The alien who pops up on every page of Sterling Bartlett’s comic book looks at our world through an outsider’s eyes—and doesn’t like what it sees. It asks: Why are Earthlings chained to devices that separate and distract us? Why do we listen to “life hacks” whose true profession is monetizing our anxiety? Or value the market for pathetic contemporary “art,” as long as it “expresses its conceptual goal”? Or buy into the “nostalgia industrial complex” that shrink wraps the past and sells it at half-price? And don’t get the alien started on movie franchises! How Did We Get Here is a provocative thumb in the eye of just about everything in our sadly diminished culture.
