“From the desk of the President of the United States of America”

President-Elect Stephan Blades (because you guys: President Blades!) arrives at the office ready to work. Waiting for him, as always, is a letter from the previous president - only unlike most other times, the letter is not attached with a “hello” or a handshake. Outgoing President Francis T. Carroll is nowhere to be seen, having skipped out on the passing of the torch - the first time a sitting president has done so in all of history. As we soon discover, Carroll might have good reason for not sticking around.

Letter 44 is a strong political thriller in a format only comics can contain. It takes the idea of inheriting unforeseen and secretive problems and blows it up to a grand scale, asking what might be done if a President discovered potential life on a distant planet. What would you do? The answer, of course, isn’t simple, as President Blades soon finds out. Can he make good on election promises when there’s a great unknown looming threat out in the distance? And what should he do about it? Prepare for a war? Sit back and let things play out as they will? Some of these decisions have already been made in some way, shape or form through the legacy of the previous President. It becomes swiftly evident that even those with the best of intensions can find themselves mired in something bigger than they had planned, with forces in motion that are too big to pull the reins back on with any sense of control. This is a book about what might be out there. It’s a book about grand metaphor involving forces too large and cumbersome to understand. It’s about trying to run the world while discovering we might not be alone.

Charles Soule and Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque have put together a strong effort with this first issue. By necessity, it is an issue that places the pieces on board. There’s not crazy action scenes, no laser guns or fisticuffs. There’s just people trying to do the best they can do given a situation they never asked to deal with. You can hear the desperation in Soule’s words and on Albequerque’s faces. These are real people they’ve created and given life too, and you laugh and cry and fear with them. You want to see this thing through, whatever this thing is. It’s a great debut comic, one that’s well worth this thin dollar it will cost you to experience. Yeah, that’s right, the first issue is just one dollar. For that price, you can at least check it out, and if you don’t enjoy it, you’ll at least know who will, and you can give your copy to them.