Albert the Alien is back at school, but not everyone’s happy to see him.

Flip and Patricia are not impressed that Albert is getting a lot of popularity and attention from all of his deeds.

Where as the first story arc (New in School) was a story about bullying, this arc is very much about popularity. What does it mean to be popular? How does one get popular? And is there really value in being popular to begin with?

I didn’t consider myself to be popular in school. In fact, I was probably the opposite of popular. I was nerdy before being nerdy was even remotely cool. To me, Iron Man has existed for 60+ years (long before Robert Downey Jr put on the armor), and I know more about him than I do some of my friends. Other things I know nothing about: More popular things, like music or sports. I know what I like to listen to (most of it would never be played on the radio in the USA), and as for sports – I don’t mind going to a game live, but I’ll never watch the stuff on TV and I couldn’t even tell you how points work. That’s not to say sports are dumb – they just don’t hold my interest at all.

Albert is kind of in a similar boat in that he doesn’t know anything about Earth sports, or pop culture, or anything like that. So we get to have fun with other adventures. Some of which may involve alien sports (as we saw in this chapter), or alien pop stars (that’ll come up eventually), but for the most part we’ll be focusing on the fantastic. But who knows – maybe we’ll slip some more mundane “Earth stuff” in those stories, too.

October is the final month to pre-order your copy of the Albert the Alien graphic novel we successfully funded on Kickstarter. Interested in getting your hands on a copy (or another copy)? Click the link to get one today.

I’ll be premiering the Albert the Alien book at Mid-Ohio Con Halloween weekend in Columbus, OH. You can find me at table B46! If you ordered a copy of the book on Kickstarter (or pre-ordered it), you can pick up your copy at the show. If you haven’t pre-ordered it yet, you can buy a copy from me directly!

We’ll also have a panel on Saturday at the show:

12:30 – 1:15PM COMICS ASSEMBLED PRESENTS: SMALL PUBLISHERS, BIG BOOKS! (C121)
Join panelist/host Thomas Zahler (Love and Capes, My Little Pony) along with Lora Innes (The Dreamer), Alan Evans (Rival Angels) and Trevor Mueller (Albert the Alien) as they discuss the challenges and rewards of being a small/self publisher.