Anyone who’s been following the OiNK Blog for a while will be familiar with the furry little face above. Smudge has popped up in occasional posts here and there but what a lot of you mightn’t have known was that he didn’t actually live with me. Instead, I cat sat him regularly. However, I’m very happy to announce that as of mid-October he has come to join me in OiNK Blog Towers permanently. That’s right, Smudge is now living with me and my house has never felt cosier.
My friends Vicki and her mum Elaine were out for dinner on a cold, rainy night back in 2015 when, on their way to their car, they heard a cat crying out from somewhere. They found a teeny tiny kitten in a hedge but couldn’t get near him and had to leave. They couldn’t get him out of their heads though, so the next morning went back to see if he was still there. He was.
The story of how they got him was funny. They’d taken a box to catch him but he was too scared to get near. By pure luck, just as they got close to him and he made a dart to escape, Vicki’s husband Colin arrived and as he approached he saw the cat run and kicked the box, which fell over the yet-to-be-named Smudge. Later that day I got the first of the photos below. He was so small!
They got him checked out and the vet estimated he was only three months old. Initially they weren’t going to keep him, just until they could find somewhere to take him. Of course, Smudge made sure that didn’t happen. The photo below was taken on 10th October 2015 by me the first time I ever met him. By a strange coincidence, he moved in with me on 11th October 2025, just one day over exactly ten years since I’d instantly fallen in love with him.
Over the years I’d visit my friends and see him, and I’d look after him when they all went away on holidays. Of course I spoiled him rotten! When I was growing up we had a couple of budgies but no cats or dogs. In fact, my mum didn’t like cats so I was always fascinated with those belonging to my mates. I found it so surprising how much Smudge and I grew to become friends, something that had never happened between me and an animal before.
Sadly, Elaine passed away in 2021. It hit us all hard. I could also tell Smudge was missing her and stressed about where his owner had gone. In the years since then I’ve looked after him more regularly and recently I was doing so every other weekend. Before she passed, Elaine asked me to take him, but he lived in a big house in the country and I lived in a regular Belfast terraced house in the city. We thought it couldn’t be done.
One look at these photos taken over the past fortnight should tell you how it’s been going!
Vicki and I brought him up in her car and he cried all the way in his carrier (he hates that thing). I was ready for him to cry all day and hide himself away. I was prepared for it to take a few weeks for him to settle in. IF he settled in. He sniffed around a bit, hid upstairs under my bed for half an hour, then came back downstairs and I put some food out, not expecting him to be up for eating anything. I expected him to be too out of sorts and nervous. The next four photos took place over the first couple of hours of him being here.
This wee cat never fails to surprise me. I’ve always said he’s a smart cat, I swear he understands me, but that’s not to say he isn’t daft. That’s something we’ve all always agreed on! He has been great fun since he got here and he’s wonderful company. He’s really taken to his new home and spends much of his time purring on my lap, and for me I’ve been having the deepest of sleeps at night with him curled up on top of me, beside me or even just near me in his cat bed at the foot of my own bed.
(Deep sleeps, just not full nights of sleep anymore. He gets up to ask for a bit of chicken about 4am. That’s my own fault for letting him get away with it for years while cat sitting, so that’s come back to bite me!)
I’m also developing new skills thanks to Smudge. Anyone who has a cat will know if they curl up to have a catnap on your lap, you do not get up. You. Do. Not. Get. Up. You just don’t want to. I’ve gotten quite good at editing on my laptop one-handed or writing whole posts and articles on my phone!
So, welcome home Smudge. OiNK Blog readers, you can expect him to pop up more around here I’m sure.
To Elaine, you were right, and I’ll take really good care of him for you ❤️ xo
This week back in 1990 the editorial in Marvel UK’s Transformers announced the exciting news that Death’s Head was finally back. Not in a reprint of a previous story (something they still liked to hype) but a brand new graphic novel. In reality it collected together his run from Strip comic, and this is the final piece of the jigsaw for the blog’s real time read through of the original incarnation of the character.
Coming in at 68 pages including a card cover, inside is all glossy and beautiful, the paper upgrade allowing artist Geoff Senior (who co-created the character for the Transformers but only drew one of the monthly issues) to return to the character in style and bring us a new level of colouring. Helen Stone (The Sleeze Brothers, The Real Ghostbusters, Knights of Pendragon) joins the team as letterer, Steve White (Xenozoic Tales, Rogue Trooper, The Lost World Jurassic Park) returns to edit and of course it’s all written by co-creator Simon Furman (Transformers, To the Death, Doctor Who), with Geoff (Hell’s Angel, Dragon’s Claws, Judge Dredd) and Walt Simonson (The Star Slammers, Jurassic Park, Thor) teaming up on the cover.
We begin in a strange land that apparently doesn’t adhere to time or meaning, with someone being tracked down and killed, the perpetrator only seen from one angle, their arm looking suspiciously like Death’s Head’s original design from Transformers and Doctor Who. Then it’s back to 2020, where he ended up at the end of his comic’s run and an electrifying chase as the Freelance Peacekeeping Agent hunts down his latest bounty and it’s full of all the usual quips and comedy action.
Rogan accuses Death’s Head of enjoying the chase and this really gets into his head. As he runs he questions himself. Is he really enjoying the hunt more than the profit? At the end he believes Rogan is about to take a woman hostage so he kills him, but he was running to her apartment for safety. She’s his partner and she screams that Death’s Head ran him down like it was sport. He walks away, solemn, trying hard to convince himself that she’s wrong.
Initially I thought this wasn’t going to feature Spratt but suddenly we’re back in 8162 and he’s meeting with his boss’ mysterious love who was hinted at in the monthly. (He doesn’t look like Spratt at all though.) It’s good to see the vulture is still on the team too. So apparently the not-a-bounty hunter is her husband and she has “vengelust” for him. Big Shot is also back and just as angry as ever. Spratt tries to escape, so Nightweaver reads his mind and finds out her love has time travelled. All the while in some void-like world the lookalike looks on. So far, so intriguing.
As in the comic the year 2020 looks just as futuristic as thousands of years into the future and given what actually happened in the world in 2020 maybe this version would’ve been preferred. I don’t want to ruin any possible future you may have in reading this graphic novel, so I must warn you this review will obviously contain spoilers. It should go without saying by this stage, this blog is all about classic comics, but more than any of the monthly stories the shocks and surprises in this are an integral part of the plot and thus the reading experience. To tell you about them would be to ruin the experience for you if you intend to read this one day. So consider yourself warned.
My favourite parts always involve our lead character and his quips, his inner thoughts and biting humour. Such as the moment above. He ends up flashing back and forth between the real world and the void and slowly the identity of the lookalike reveals himself. However, surprisingly this is seen in flashback form inside our anti-hero’s mind. He begins to question his own origin, something he’s never done until now. The same goes for the reader, but I’ll get to that below as it’s the only real bone of contention I have with this.
It doesn’t stop the rest of this graphic novel from being highly enjoyable. For example, despite Death’s Head initially being joyful that Spratt wasn’t there, the banter between the two during action scenes is better than ever. I think he secretly loves it! Or how about another scene when he realises he hadn’t previously defeated Big Shot and he strops like a child, proclaiming it’s unfair while having the huffiest of faces his angular jawline will allow. Then things take a turn when Big Shot says all bounty hunters are the same, that they all enjoy their work. Following up from earlier in the story, this leads us to the main event, the creation of Death’s Head.
Meet Lupex. He’s the fella in the void universe who bares a striking resemblance to the star of the piece and whose catchphrase is also somewhat familiar. He’s a warlord and Nightweaver, known here as Pyra, was his wife; a woman who wanted all the power he had but who was in love with another. Lupex possessed bodies to survive and did so with her lover’s body out of spite. He was also creating a robotic form for himself so he could live forever without the need of new flesh.
But in an act of revenge Pyra finished programming the robot and made him autonomous with a mind and soul of his own. Not just any mind, a business-like mind, a clinical assassin whose only goal was to do the job and get paid. The opposite of Lupex. She thought this would create the only one who could go up against her husband (whose love of killing drove him). It’s a hell of a story but I’m not sure if it fits within the Death’s Head comic for me. It feels too mythical. Then again, he did fight Unicron, the God of Chaoson the astral plane so maybe it’s just that I’m used to the more grounded stories of the monthly by now.
What definitely doesn’t gel for me is the retconning. Don’t get me wrong, I like stories that add to previous ones, that surprise us and take things in new directions or give us previously unknown facts to completely redefine characters and settings. But what I don’t like is when this completely contradicts what went before, and we’d already been told by Death’s Head himself he was created as the plaything of a very rich, very bored individual who he later killed.
However we are told here that his body was subsequently stolen by an unknown party so there’s always a chance the previous origin could be woven in, in the time before his first appearance in Transformers. Did Simon intended to do so or was this was replacing what went before? I’ve convinced myself it’s the former because the rest of this book is so much fun, so full of superb action, great character moments and lots of laugh-out-loud moments that it really is classic Death’s Head.
The story culminates in a chase echoing that from the beginning, only with Death’s Head as the one being chased and taunted. This creature also has control over the land in this realm, which is split into ‘magik’ and ‘techno’ sectors. In each he can realign his powers to shape the ground and use it to attack his victims, and he almost destroys Death’s Head by doing so. However, he cannot control the borders between these sectors or when they change from one to the other independently.
We see Death’s Head almost enjoying each successful escape, leading him to question himself again. That is, until he remembers his one true love. No, not Pyra. He remembers how much he loves money! This is enough to refocus him, and I’ll admit I had a little inward cheer and fist bump when this happened. It’s almost a spoof of scenes in superhero comics when doubts are washed away and the hero emerges ready for battle after thinking about the reasons they’re fighting, their cause for good. Here, the cause is cash.
In the end Death’s Head takes a gamble that Lupex doesn’t know he’d spent so long in 8162 (in his own comic and Dragon’s Claws) and as a result has become much more advanced as he repaired and added to his tech. In the end he’s playing the victim but in reality his computer systems are calculating where a magik zone is about to change into a techno one. We think the final blow is about to fall but Lupex unknowingly tries to use magik as the zone changes and it no longer works. The few seconds it takes him to correct his attack is just enough for our star to use his built-in hidden spike.
It’s a thrilling conclusion. It rockets along but never fails to hit the right character beats as it goes. Lupex feels like a genuine threat for the seemingly indestructible Death’s Head, all the while our hero (I’m just going to call him that from now on, I think he deserves it after all this) quips escalate the more desperate he gets, almost like he’s trying to use humour to keep himself going. After it’s all over he even begins to gloat, but he stops himself. He doesn’t want to end up like his father!
Even the vulture gets a funny moment alongside Spratt before Death’s Head gets to round everything off with his usual blasé attitude, despite the scale of the battle that’s just occurred. While I’m still in two minds over the retconning, the story told here is a fascinating one. If we hadn’t been told something different beforehand this would be faultless. In fact, it near enough is anyway!
What a fantastic send off for one of my very favourite comics characters. Apparently this first incarnation of Death’s Head appeared in Marvel US’ Fantastic Four #338 so I might track that down some day as an extra for the blog, but in the meantime it’s a very, very fond farewell to the greatest Freelance Peacekeeping Agent any world, any time or any universe has ever seen. What an ending! Kudos to all involved.
A couple of years ago I bought the Alien: Isolation game for my Nintendo Switch after some friends had described just how terrifying they’d found it. They weren’t wrong. I could only play it for about an hour at a time; my heart couldn’t take any more in one sitting. Then again, playing it late at night in the dark with surround headphones on probably didn’t help.
Back in 1991 my first edition of Commodore Format included the UK version of the C64’sAliens game on the cover tape. It’s very basic today but at the time its eerie atmosphere and sudden sound effects gave us the willies and jump scares aplenty. Now, I’ve added a game that lands somewhere in between the two time-wise to my growing Nintendo GameBoy collection (which began because of the Jurassic Park comic on this blog), Alien Vs Predator: The Last of his Clan from the 90s.
It’s the first game in my collection not to come with a box (because the cheapest complete set would’ve melted my debit card) so I had to download the manual from an online resource, but at least it’s still the original cartridge being played on an original machine, just like the rest. While I wasn’t expecting it to terrify me, the legacy of the 8-bit game I’d played decades before showed the potential of creating an atmosphere and using the player’s imagination against them.
Unfortunately, what we have here is a by-the-numbers action platform game instead. The advert published in the pages of an issue of Transformers: Generation 2 alerted me to the game’s existence and I liked the sound of it from the description. What a shame then, despite the ad showing the GameBoy box, the description is for the Super Nintendo home console version which has received many positive reviews online. So what did I think of this version?
Let’s begin with the plot. While I say “plot”, it’s more like an excuse for the gameplay but I won’t hold that against it, that was something we were used to back then. Basically, in wanting the ultimate hunt the Predator race seeded a few alien eggs on a desolate world and completely underestimated the numbers they’d produce. Now, playing the lone surviving Predator you must infiltrate the alien hive and kill the Queen to avenge your tribe’s honour. You know, instead of just leaving.
The first thing that struck me was the intricately detailed sprites of the Predator and the aliens. Or rather, alien in the singular sense as it’s the same sprite used for every xenomorph throughout. Not that it’s easy to make them out. While original GameBoy games did blur when scrolling, this one seems to do so way more than others, resulting in a right confusing mess on the screen.
What I did like straight away was the large map area, which draws as you explore and by playing close attention you’ll see differences between it and the main game screen, identifying fake walls to be walked through or blown up. However, the map is powered by energy cells, the same ones that run your invisibility cloak and the map constantly drains them. This adds a bit of strategy to proceedings as you have to use the map to find the weapon pick ups and the extra energy cells to keep it going. This and the bombs are really the only things you’ll need to think about, though.
The bombs can also be used to push your jumps further into the air to find more secrets. However, when you realise the amount of bombs you get per level is the exact amount you need to make it through to the end there’s no room for experimentation and strategy. One error and you’ll have to find an alien to kill you so you can restart the level all over again.
The shoulder cannon with its heat-seeking ammunition kills with one shot, but even having “only” 20 rounds doesn’t bring any thought to the gameplay because there won’t be that many enemies in any one zone, and you have to recollect fresh weapons at the start of every level anyway. So what does that leave us with? A game that pays lip service to having a bit of depth but which in practice is a simple shoot-first-and-ask-no-questions-because-the-aliens-won’t-understand-or-care kind of game.
Games like this are why Jurassic Park stood out
I wouldn’t call it a “run and gun” either because as you can see our Predator friend lumbers along like he’s on his way to the office on a Monday morning. The fight button uses whatever weapon you happen to have selected, while the other makes him jump a preset height and distance. There are ladders which always seem to have annoying facehuggers or alien symbiotes at the bottom that you can’t avoid (until you get the heat seekers), cheekily damaging you without a way around them.
The aliens themselves come in from the same direction every play through so when you’ve finished a level you know exactly what’ll occur and when. Unlike their movie (and now TV) counterparts they’re not exactly smart. They just run at you blindly and you have a good enough reach that even with your wrist blades (the default weapon) you can just punch them a few times (more on later levels) to get rid of them.
Look, I know it’s a GameBoy game but that doesn’t mean it has to be this basic. In my collection so far I have games which show this machine could handle more complex game styles, such as the frantic platforming of Super Mario Land, the utterly fantastic conversion of Lemmings (the fact it works so well on the small screen with so few buttons is a masterclass!) and of course Jurassic Park which offers more play styles, more fun and a much greater challenge.
There are some elements here I do enjoy, such as finding the little secret areas only through close study of the map, the inventory management needed with the energy cells and the bombs, and the main sprites are certainly entertaining for a while, even if you can only admire them when they don’t move. The variety of weapons livens things up too, especially on later levels when I was getting tired of the same gameplay over and over. However, with each new level you have to go off and find them all over again, adding to the repetitiveness.
There are seven levels altogether over four different locations. You’ll find yourself traversing a warehouse, a vent, a cave and the final alien nest. Not exactly a thrilling selection and to be honest they all play identically despite the slight change in backgrounds. The criticisms I’ve levelled (no pun intended) at this game are pretty clichéd I have to say, because they’re the same traps a lot of licenced games fell into back in the 80s and 90s. They’re the reason why games such as Jurassic Park stood out.
In fact, if you replaced the Predator and alien sprites with those related to any other licence this could easily have been marketed as a tie-in for any movie, TV series, cartoon etc. The only part of the game that stands out is the final confrontation with the Queen. She takes up most of the display and it’s an impressive sight after the rest of the game. Even so, she’s not the most difficult end-of-game boss to defeat, it just takes a long time and can become quite monotonous.
The end sequence amounts to no more than a written congratulatory message and with the game playing exactly the same each time there’s no replay value once you’re finished. The day before this review was due on the blog I decided to record these videos and unfortunately I didn’t make it all the way to the Queen, and the thought of going through everything all over again was just too much, so here’s a screen grab from VG Junk’s Retrovania blog instead.
What there is in Aliens Vs Predator: Last of his Clan isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that there’s not much of it. The first level feels like it should be the introduction to the basic controls before more complex levels and gameplay later, but it never develops beyond this initial experience, instead copying and pasting everything from gameplay to the enemy attacks for half a dozen levels.
It’s a shame, especially after the C64 showed what was possible with a limited 8-bit system. However, there could be more positive news ahead. Another game on the horizon for the Dark Horse International section of the blog is the GameBoy’s version of Alien³. It got rave reviews at the time across all formats, including the diminutive handheld. In fact, I’ve been collecting GB Action magazines from the 90s to help me choose games for my own personal collection and its review is stellar. (Aliens Vs Predator wasn’t in any of the issues I have so far or I could’ve saved myself £30.)
So watch out for more handheld horrors of (hopefully) the good kind next Halloween!
The Real Ghostbusters tied themselves in with the free drinks offer most Marvel UK comics ran this month in 1988, the cover drawn by Martin Griffiths and in The Transformers and VisionariesJeff Anderson’s cover foretold of dark stories to come. Exciting times! Welcome to the next Mighty Marvel UK Checklist!
Inside this edition of The Real Ghostbusters is the only place (comics or cartoon) you’ll find any kind of official origin story for their pet ghost, Slimer as we find out who he was in life. As we approach spooky season Spengler’s Spirit Guide tries to explain the origins of Halloween and how it’s when the separation between dimensions is at its weakest. While it’s very funny it completely ignores the recurring villain from the cartoon, Samhainthe Spirit of Halloween. Missed a trick (and treat) there!
In The Transformers the Winter Special Collected Comics 11 is mentioned in the editorial. It was the edition of the comic that would ultimately turn me into a fan and ignite my love of these characters. This is also the issue when Megatron kills the time-travelling Cyclonus 20 years before he’s created, setting in motion the events leading to the epic Time Wars. We even see the very fabric of space begin to tear right at the end of the story here. Oh, and no, you couldn’t win a box of Ready Brek, the prize was a clock radio.
Just the four comics this week, with the latest monthly edition of Action Force tying itself in with the newly released home video of Action Force: The Movie, which famously changed the death of a character to a deep coma after the reaction of kids to Optimus Prime being killed off in The Transformers: The Movie. Also, does the Flintstones and Friends comic have any actual comic content? Judging from the checklists it’s hard to tell.
Last week I mentioned how I might just have to add the Marvel Bumper Comic to the blog’s list of real time read throughs after I found out Count Duckula had joined its ranks. In this week’s comics he also stars in an advert for his own Winter Special. Even though Duckula was a British cartoon it was Marvel US’ imprint Star Comics that produced a strip instead. In his natural home there was no regular comic with original UK content, just imports of the American strips into specials and the Bumper Comic. Surely a missed opportunity, especially given how funny the UK writing team for the Ghostbusters could be.
This blog series really seems to have fired the ol’ memory cells of readers out there because there’s been a great reaction on social media. I post the checklists and adverts there to get the conversations going, but of course you can follow along here instead where you also have access to all of the previous entries in one place. (Just click on the link below to the menu screen.) I’ll be back in seven days with even more. There’s plenty to come!
This cover by Robert Mentor (Sex Warrior, Star Wars, Vamperotica Magazine) is partially obscured by the latest free gift of an Aliens postcard, one half of a set showing a xenomorph facing up to a Predator. Don’t be expecting the other half next month, it was given away with a totally different comic, Total Carnage. Having linking postcards seems a bit strange. Were we meant to send them to the same person? The other postcard also marks the beginning of a new Aliens/Predator crossover strip in that comic. Why is it not in this comic where it belongs? Damn, that’s not fair. An advert for this issue also featured in Jurassic Park#5’s review.
As per usual here’s the editorial page with all of the credits for the issue and we kick things off with another short two-part story from the pages of anthology US title Dark Horse Comics. Part one of Dan Jolley’s (G.I. Joe Frontline, Vampirella, Warriors) Cargo is eight pages long and full of classic Alien atmosphere.
Gerald Coile is a smuggler who’s getting out of the game by informing to the DEA and escaping to anonymity, but he can’t help making one last run. In this universe we know this is likely to be a bad decision. He delivers his illicit cargo to a large ship and when he sees no one about he takes control of one of its cranes to get it on board so he can get paid and skedaddle. He doesn’t notice something automatically release itself and fall back into his boat.
Once his cargo is in the hold he wanders around a bit and realises he’s completely alone and the ship is powered down. He decides to go and check on the cargo he’s still to be paid for. Noticing it has a bleeping video screen his heart sinks. A video of the man he informed on pops up and Gerry’s boat explodes thanks to that earlier device. I do love the explosion picture, the bright colours against the dark shadows on the water are great, John Nadeau’s (Star Wars X-Wing, Wolverine, Colonial Marines) art compliments the atmosphere perfectly. As for Gerry, that’s not the end of his problems as the cargo he delivered opens up…
Of course this asks a lot of questions, like how Vasco got hold of an alien, what he originally wanted it for and what is the reference to its “home”. But this is a short two-part story and those answers may or may not have be answered elsewhere. It doesn’t matter though, we’re here for this tale and it’s a classic Aliens set up. I’m looking forward to seeing how (or if) Gerry gets out of this one.
There’s more of interest in the Motion Tracker news section than there has been these last few months. Not necessarily tying in with Aliens but I do love a good contemporary news article in these old comics and this one is very 90s indeed. The Difference Engine movie never got made in the end but I remember playing The Chaos Engine game on a friend’s Commodore Amiga and it was actually based on the novel. I never knew that! Penal Colony would get made but was renamed No Escape and it had a comics adaptation too.
I’ve never seen Time Cop but I remember reading about its short-lived TV show sequel in the excellent TV Zone magazine in the 90s and it seemed like fun. As for news centred around the comic’s inspiration I’d say the news Alien³ is the first of the series to make profit is probably only how the studio’s creative accounting saw it and our previous prose story Tribes won a very well deserved award.
Part five of Michael Cook’sCrusade takes up 11 pages in the middle of the comic and Christian Gorny’s art has improved immensely! The aliens and action scenes in particular are wonderful. Why was it not this good previously? It’s revealed Rani the seer is searching for her missing childhood friend Martha and her narration is a welcome addition. Coupled with the upgrade in art it makes things a lot less confusing.
This chapter is their escape from the sewer but unlike previous entries it has satisfying character development too, thanks to there only being three characters now and the art making each more distinctive. Running from the aliens, Minecorp marine Channon saves Rani and one of the male Marines (his name isn’t given here and trying to work out who he was previously was impossible) but the narration tells us they couldn’t save her in return, so they made their escape without her. We think this is because Channon is about to be killed by the alien but it’s actually a smart bit of misdirection.
Instead, she faces it down, shoots it and for once in the Alien franchise doesn’t get covered in acid, so kudos to her! However, once out of the sewer a gun is held to her face by an unknown person. Rani and the male marine are all that’s left as far as they’re concerned and we find out the missing team they were sent to find included his wife. This changes Rani’s opinion of him. She knows he’s no solider (he’s actually a company man, not a marine as its turns out) and they disagree on pretty much everything, but she respects how much he believes in his wife’s abilities to survive.
They realise the horses that birthed the aliens had been drinking from the Thames, and if that’s how they got infected then the creatures must be all over the city by now, in every river and stream. The slower, quieter moments with proper dialogue instead of the forced ‘chat’ of the earliest chapters and the upgrade in art have really surprised me, and raised Crusade’s prospects immensely.
The Technical Readout is getting less and less technical as the comic goes on, unfortunately. This month it’s about Dropship markings, nothing more than a few identical drawings of drop ships coloured differently. Much better as a feature is the next Q and Aliens, with the trickier questions from readers put to the publication’s experts.
That’s an interesting image by John Bolton and the Question of the Month has a fun answer, staying within character and defending the company, and I like that comparison to bees. But most intriguing is the mention of Skeleton Crew magazine and why its Aliens Special was withdrawn from sale. The magazine was actually created by this comic’s Dave Hughes but as it says here it’s a rare issue and the only one I can’t track down on eBay. Possibly a future special feature for the blog.
Chris Warner’sColonial Marines is next and with their APC damaged they’re awaiting rescue from their second dropship when loads of finned aliens with fish tails instead of legs break through the surface of the kelp beds. There’s even one huge mother of an aquatic alien who clearly wants to challenge Daryl Hannah as the Queen of the mermaids.
While it should be a tense scene with nowhere to run except to sit on top of their APC and fight off hoards of aliens (why not go inside the heavily armoured vehicle?), unfortunately this usually superb strip has gone in the opposite direction of Crusade. Here, there are just too many characters who all look like each other. I can’t even tell who Lt. Henry is, who I’d been enjoying so much in previous issues, so this means I’m suddenly not as invested as I was in what happens. Eventually Vasquez arrives piloting the dropship and rescues everyone, redeeming herself after she’d previously froze on the spot mid-battle. There’s a funny reference to this on the final page and this is pretty much all we get as far as character moments go. The first disappointing chapter in this lengthy tale.
Next is a follow-up feature to the excellent alien autopsy from #11. This time, Jim Campbell’sUnder the Knife cuts deep into a facehugger and its alien egg or, to give it its proper name, the ovomorph. I’ve been really looking forward to this and, as it’s once again written from the perspective of the future scientists doing the dissecting, it’s another fascinating read. For starters, I never thought of the eggs as separate lifeforms until now. It makes sense, of course.
Jim gives us a reason as to how they survived so long on LV426 before discovery in the first film, something which is key to the aliens’ survival. How the egg detects potential hosts makes these things even creepier and how it can configure a facehugger in much the same way as an alien adapts to its host is really well written. In fact, the whole feature is brilliantly written. Again.
The apparent science behind the actual face-hugging is compulsive reading, from how it’s awoken to how it samples its host’s respiratory system to determine the best way to keep them alive. Then the fact the alien is created inside the host rather than being implanted actually pairs up with the prequel movies decades later. Towards the end I did laugh at the typically horrific reasoning of the company when it reveals the only thing stopping them from carrying on their research!
Believe it or not we finish on a four-page humour strip. Not that you’d know it from the first few pages. Coming straight after the dissection feature the images on the first page instantly set me on edge. Aliens: Taste is written by Edward Martin III (a Dark Horse US editor for Dark Horse Presents, Aliens and Predator), drawn by Mark Nelson (Graphic Classics Bram Stoker, Native American Classics, Rosebud), coloured by Ray P. Murtaugh (Splatter, Star Wars, Elementals) and lettered by Willie Shubert (Legends of The Dark Knight, Deathstroke, Robin).
The narration talks about life forms dying of ennui (boredom, lethargy), then builds tension as it talks about those of us who experience bits of danger everyday, then those who like it for the adrenalin rush, those who seek it out, right up to those who actively court danger. All the while the facehugger is slipping further out of its egg until it lunges towards the reader… but a giant clawed hand grabs it before we turn to the final page below.
I didn’t expect this to be a funny strip until I actually read it and got to this page. It was certainly a surprise inside the pages of this particular comic! This many issues in and Aliens continues to shock us in terms of its horror stories and now a shock dose of humour. One of the very best all-round issues yet, it begs the question of what will #18 contain to improve upon it? We’ll find out together on Tuesday 18th November 2025.
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