While it may say ‘Monthly’ in the Dark Horse International border on the cover, the three issues of the Alien³ Movie Special were released every three weeks (bit of a pattern there) like the earlier editions of Jurassic Park would be the following year when it was also publishing its movie adaptation. Instead of being printed as part of their regular Aliens comic, DHI decided to release this adaptation separately and include a wealth of fascinating extras.

What I instantly like as I flick through the issue is the fact that the free poster is actually free! It’s separate from the rest of the comic and isn’t just the middle pages. (I’m looking at you The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Doctor Who Magazine.) It’s not the image you’d expect it to be from the cover but it’s still a cracker and on the gloss paper it really sizzles.

The comic’s cover is taken straight from their American publication rather than being an original like their monthly and it’s by Arthur Suydam (Marvel Zombies, Deadpool, Moon Knight). Inside, the editorial by Dick Hansom welcomes us to both this limited run comic and DHI as a whole, promising many more titles to come over the years. Of course, DHI would close down in 1994 but I love their ambition. While I hadn’t really discovered James Bond for myself at the time, that definitely would’ve been one for the blog if they’d gotten around to bringing it over.

There’s an interesting feature right off the bat written by the main title’s regular features writer Dave Hughes. 20 Things You Should Know About Alien³ is a smorgasbord of little tidbits about the film which was still 16 days away from its UK release date. What you as blog readers should know is that I’m a big fan of Alien³, even more so today than at the time.

I always enjoyed it and thought it made for an original contribution to the series, making the first three films very different from each other. Some friends weren’t as crash-hot on it though. However, since then the Collector’s Edition has been released and to me it raises Alien³ up to an equal footing alongside the first two classics. In it there’s a lot more story, a lot more to the alien itself and some of the characters we only saw a little of are now central to the plot. In the case of Golic, (played by Eighth Doctor Paul McGann) he went from being a background player to being a main lead and central to the more complex plot.

So it’s interesting to see there were more creatures due to be featured at one point, including a bigger, armoured version of the facehugger and there’s mention of the ‘ox-burster’ being replaced by the ‘dog-burster’. This was switched back again for the Collector’s Edition, which altogether is much closer to David Fincher‘s original vision for the film. Point four above hints at the chaos in pre-production (pre-Fincher) and you can read more about that in the review for Aliens #1.

Point 13 stands out as well to me, both that the film wasn’t trashed across the board and also what it says about American fans. According to Dave, of course. 

So now we move on to what is essentially the main event, the 25 pages of strip that make up the first part of the comics adaptation. For those new to the blog I’ll quickly explain I’m not usually a fan of movie adaptations, ever since being disappointed with them in childhood. However, since writing the blog I’ve seen some which definitely start off well and have potential to be really good (so I’ll always give them a chance), but ultimately they’ve fallen apart because there’s so much to cram in.

That’s the main issue here. There are only three chapters, one less than Jurassic Park was given, so within these 25 pages we’re already a third of the way through the film! As such it rockets along and leaves everything I love about the film (the atmosphere, the characterisations, the unique portrayals, the mystery, the plot development) behind in order to simply copy and paste passages from the script into speech balloons and accompany them with something looking vaguely like what we saw on the screen. There doesn’t seem to be any proper attempt to adapt this adaptation for a different medium.

Strangely, it starts off by showing us Ripley being impregnated by the symbiote after Newt dies in her cryo tube. In the film this scene was presented as quick-cut moments between the credits so we didn’t know what was really going on. We knew there was something wrong but the scene later when the alien doesn’t kill Ripley was a surprise and the audience could start putting two-and-two together, but here it’s all laid out for us before anyone in the UK would’ve seen the film.

Another issue is the art pencilled by Christopher Taylor (Old Man Quill, Hulk, Blood Pack), inked by Rick Magyar (Captain America, Deathlok, Rom), coloured by Matt Webb (Spider-Girl, Adventures of The Mask, Fish Police) and lettered by Jim Massara (Transformers, The Real Ghostbusters, Droopy). I do like how it’s all framed in black, giving it an overall darker feel, possibly trying to mimic that atmosphere, but no one resembles their on screen actor in any way, not even Ripley. It also doesn’t help that all of the bald white men look identical here. There’s just no way of following who is who, who they’re talking to, or what’s happening to whom.

Moments that were jump scares in the film just don’t work and a lack of narrative captions doesn’t help either, so scene changes are very jarring, especially when they involve the same characters. Even for someone who has seen the film countless times this is a very confusing read. Unfortunately, script-wise it’s a very by-the-book strip by writer Steve Grant (The Punisher, X, Whisper). I don’t envy his task (as Don McGregor told us in The Lost World: Jurassic Park comic it’s ludicrously difficult to adapt a movie to the medium) but the end result feels even more rushed than most.

Take this scene above. When you first turn the page it certainly catches the eye, that’s for sure. But it’s only from watching the film so many, many times that I know what the characters are doing, why they’re lighting candles (even that isn’t obvious), or what happens in the sequence that sees one of them killed and has the other two running in circles trying to escape in sheer panic. In the film this is a terrifying scene, expertly directed and lit by nothing more than tiny flames.

The latter part of the comic houses more features by Dave, beginning with a look at the complex back and forth between the movie and UK model company Halcyon. I didn’t think I’d find this interesting but it really is, especially when founder Barry Jones admits their model of the alien itself isn’t accurate due to changes made during production of the film. They kept the model as it was because in a stationary pose it just didn’t look right with the changes, while it looked excellent in the film.

Unfortunately for readers at the time it’s a bit spoiler-heavy. Could they not have kept some of these details back at least until the film was released here? Then again, the fate of Newt and Hicks was already in the strip the reader would’ve just read. What’s most interesting is the fact that there was no definitive chest-burster alien to draw from before now, that Alien³ was the first time we actually saw one in its entirety.

“To me, the alien wasn’t just a monster, it was a character”

David Fincher, director Alien³

After that is a strange little two-page black-and-white Aliens vs Predator strip involving no more than three panels and a splash page that tells us the predators are responsible for spreading the aliens throughout the galaxy. It’s to continue across both Alien³ and the monthly Aliens so I’m sure I’ll show you a more interesting bit at some stage. After this is the best feature of the issue, called Trouble Comes in ³s, again by Dave.

Thankfully he moves beyond the heavily publicised pre-production problems and instead concentrates on the actual production of the film. Again, as great as it is I can’t help but feel it should’ve been held back for at least the second issue. Okay, so I don’t know yet what that one will contain but this is very spoiler heavy for any comic fans reading before watching the film.

Even the ending is given away! I do like how the feature praises first-time director David Fincher, who was unfairly maligned for problems the film faced even though they were beyond his control. What he did produce was great, and that newer version of the film in particular is testament to that. 

There’s mention too of the more complex story involving the capture and release of the alien by Paul McGann’s character, all of which was excised in the original cut before being placed back in over a decade later. The article also works as a fascinating look at the beginning of what would be an incredible directing career. Finally, effects technician Chris Halls is a name you’ll see more of on the blog as he’s the artist of some stunning covers for the UK comic to come. 

The issue ends with a brief one-page feature I won’t include because it’s a very quick interview with an incredibly arrogant British special effects supervisor who boasts about how his team made life awkward for the Americans working on the film and he does nothing but slag off (that’s the best way to describe it) the script. Not what I’d include in the comic when it completely relies on said film.

Out of the 48 pages in total the 23 that don’t contain comic strip are by far the best and as a fan of the movie I’ve found them fascinating, not only for the information on the film they contain but for how this eagerly anticipated sequel was covered at the time. As such, I look forward to more of those pages in three weeks when #2 of the Alien³ Movie Special leaps from the shadows and on to the blog on Monday 26th August 2024, and before that on Tuesday 20th August remember to check in on Aliens #3 too.

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