The 12 (Week)Days of Comics Crowdfunding, Day 11: Area 51: The Helix Project #2

[Since jumping into comics crowdfunding in March, I’ve received 12 projects in paper form. Some have arrived digitally, but I’ll wait until the paper copies arrive because I’m that type of luddite. This “Year in Review” will catalog each one…and I promise to be done by New Year’s Eve!]

Trevor Fernandez-Lenkiewicz Area 51: The Helix Project #2 is a well-polished, well-written 24-page (plus cover wrap) comic with great art and superb production values. Truthfully, it’s good enough to be a book on the shelf at any local comic shop.

The premise is that something is happening in Roswell, New Mexico. Experiments of some sort. Is it an alien? Is it a mutant? Is it scientific experiments? Are we entirely clear on it by the end of issue 2?

There’s a boy. And a girl. She leads him to meet this person who had a profound impact on both of their lives. But the boy doesn’t appear to be everything we thought he was. But both the girl and the boy have issues.

Am I being ambiguous enough? Good, because I’m trying to be. This is a slow burn script, and Trevor is playing it like a finely tuned violin. I don’t want to give it all away up front because that would reduce the mystery.

The art, by Marcelo Salaza, is very strong as well. His layouts and character work remind me of Mike Deodato’s Resistance books for AWA/Upshot. Really nice, clean work with creative use of paneling on the page.

Confession time: I didn’t care for this book the first time around. So much that I didn’t bite on supporting the third issue. But going back and reading it fresh, I see what Trevor was trying to do and appreciate it all the more. I’m diving in on the issue 4 campaign and will grab issue 3 as an add-on…just as I added issue 1 when I supported issue 2: