Invasion: Alice!

Continuing the comics challenge, today's hurdle was to pick a '70s sitcom and adapt it into a comic book. As always, results vary.

"Kiss my grits, Lobo!"

Aspiring country singer Alice Hyatt was accompanying her trucker husband on a cross country haul when fate cruelly intervened. An errant Zeta Beam struck the highway in front of their semi, causing it to leap the concrete divide and crash head-on into oncoming traffic. Don Hyatt was killed instantly in the wreck, but Alice was trapped in the Zeta Beam's pull and whisked across the galaxy. One moment Alice's life is flashing before her eyes, a split second from death, and the next she's shaking in the fetal position on the floor of Mel's Diner, orbiting the planet Rann.

Mel Sharples, retired Khund mercenary is a veteran of the Invasion of Earth. Taking his back pay and pension he owns Mel's Diner, a restaurant and interstellar shipping rest stop orbiting the planet Rann. Mel's a grizzled old fry cook who hides the fact that he's a soft touch with a grim exterior. After his time on Earth during the war he grew to like humans... on the bone, with a brown sauce.

Mel's soft touch is reflected in the collection of cast-offs and misfits under his employ. The head waitress, who's also the head waiter (depending on who she's sleeping with at the time), is Flo Castleberry, a sassy, sex-hungry Durlan shape shifter.

Ver Go-man is a neurotic, scatterbrained Psion exile. Ver's trapped in the characteristic Psion loop of self denial, but lacks the typical Psion talent for science, hence a life of slinging Thanagarian hash at Mel's.

Rounding out the cast is an aquatic Gil'dishpan dishwasher and Mel's line cook, a snarling cyborg, one-armed Okaaran who served with Mel during the war.

Recurring characters will include Adam Strange and his wife Alanna, and Lobo, intergalactic '90s stereotype.

NEXT PAGE, NEXT PANEL. WIDE ANGLE OF A DINER. IT'S A TYPICAL GREASY SPOON BY WAY OF THE MOS EISLEY CANTINA. OUTSIDE THE WINDOWS IS THE BLACKNESS OF SPACE. CURLED UP ON THE FLOOR IN THE FOREGROUND IS ALICE. SHE'S DISORIENTED AND TERRIFIED. SURROUNDING HER IS THE ZETA BEAM'S FADING GLOW. STANDING OVER HER, DRESSED IN THE OUTERSPACE VERSION OF A 1950'S WAITRESS UNIFORM, IS THE REDHEADED DURLAN FLO, BALANCING A TRAY OF STEAMING PLATES.

FLO: TABLE FOR ONE, SUGAR?