By Bruno Savill De Jong — During the Cold War, Berlin was a microcosm of a divided Europe. Nestled within the Communist controlled East Germany, the capital city of Berlin was itself divided up by the Berlin Wall, separated into Western and Eastern sections. This small pocket in the Iron Curtain meant East Berlin was an intensely monitored area by the Stasi, secret police who watched and interrogated its citizens to keep them from ‘deviation’. Strange Skies over East Berlin follows Agent Herring, an ex-CIA American undercover in the Stasi, who is helping certain desperate citizens to flee to the West. But one time, while navigating around the clustered guards and watchtowers that track people trying to climb the Wall, a mysterious flying object with a luminescent blue streak splits the sky above them. Worse, it crashes on the Soviet side. So, Herring has to again infiltrate enemy lines to investigate this strange encounter, resulting in the geo-political divisions of this era paling in comparison to the global perspective an alien invader brings.

This particular extra-terrestrial is less an external threat which questions humanity’s place in the universe, and more an internal threat which questions people’s place among humanity. Strange Skies over East Berlin is actually predominantly underground, set in a Soviet-operated bunker full of those trying to understand this other-worldly creature, when in fact it is the one who examines them. The spindly uncanny entity somehow extracts and exposes the inner anxieties of those around it, psychically confronting its victims with the deceptions they’ve shrouded themselves with. For an era defined by secrecy and paranoia, this is a problem. Herring particularly has a buried past and history of double-crosses which are painfully leaked out in the comic.

From War of the Worlds to Arrival, science-fiction often uses Aliens to interrogate the human condition. Strange Skies is slightly simpler and smaller-scale than those works. Despite the time period, it's less interested in political factions, and more in universal human tendencies; the meaning of lies. Strange Skies reminded me of sci-fi short stories or certain “Twilight Zone” episodes; a fantastical premise used towards a metaphorical parable. Herring’s internal narration makes most of Strange Skies dominated by vague musings upon ‘truth’ and ‘lies’, the comic fairly explicitly wearing its themes on its sleeve. As a result, Jeff Loveness’ writing can sometimes feel fairly flat and heavy-handed. Evidenced by the alien personifying the character’s struggles with self-identity, Strange Skies is a comic more interested in conceptual ideas than seamlessly developing a story around them. But the story never becomes too loose, with characters like the Soviet base commander Anzhela keeping it grounded and well-paced. Strange Skies is less about tense physical battle (like in The Thing or Alien), and more about an atmospheric hallucinatory psychological self-confrontation. Although this psychic connection does mean some heads explode.

Lisandra Estheren provides great illustrations of both the gory drainage of soldier’s skulls, and the increasingly hallucinatory sequences where the underground bases’ dark caverns open up into flashbacks of battlefields or other events lodged in people’s memories. The characters are cartoon-y, but with enough rumples to remain dynamic and engaging. Patricio Delpeche contributes to the blurring between ‘realism’ and ‘fantastical’, the tangible and intangible, with the coloring. Strange Skies begins with mostly realistically muted colors, but after the otherworldly blue light invades the setting, the book becomes steadily lit with bright oranges, yellows and greens as the alien is unleashed.

Strange Skies over East Berlin sometimes places its ideas above its story-telling. Yet mostly these broad thoughts have enough construction around them to keep the book a brisk and engaging read. Strange Skies is nothing too mind-blowing or detailed, but it works best when taking a broad and distanced perspective on its themes, rather than getting caught up by the factors on the ground.

Strange Skies Over East Berlin - REVIEW

Strange Skies Over East Berlin
Writer: Jeff Loveness
Artist: Lisandra Estheren
Colorist: Patricio Delpeche
Letterer: Steve Wands
Publisher: Boom Studios
Price: $14.99
MANKIND MADE IT TO SPACE. AND NOW SPACE HAS FOLLOWED THEM BACK. Herring is a disillusioned American spy stationed on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, struggling with his role in a Cold War that seems to have no end. But when he's sent on a mission behind enemy lines to infiltrate East German intelligence, he soon learns the Soviets have a secret weapon that could change the tides of the conflict: an alien monster that they don't understand, and can't control. The Soviets are about to learn that they're not in charge of the monster it's already in their minds and has twisted them to their will. Now, Herring must find a way to understand the impossible before it transforms him into a monster unlike any other. Writer Jeff Loveness ( Judas ) and Lisandro Estherren ( Redneck ) team up for a story in the spirit of Cold War classics, for fans of period piece science fiction as well as alien action such as Barrier.
Release Date: August 2020
Buy It Digitally: Strange Skies Over East Berlin

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Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.