Explosive publisher BOOM! Studios continues to blow its SDCC wad early by announcing a bunch of series before the big event in its "Road to San Diego" promotion. The latest is a new four-issue mini-series by Jeff Loveness and Lisandro Estherren called Strange Skies Over East Berlin. The comic is about an alien invasion in the middle of the Cold War, and is set to launch in October. The book is described as "a chilling and intense thriller about an American spy who encounters a terrifying inhuman threat at the heart of the Cold War."

More from the press release:

It's 1973, and Herring, a disillusioned American spy, has spent the entire Cold War infiltrating the inner circles of East German intelligence for a cause he barely believes in anymore. He's seen everything and done anything his government asked but his latest mission pits the brilliant embittered operative against an enemy force so vast it could obliterate all of humanity. The Space Race had greater consequences than even the Soviets could have guessed, and when they sent the first human ever to the stars, something not quite human followed them back. When a mysterious alien probe lands outside East Berlin and into Soviet control, the Americans send their top spy in to investigate. But as Herring gets ever closer to the truth at the heart of the conspiracy, he may find that the power he so desperately seeks is too dangerous for anyone to control or contain.

Loveness says of Strange Skies Over East Berlin:

Through comics, I've been able to write space operas, dark religious epics, and superhero stories, and now I can't wait to write a sci-fi horror set within the bleak, creeping dread of the Cold War. The Iron Curtain surveillance state of East Germany is now far enough removed from us to seem shockingly familiar. It's been humbling to research that world, only to see how many sad parallels of it we still endure today. There's body-horror and sci-fi creeping through the paranoia of the story, but it's also about what it means to be American in a world slipping away from you… a world that was perhaps never truly there to begin with.

And Estherren adds:

I'm thrilled to work with Jeff on a story that mixes different genres so well, that has this deep human touch, and also lets me try some new graphic techniques. I think readers will love it!

Strange Skies Over East Berlin #1 hits stores on October 2nd.