Category Archives: Aliens

Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #19: DiD iQs JUST DROP SHARPLY WHiLE i WAS AWAY?

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It’s only a couple of days before Christmas Day, so where’s the special cover? Well, Aliens mightn’t have had the easiest of logos to cover in snow, but we did get a (somewhat) festive themed front page last month instead. In case you missed it, you can go and check out Chris Halls’ second yearly seasonal treat in #18’s review. For now, it’s back to the January edition.

Dave Gibbons (Watchmen, Ro-Busters, Doctor Who) joins the Aliens fold at Dark Horse International with the brilliant cover and as writer on a new strip inside. Of course, long-time blog readers will have seen Dave’s work before on the site in the read throughs for OiNK, Death’s Head and Dragon’s Claws, as well as a post about his autobiography Confabulation, so it’s great to see his work back on the site, especially in this comic. A comic which is very strip-heavy this month.

As you can see the Features side of the contents is rather bare looking and this is mentioned by editor Cefn Ridout. It certainly sounds like they’re going to make up for it next month though. Of course this issue has to kick off with Dave’s story as the headline event. Salvation was an American one-shot comic split over two issues this side of the Atlantic and the artist bringing Dave’s script to the page is just as exciting.

Mike Mignola, whose dramatic and original artwork I enjoyed so much in the comics adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula recently on the blog (also see Hellboy, Rocket Racoon) makes his Aliens debut and these 15 pages are dripping in atmosphere, his art taking an already interesting story and making it absolutely compelling. And this is even before we’ve seen him really handle the aliens themselves. We only see part of one dead xenomorph here but that’s enough to have me anticipating the next chapter.

Matt Hollingsworth provides the suitably subdued colours and Clem Robins the lettering to Dave’s story of the survivors of the Nova Maru, a ship whose company trawled backwater planets looking for people desperate for no-questions-asked work to deliver a cargo to a deserted planet. I think we can all guess what the cargo is. Our main character is Selkirk, a religious cook who is mocked both for his religion and the fact he can’t actually cook.

When an alarm sounds we know exactly what’s happened, we’ve seen and read enough Aliens by now. The captain picks Selkirk at random to pilot an escape craft to get him off the ship, so horrified and scared is he by what he saw in the cargo hold he abandons his crew to die. After the crash the captain starts going insane, thinking the aliens are behind every tree, even suspecting Selkirk of being an alien trick. This leads to Selkirk killing him in self-defence in a particularly tense moment, made all the more so by the pitch black shadows of Mike’s art.

All through this Selkirk’s been praying (more Aliens+religion, there’s definitely been a theme recently) and every time a tiny bit of good luck comes his way he thinks it’s a sign and has occurred only because of his prayers. After discovering a half-submerged dead xenomorph and witnessing a bright light in the sky he deduces the Nova Maru has landed or crashed and will be stocked with provisions. Before heading off though, he’s hungry and needs energy for the journey. Looking at the captain’s body he believes god has provided for him again… and he cooks him.

By the end of this first chapter he’s completely relying on prayers and sees everything as intervention from his god, believing he’s being tested. All of the death, all of the people wiped out, and all because god wants to test him? It’s obviously hard to empathise with this lunatic. I’d be quite happy for him to be impregnated but we’ll see what happens next time in this short two-part tale.

In the Motion Tracker news pages Dave Hughes tries his very best to provide yet more hype for the interactive Alien War experience by reporting on its grand opening night. However, it still doesn’t come across great, does it? I had my doubts when it was previously announced it’d been cut down by half to squeeze more people in each day, and I think I was right. I also think he’s imagining things with the Dave movie poster.

Part 12 of Colonial Marines has a new creative force at the helm. Kelley Puckett (Batgirl, The Comet, Kinetic) takes over as writer and in comes Allen Nunis (Classic Star Wars, Images of Omaha, The Frankenstein Dracula War) on pencils and inker Paul Guinan is now joined by John Dell (Speed Racer, Lobo, Femforce). I do prefer this team for the aliens and layouts but the humans seem to have lost their defining characteristics.

Lt. Henry’s plan is to defend Bracken’s World’s central harbour with its tall concrete walls and one entry point, but this is Aliens and we know us humans are spectacularly bad at trying to outthink them. It’s also not much of a plan, simply sending some of the team out to lure the aliens back into a trap. It isn’t the most exciting of plots. Of course, the aliens are actually already at the harbour entrance, predictably lying in wait under the surface and quickly overpower the marines while the rest are out at sea.

Then the drop ship pilot disobeys orders to protect the harbour and instead, in an attempt to save her teammates, she destroys a huge alien Queen right next to the harbour wall, its acid blood producing multiple holes and weak points, eventually leading to its collapse and leaving the harbour exposed. This is the main bulk of the story and it’s just too predictable to be exciting. However, goings on elsewhere intrigue me.

Again the huge bulking android refuses to fight because of how much he cost to make, so are Beliveau’s comments last month ringing true yet for Henry? They seem to be, because amongst the chaos he orders his tech to hack into the android. That’s a big gamble when there’s a battle afoot but Henry must be thinking it might be worth the risk. I’ll look forward to afinding out more about that at least.

Moving on to the concluding part of Chris Claremont’s Renegade, this aliens-less prequel to the new Predator crossover would’ve been better in Total Carnage and the crossover in this comic, surely! But nope, that other comic would get the main event instead. So it turns out Ash’s big secret is that she’s really an android. To be fair, I should’ve clocked that the moment her name was given last issue. However, throughout the galaxy she’s known as Renegade and here she shows us why.

The Ransome ship’s security spot a small 12-year-old girl on a hill with binoculars watching them and immediately classify her as a threat, despite clearly identifying her as a child. When they take aim, meaning to kill her, Ash takes them all out. I’ll admit, it’s a thrilling read and in places Vince Giarrano’s art is powerful! But it’s all tempered by my original point, that it’s being used to promote Total Carnage to Aliens readers, while we miss out.

Crusade may have been the UK exclusive strip at the time but with everything else included this month it’s been reduced to a measly five pages and it suffers as a result. Foston and Rani try to explain to the Archbishop they need to evacuate the cathedral because the aliens are loose in the city. When he can’t convince them to put their faith in god he finally admits he’s been sheltering the aliens in the tower.

He moves to lead them out the door but the aliens from the sewers are there, waiting to get inside, which they can now do easily and immediately start killing his innocent followers. I’m not saying it’s impossible to tell a good story in five comic pages, but writer Michael Cook usually had more space to work with. The story had also started to become more interesting and involving in recent months, so this quick in-and-out is a bit of a let-down; it feels like it’s getting started when it just… stops.

After all the strip action we can take a breather with the letters page and someone asks if a competition can be run for readers to come up with story ideas that could be turned into strips. The answer is interesting, explaining many readers have already sent in unsolicited material, but everything published in the comic has to be “rigorously approved by 20th Century Fox so that new comic strips and illustrated stories featuring their characters do not contravene the nature of those characters and remain faithful to the Alien films.”

The problem is that sometimes the strips remain too faithful. Last month’s issue was great, this month the strips with fewer (or no) aliens that concentrated on the human element were the most interesting, while those filled with aliens basically retread familiar ground from the film series. There are only a few issues left so here’s hoping the new year brings a bit more balance before the comic is placed in its own chryo-chamber.

BACK TO iSSUE 18

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CHRiSTMAS 2025

Aliens, Christmas, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #18: MY MOMMY ALWAYS SAiD THERE WERE NO MONSTERS

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What’s this? A Christmas Chris Halls Aliens cover? Am I late in covering the blog’s logo with snow? Nope, that’ll happen on 24th November (six days from the day of writing) as per usual, in this case Dark Horse International editor Cefn Ridout must’ve mistimed the chilly seasonal cover somewhat. Yes, it’s the December issue but last year Chris’ superb art and pun-filled headline were part of the January issue released on 24th December. This year there’s another issue after this one just before Christmas Day.

Despite this, Cefn still takes the opportunity to wish us all a Merry Christmas and since mine starts as soon as the Christmas tree goes up in a few days I’ll take it! Anyway, there’s your obligatory editorial page with the full credits for this month’s issue.

Contrary to the blurb on the cover, the latest chapter to Michael Cook’s Crusade isn’t seasonal. The alien Queen trapped in a cathedral tower gave Chris a reason for the frosty cover and its church iconography, but in these eight pages we don’t see any aliens. From the ‘previously’ page we learn Channon is the leader of the Minecorp marines and Foston is the male company man, not that the strip itself has ever made these clear. The last survivor of the crashed survey team is Foston’s wife, hence why he’s risking it all even though he’s out of his depth.

Channon has been captured by a tribe who have constructed a whole village out of old vehicles because they don’t know what they are. Sounds interesting but unfortunately it’s just a mess on the page. The ‘jail’ is a camper van with a padlock and inside she finds Foston’s wife. They hot-wire the van and make their escape back to the survey ship where they stock up on heavy weaponry and take off down the egg-infested Thames in what is definitely too small a boat. It just feels right to have two kick-ass women in an Alien story, doesn’t it?

I certainly didn’t expect to get a huge laugh from the Motion Tracker news section! There’s a competition for a box set of VHS videos and it would’ve been right up my street. It’s a shame we don’t get a decent photograph of it, I’d really liked to have seen it closed with the face hugger wrapped around it. The comic also corrects (without mentioning it’s a correction) its previous error of stating Aliens wasn’t filmed in widescreen and I really laughed out loud when I got to the end. I hadn’t paid attention to the photo so hadn’t realised who it is until I read the question!

The 8-page first part of Renegade is written by Chris Claremont (Batman Black and White, Gen13, Wolverine), drawn by Vince Giarrano (Haywire, Terminator: Enemy Within, Manhunter), lettered by Tom Orzechowski (Thor, Ghost in the Shell, Spawn) and coloured by Greg Wright (Deathlok, Ghost Rider, The Punisher) and is taken from the American Dark Horse Comics anthology. It’s a prequel to Deadliest of the Species, a new Aliens/Predator crossover story. This is actually a little bit of Aliens history right here. Because it doesn’t feature any aliens, characters or names from the films this has remained the property of the writer and artist so it’s never been reprinted or collected since. 

On a planet rich in resources lives Caleb Deschanel and his daughter, and along with Ash Parnall they’ve built a community at one with nature and it’s making a profit. In lands Commander Javier Milan and EO Moira Delgado of the Descartes Indigenous Self-Defence Forces, protectors of the natural resources, according to them. Their motto is “Unexploited resources are wasted resources”, so defending the planet means exploiting it. The broad smiles and flirting is accompanied with straight-to-the-point statements; they must stand aside or face elimination. The fact the force’s spaceship is called Ransome is a bit on-the-nose.

Caleb is ill and frail and asks Ash to deal with this given her history, whatever that is. In fact, during a conversation Javier asks her how she knows so much about military weaponry and tactics and her response is just as mysterious as this strip; she had a misspent youth and they’ve a well-stocked library. This is the second strip of the issue and the second one with no aliens. A bold move or a poor decision? Truth be told, they’ve both been interesting to read so I’ve no complaints in taking a breather for more character moments.

In the concluding half of Cargo, writer Dan Jolley and artist John Nadeau continue to play to their strengths with a superb atmosphere, even if there’s a key part of the plot that doesn’t make sense. Surely even a criminal such as Vasco wouldn’t endanger the entire planet by importing an unsecured alien just for a bit of revenge? The fact it all happens on an abandoned cargo ship far out at sea doesn’t excuse things, it would eventually run aground or be found. But that atmosphere is palpable, so let’s just go with it.

Having Gerald as the lone human on a huge vessel with one alien has the makings of a truly terrifying tale, so it’s a shame this is a short 16-page strip in total with no time to build suspense. But that’s not where this falls foul, it’s in its overly simplistic ending which amounts to tricking the alien into the mag tube, filling it with water and then electrifying it. Now, that might not sound simplistic, but the fact it all happens in less than two pages makes Gerald’s escape seem very easy. A shame, as the tension in the build up was great.

Extra Terrestrial is a four-page feature written by Terry Jones detailing the cut scenes from Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie. Ridley has never released a director’s cut, he was very happy with the finished film, although he’s released an alternate cut with some scenes and moments replaced by others. The only scenes in this feature that really would’ve added anything new to the film are those above, which for obvious reasons (after the release of Aliens) can never be put back into the film. Ridley has said he never would because James Cameron did such an amazing job with the sequel’s explanation of the eggs.

Colonial Marines is our final strip for the month, coming in at a meatier 11 pages. On Bracken’s World the kelp beds are mysteriously disappearing across the planet and we see this lovely detailed opening of a colony hub on the agricultural world by Tony Akins, Paul Guinan and Matt Hollingsworth. Lt. Henry has explained the situation to the council but they’re angry with his team for upsetting their order, only half-believing him about the aliens.

Still, they demand he help but he can’t without orders, or at least that’s what he says. He’s playing something very close to his chest since the firefight last issue but even his sergeant can’t get it out of him. He won’t tell the council he can’t establish comms with HQ, and just tells his sergeant neither the council nor she need all the facts. This is out of character for him. All we know is that he saw “something” during the fight.

We get more questions than answers when he confronts Alphatech’s supposed “glorified accountant” Beliveau about the bug men having Alphatech weaponry. Aha! He’s convinced Beliveau is a bigger player than he’s been letting on, however Beliveau counters by asking why a new multi-million dollar synth prototype has been assigned to Henry’s babysitting team. Henry has no answers. Conspiracies abound. Intriguing.

Henry buys black market remote bombs and when asked by a different council member to help even though they can’t afford it (the capitalist future of the Alien universe in full effect), Henry says that they’re there until morning, they’ll help until then. This is an interesting, suspenseful and now a mysterious story with great characters and it’s back to full strength after getting lost in a sea of too many characters at once and overblown fight scenes.

There are some moments that hint at aliens attacking ships but otherwise this is again alien-free, concentrating solely on the humans involved in fighting them. So that means three of the four strips have no visible aliens in them whatsoever. In an Aliens comic. You know what? I didn’t even notice until I went back over the issue to make notes for this review. The Alien universe has always been about more than just the xenomorphs, as the brilliant Alien Earth has been expertly proving.

On the letter’s page there’s a brief mention of a new RoboCop comic in the new year, beginning with an adaptation of the upcoming third movie. It would never appear, what with DHI going out of business a few short months later. Marvel UK had also announced a RoboCop fortnightly in the pages of Transformers back in 1990 but that never happened either. He’d eventually pop up on these shores in the pages of Havoc. However, definitely coming next month is a cover drawn by and a strip written by the legendary comics star (and one-time OiNK contributor) Dave Gibbons.

It may have been released a month too early for the Christmas-inspired cover but #18 of Aliens has been a delightful surprise. The fact the stories didn’t need much in the way of alien action for the issue to be compulsive reading (their presence always felt) has ironically made it a highlight of the run so far. I’m intrigued to see what we have in store when the first post-holidays issue hits the blog before the Big Day on Tuesday 23rd December 2025.

iSSUE 17 < > iSSUE 19

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ALiENS VS PREDATOR ON GAMEBOY: A HANDHELD HORROR

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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’s Aliens 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!

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ALiENS #17: iT’S GOOD FOR YOU, BOY. EAT iT

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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’s Crusade 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’s Colonial 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’s Under 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.

iSSUE 16 < > iSSUE 18

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Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #16: A DAY iN THE MARiNE CORPS iS LiKE A DAY ON THE FARM

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This cover by Carl Critchlow (Thrud the Barbarian, Flesh, Batman/Judge Dredd) has got to be one of the best covers so far, encapsulating a moment with the twisted Doctor Cutlow character in the final chapter of our prose story, Tribes. So, only six issues to come after this one, eh? Yes, but calm down, that’s still half a year and a lot of aliens!

Editor Cefn Ridout mentions a sea-faring (“sea-scaring”) tale beginning next month and teases us about some other surprises to come. Colour me intrigued. After the editorial (included here so you have access to the full credits) we’re straight into the concluding half of Jim Woodring and Killian Plunkett’s superb Backsplash. After the cliff collapse there are only two Marines left, Gibbs and Crespi and these eight pages depict their desperate escape bid from the alien-infested cavern to their drop ship outside.

This is great fun! It’s also tense in all the right places which is quite the feat when we’ve gotten so used to seeing the aliens in comic form. Smacking an alien over the head with the limb of one of its fallen siblings, the pair make their way outside just before everything collapses around them. Not that this stops one of the aliens making a surprise reappearance to grab Crespi as they make a bolt for it.

Gibbs saves him only for things to take a turn for him. Hanging on to the ship’s entrance ramp he’s suddenly choking and an inner alien mouth bursts out of his own in a scary moment of synchronicity. His decapitated body falls to the ground as the ship takes off and a quick lever pull by Crespi opens the floor beneath the beast and, mirroring that earlier arm smack, poor Gibbs’ head is used in a moment of alien frustration!

This has been a brilliant little tale. Okay, so it’s light on plot and the characters are interchangeable with pretty much any Colonial Marine from the comic or movie, but through its sheer relentlessness and imaginative situations it’s a standout. But Kilian’s art is the main reason for its success in my eyes. His aliens are superbly detailed, his humans full of character even if the script doesn’t really call for it, and he heightens the horrific moments perfectly.

On to the news and I take issue with the Director’s Cut/Special Edition of a movie being referred to as “diluted”. Also, “already hailed as the best platform game for the Super Nintendo”? Really, Dave Hughes? Better than Mario? Better than Yoshi? The Alien³ game did very well across the board in all versions too, so I think maybe Dave owned a SNES. Ah, the days of unrivalled loyalty to a games platform. (For me it was still the C64 at this point.)

The game was notable for not following the plot of the film at all, with Ripley running around with a huge variety of weapons killing hoards of xenomorphs. Kind of defeats the purpose of having an Alien³ licence, no? At least she was bald! I still think a creepy platform game of stealth and a lack of weaponry with one alien roaming about would’ve been much better, like a 90s version of the more recent Alien: Isolation.

British strip Crusade begins with the Archbishop confronted by his suspicious followers, but he just keeps coming up with ludicrous excuses. “The wind whistling through broken stones” really placates people who’ve heard the alien Queen? Then our tribe and Minecorp marines are attacked by another tribe but the art is too messy to work out what’s going on. In the end the survivors continue on with their two horses into the sewers beneath London and now we can’t even see their hair colours in the dark, one of the few things we could use to tell characters apart. Suddenly their motion tracker starts to bleep and Rani’s spidey senses start to tingle. That can’t be good.

Back in the “big building for tiny minds” (as one of the Marines describes the church) it becomes clear that the Archbishop thinks he’s actually doing god’s work by keeping the alien threat contained within the tower via human sacrifices. But an attack and a hole in the wall recently saw some eggs roll down into the river, however he thinks if he keeps the aliens fed with outsiders they won’t leave their tower. In reality of course he’s just adding to their army.

The world building is potentially great but it’s that lack of visual clarity that’s just so frustrating. This issue’s chapter ends with one of the horses suddenly writhing in pain and an alien bursting from its chest, so the thrills and danger should be tangible but it just requires a bit too much effort for you to feel it.

One moment almost ruins the whole months-long story for me

Much better, as per usual, is prose story Tribes. This concluding chapter is, to use a clichéd phrase, a thrill ride. The whole place is rigged to explode any minute and Rat is stuck in a refuge unit with an alien climbing down through the rubbish. Bort realises he’s always loved her and risks his life to release the unit into deep space so she’ll finally be at peace, dead from the vacuum instead of being an alien incubator and reliving those nightmares of her childhood with her father.

In a tense moment she’s finally able to activate her oxygen supply and the story is left with her floating (alone, sans alien) in space. But one moment almost ruins the whole months-long story, for me anyway. The doctor of the religious extremists trying to help the aliens finds himself in an escape pod with a newborn Queen and a human baby. He was going to use this baby to feed the Queen but the baby dies in his arms slowly from a lack of oxygen.

Look, I know Alien is a horror franchise but I just felt this was an unnecessary use of a mental image of a dying baby to try to elicit an emotional response from the reader. It wasn’t needed and it cheapened all of the excellent work up to this point by writer Steve Bissette. Colton is also dying but knows the Queen will feed on him, providing her with sustenance until the pod lands and she can free herself. Tribes has been a real highlight and if it hadn’t been for that one moment I’d have been singing its praises for months to come.

The Technical Readout pages seem to have done away with the intricate technical cutaways, somewhat making the name of the feature redundant. While I do miss those earlier entries I have to say I really like this most recent one showcasing the military gear worn by two female Colonial Marines. There’s no credit anywhere for the artist, perhaps they were drawn by Lee Brimmincombe-Wood himself?

Our final strip is Colonial Marines and it’s been reduced in pages again after a bumper chapter last time but it’s still a meaty 12-page read. Leaving the sun gun they get distracted on the way to their main mission by a kelp bed on a planet that’s somehow keeping a comms channel open with the HQ they can’t reach, and on a planet that’s not meant to be inhabited. So off they go, with their bug man prisoner in tow.

Unfortunately, things don’t start off too well when the comic’s habit of printing errors sees spread above in the wrong order. The bug man is somehow able to produce the addictive alien slime we humans can’t get enough of and it’s handed around the marines like a drug. Meanwhile there’s an underlying current of distrust in Vasquez after her freak out as people begin to question whether they can rely on her to save their lives like they did hers. With less characters now we can begin to familiarise ourselves with some of the personalities in the ragtag team during these downtime scenes, instantly improving what was already a good strip.

Once they’re flying over the planet they spot an outpost where there shouldn’t be one and, once inside and cornered, they find out it belongs to the bug men. That of course means the aliens can’t be far away. The Marines attempted escape in the people carrier had the same music from the Hadley’s Hope escape scene in the movie playing over and over in my head as I read the end of this month’s chapter.

The cliffhanger sees their drop ship explode and now they’re stuck on this mysterious planet. Chris Warner’s story began as a fun take on the movie but little did I know that was only the starting point. I’m still not convinced about these bug men but given how much I’m enjoying the rest of it (at least they’re no longer 70s Doctor Who aliens) I have hope they’ll develop further too.

The Genre Gap is a strange little page, taking a long time to come to the conclusion we knew already that the Alien films are horrors. They just so happen to be set in a futuristic sci-fi setting, with a sci-fi entity as the main scare. When Stephen King says so is there really any need to question it? Then on the Bug Hunt letters page I’m not too sure about the name given to describe fans of fellow horror franchise, Predator!

There’s a healthy variety of places of origin for the readers this month. Back then it was rare to see letters in our comics from anywhere other than England. There also appears to have been a great deal of positivity for not only Tribes, but for the very idea of having a prose story in the comic, which I’m all for too. The sequel idea for an Alien 4 movie is just ridiculous… I mean, Madonna doing a movie song after that thing that I had to endure at the start of Die Another Day?!

Backsplash and Tribes may be over but that means more new stories next month which is always exciting. Colonial Marines continues to get better and better, and Crusade certainly has loads of potential that hopefully it can begin to fulfil. Even more excitedly there’s talk in this issue of a second autopsy feature (the first in #11 was fascinating) next month, this time for the alien eggs. Things can only get better, so be here in one month to check out Aliens #17.

iSSUE 15 < > iSSUE 17

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