BORDER TOWN #1

Written by Eric M. Esquivel.

Art by Ramon Villalobos.

Colors by Tamra Bonvillain.

Letters by Deron Bennett.

Cover A by Ramon Villalobos and Tamra Bonvillain.

Cover B by Jorge Jimenez.

Comic book culture shock from the imprint that does it best—the newly minted DC Vertigo continues its titanic takeover this September with Border Town #1, an unsubtle, off-beat melodrama about aliens, xenophobia, fitting in and moving on.

New kid Frank has so far endured the chaotic paradigms of high school in the quiet Arizona backwater of Devil’s Fork, and has received a punch in the face from a local skinhead for his trouble. That hostility isn’t unique, either: Devil’s Fork has pit neighbor against neighbor, one blaming the other for the town’s various strange goings-on despite having an abundantly obvious perpetrator—extraterrestrials have infiltrated America, but most folks can’t see past their own prejudices to even comprehend the truth.

DC Vertigo has released four pages from this awesome debut, which puts Ramon Villalobos’ acid-drenched linework on full display. Frank’s mid-afternoon sock to the cheek pops with the requisite violence, characters run an emotive gamut against backgrounds stuffed to the brim with world-building detail, and the book’s resident aliens have a wild, Quitely-esque squiggliness. And not to be outdone, Tamra Bonvillain’s lush hues make sure Devil’s Fork absolute broils with brutal desert heat and belligerent enmity.

Check out this four-page preview of Border Town #1, which includes a never-before-seen variant by Jorge Jimenez, below! FOC is this Monday, August 13—hit up your LCS and tell them you want Border Town!

$3.99 | M | SEPTEMBER 5

From DC Vertigo: When a crack in the border between worlds releases an army of monsters from Mexican folklore, the residents of Devil’s Fork, AZ, blame the ensuing weirdness—the shared nightmares, the otherworldly radio transmissions, the mysterious goat mutilations—on “God-dang illegals.” With racial tensions supernaturally charged, it’s up to new kid in town Frank Dominguez and a motley crew of high school misfits to discover what’s really going on in this town torn between worlds.

“BORDER TOWN is informed by the weird relationship I have with my ethnicity (I’m a biracial Mexican/Irish guy), the scary stories my cousins traumatized me with when I was a niño, the weird culture of the town I moved to right before my sophomore year of high school– basically all of the stuff I never thought anyone in the world would care about, except for me,” says Esquivel. “Our book takes place in Arizona. And Arizona’s most striking quality is that all of its most gorgeous sights occur right next to its ugliest. Picturesque sunsets fall over Joe Arpaio’s gleefully inhumane outdoor prisons. Flowers bloom on some of the most poisonous plants known to man. It’s anything but subtle.”