearned to come back home. After he came back from deployment everything started changing and what was left of the world got smaller and further away. His wife Anita seems to have passed away a few years after Maria was born.
Hector and Maria’s lives are irrevocably altered when a creature, which is not an animal but not quite human either, is caught in one of Hector’s animal traps and brought back to the house to recover. They first try to be helpful and tend to the trespasser’s wounds, but they have no way to know the creature’s intentions as they can’t understand its language. Unable to communicate with the alien, Hector quickly grows distrustful and embarks on a course that puts him, and his daughter, in grave danger. Is the alien a threat, or not? Is Hector behaving rationally, or has he become paranoid in his isolation?
THE LIMITED SERIES SINGLE ISSUES
The Trespasser limited series’ single issues are as follows:
ISSUE #1 FATAL FALLOUT!
After a devastating war ruins the air and food supply for most of the world, Hector and his daughter Maria struggle to survive. But when a strange visitor crash lands in the forest, Hector will go to unspeakable lengths to protect his child.
ISSUE #2 BURIED SECRETS
With their problems behind them, everything slowly returns to “normal” for Hector and his daughter. But their moment of peace is about to come to an abrupt end as someone comes back into their lives. Someone Hector thought he’d never see again.
ISSUE #3 TO ERR IS HUMAN, TO FORGIVE…ALIEN!
While Hector’s illness escalates, Maria begins to piece together what happened. Stress and anxiety take their toll, driving a wedge between father and daughter. Turns out that both of them have been keeping deadly secrets.
ISSUE #4 EVERYTHING ENDS!
While his daughter’s life hangs in the balance, Hector makes a desperate gamble with the beings who threaten their existence. With nothing left to give, Hector makes his last stand.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Trespasser is a dark tale that makes you feel trapped. It has several themes including xenophobia, isolationism, The justification of bad actions, actions and consequences, the strange object, the Jeffersons’ Military Checkpoint, the father-daughter relationship, No place like Home, and the changing attitude.
THE CHALLENGES OF LIVING IN SOLITUDE
The story explores the difficulties of living in solitude (isolationism) because of losing faith in humanity because of betrayal. Humans are naturally social animals and missing physical human interaction can have consequences on one’s mental state resulting in strange behaviors.
Thinking that no human relation is worth it and disliking strangers (xenophobia) caused Hector to become cruel and because of his action, his daughter gets sick. Did he lose his mind? In his desperation, he had no one to turn to for help.
JUSTIFYING BAD ACTIONS
The importance of Human connection and communication is illustrated in the story. Anita used to say that there is still more “good” in people than “bad” if you just talk to them. Hector chooses to forget his morals because he was not able to communicate considering that the creature is not human. These were his justifications for bad actions.
The combination of isolation and desperation makes people dangerous and irrational. There seems to be no thinking of consequences on Hector’s part and his decision was just a dump taking into consideration what people of that world know about aliens. When he finds the creature, he doesn’t seem to be as freaked out as one would expect. He was freaked out by the Alien’s gun and felt threatened by it because he didn’t know what the Alien wanted.
ACTIONS & CONSEQUENCES
The title of the third issue is “To err is human to forgive alien”. The situation was already crude but the end showed a cruder scenario. Based on the war the aliens could have taken Maria to their ship but they chose to help her. Yet you wonder whether they were able to survive the act of helping her.
The military base has clear displays of dead alien bodies and heads, cruelty seen since the barbaric ages. Is it justified because they are not human? In the end, the reader is still missing the context of what really happened to the world.
STRANGE OBJECT
The object inside Belle and Maria’s heads is intriguing. The object seems to be high-tech and non-human and seems to be linked to the brain, once extracted the host dies. The object seems to be a locator of some sort inserted by the aliens since right after Belle appeared with it the Aliens also appeared.
THE JEFFERSON MILITARY CHECKPOINT
Hector’s stubbornness to be a hermit and maybe his own ego prevented the long drive to Jefferson’s military checkpoint when he was sick. Since he lost faith in people, he taught that they wouldn’t help them for free and that they had nothing worth trading in exchange for the military doctors’ services. But his attitude took a 360-turn when Maria got sick.
THE FATHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP
The story also covers a (mostly) positive father-daughter relationship. The first issue of the limited series starts by showing a strong father/daughter bond between Hector and Maria. But Maria being a child reaches the normal stage where children hate their parents because they don’t understand that they are being protected. However, in this particular case, I think Maria is justified in resenting her father’s irrational behavior.
I think that because of the strong bond with her father Maria is able to pick on things and understand them faster than normal children. Maria seems to get over the hating phase very quickly as she herself is dealing with a challenge. When the time comes Hector is ready to sacrifice his life for her daughter. Ready to beg and humiliate himself to save her.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Trespasser explores the need we as humans have to have a place of our own that we can call home to raise our families despite the challenges created in the housing market making it difficult for the regular citizen to own a piece of land.
People should demand governments limit the sale of land to foreign investors, institutional investors, corporations or wealthy individuals. Remember that we pay for their salary to work for our benefit and the benefit of our society. They don’t work for international organizations and corporations.
CHANGING ATTITUDE
After what happened with his daughter there is a slight change in Hector’s attitude regarding trespassers that is manifested in the change of the sign “Trespassers will be shot” to a drawing of what appears to be a star map. A change from isolation to wanting contact.
This 2017 series can’t be more relevant in 2023 with the resurgence of the “Alien” topics by the U.S. government to request more taxpayer money from its citizens to fund initiatives and to probably distract from the government-related controversies and legislations that are being worked on. People have always talked about the extraterrestrials but it is very suspicious when a government is talking about it.
On the other hand, we also have the threat of a possible nuclear war as the Ukraine/Russia conflict continues and there seems to be no sight of it ending soon. It’s puzzling how this threat is not talked about in the mainstream media at all, instead, people are more preoccupied with climate change, yet no one addresses the damage caused to the environment by the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Trespasser is a very intriguing suspenseful tragic human tale. It is a simple stand-alone story that provides compelling entertainment and substantial food for thought that is very much needed in current times. The story was impactful in a one-sitting read, but perhaps more impressive is the way the story ends leaving the reader with unresolved questions. Rossi’s art is interesting to look at. The choice of colors and art enhances the tense tone throughout the book.
You can choose to read the story in one sitting with the graphic novel/Alterna giants-size edition or you can read the story in 4 settings. The physical editions and digital editions are available at Alterna Comics. Trespasser is not part of the “EYES ON” series as it is not part of any recent Alterna Comics crowdfunding campaign.
Recently Alterna Comics crowdfunding campaign backers that were used to backing the campaigns on Indiegogo were given the option to back directly from the Alterna Comics website. The benefit of backing directly from the website is having access to all of Alterna’s available existing published titles and merchandise. Trespasser is one of those existing published titles. What I personally love is that all your orders are grouped and shipped in one package which is financially more favorable for some people like me. But they also ship items separately for a fee for those who wish to receive the available items earlier.
Interested in more titles? Check more COMIC BOOKS and GRAPHIC NOVELS under the “EYES ON” series wherein I documented my experience with crowdfunding entertainment and shared my notes on the products I received.
All images in this publication belong to the original creators and are used as references under fair use.
My notes are all set. Let me know what you think.
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