Alien Idol is an incredible series by JIAE. This webcomic follows the story of Rama, a genderless alien of a race that has three naturally occurring sexes (male, female, and nonbinary). Rama has always identified as a woman, and would have been able to make that choice upon reaching legal adulthood on her planet in the next year or so. However, following her and her fellow crew members’ escape after their home planet and research vessel are both destroyed by an enemy alien attack, she now must wait for her body to naturally develop on Earth. She and the few others that were on her research vessel make a rush teleport to Earth, light years away, and land in the bedroom of a famous K-pop company CEO. The CEO is impressed by their otherworldly beauty and voices, and immediately recruits them to form an all-male K-pop group, which includes Rama and a few other genderless members that have yet to fully develop.

There is a lot to unpack here in terms of story. The story does a lot to dive into the alien nature of immigration, gender, isolation, and so much more. For example, the creator explores the complicated and sometimes frightening look at Korean pop culture and idol culture from the artists’ side, showing characters that must struggle with how the public perceives them, comments on their bodies, attacks or supports, and how the mass media plays into that too.

I find that it also explores that complicated feeling of gender dysphoria in a way that is respectful to the challenges of the individual people in this story. Rama, for example, as a genderless alien who identifies as a woman, struggles with having to act as a man in public and with their changing body overlapping with all the other challenges in her turbulent life. Other characters also struggle with these ideas. There is a lot of trauma in the refugee experience that they display, and I think that the author is being sensitive and respectful in their sci-fi exploration of these ideas and experiences to the ways in which these stories are also real experiences of real people in the world right now.

Overall, Alien Idol is a truly unique and thought-provoking series that blends science fiction and social commentary and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in deep social commentary, sci-fiction, and storytelling. The series is available and complete (as well as fully translated) on Tapas now.

10/10 A Phenomenal Read

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Copyedited by: Katherine Cañeba | @kcserinlee