The Silent Invasion

This newly formed comics team concocts a series that will undoubtedly become a classic. It's 1952 and Matt Sinkage, a reporter for the Union City Sentinel-Gazette , can't interest his editor in articles on flying saucers, especially with the Communist threat crowding everything else off the front page. Sinkage has a baffling encounter with a strange force outside Albany, N.Y. Someone or something is after him; his family thinks he's crazy, his fiancee doesn't trust him anymore, but Matt's sure that he's onto something big. This comic has it all: great plotting, humor, suspense and excellent, stylized black-and-white drawings (by Cherkas). In a science fiction mystery steeped in '50s Americana, everyone drives big, bulbous Buicks, the men have shoulders like linebackers and there's a Red under every bed. And talk about good boys and nice girls. On the run from unnamed enemies, our hero and the alien Gloria Amber stop at a motel. At the bedroom door, in a shared thought balloon, they both exclaim, ``Whew . . . twin beds.'' This is the first of four volumes. (July)