This atmospheric cover by John Bolton promises much for the tale of the Aliens film seen from Newt’s point of view that continues within these pages. What a shame the chapter inside issue four of Dark Horse International’s Aliens comic doesn’t deliver on the promise of this terrifying image, or indeed its previous instalments. In general this is the weakest issue so far but that’s not really the fault of the UK publisher or its editor.
Editor Dick Hansom’s comic, like most UK comics of the era, chopped up the US stories into smaller bite-sized chunks and serialised them across more issues than American readers would’ve had. This meant we got to have no less than four individual stories in this monthly anthology, which is always a good thing. However, upon occasion it did highlight weaker elements of those stories. You’ll see what I mean later in the review. First up though, is chapter four of Hive.
Written by Jerry Prosser, drawn by Kelley Jones, coloured by Les Dorscheid and lettered by Clem Robins, main character Doctor Stanislaw Mayakovsky provides the narrative captions as we see android alien Norbert finally enter the hive of the title. While the doctor’s words actually describe his previous experiments involving ants on Earth, they are no less relevant here and show how his previous research would lead on to this trip to deep space.
In the ‘What Has Gone Before’ description of previous issues we’re told Max the dog wears an inhibitor that makes him imperceptible to the aliens. What? This hasn’t been explained in previous chapters and we’re given no explanation here on how it’s meant to work either. Also, given how the doctor discovered another team’s much easier way of extracting the alien jelly he craves, why is he still going through with his much more dangerous idea?
Yes, he has learned of an almost risk-free way of achieving his goal but let’s go and annoy an alien Queen anyway. And let’s sacrifice the pet dog at the same time, turning off his inhibitor so Norbert can present Max as food to the real aliens. Unless the doctor’s ego is such that he must see his own plan succeed, this makes no sense. What also doesn’t make sense is even considering that the reader might feel any kind of tension about Norbert entering the hive.
This results in me not caring about what happens to any of them
It was already established in the films that the aliens couldn’t care less about androids, only if one posed a threat would they destroy them. So there’s no tension in his entrance and once threatened they terminate him, which is actually rather sad. After this there’s a confusing turn of events when the human observers crash land, apparently hit by lightning although it’s hard to tell what’s happened, leaving them stranded on the surface. Quelle surprise.
Now that we’re a few months in to this initially intriguing story the cracks are beginning to show, the main problem being there isn’t one single likeable human character in the cast. They’ve deliberately been painted as selfish profit driven cretins, the likes of which Ripley would’ve gone up against in the movies. This results in me not caring about what happens to any of them, completely negating any suspense or tension the script and art tries hard to rack up.
The Motion Tracker news pages bring another interesting insight into the early 90s, beginning with the reveal of an Aliens Vs Predator movie. In reality, while videogame crossovers would happen soon after, it wouldn’t be until 2004 that the two franchise behemoths met on the silver screen. (I must look out for that trophy in Predator 2.)
I’m sure I borrowed that Earth Hive novel from the library as a teen and really enjoyed reading it very late at night in bed by lamplight. The news about Ridley Scott’s Alien Special Edition needs a bit of clarification. The Director’s Cut I’ve seen since is, as Ridley himself explained, a recut rather than one which adds in missing scenes. The “controversional” scene mentioned here wasn’t controversial at all. It involved Ripley discovering Dallas metamorphosing into an alien egg but it was removed because it slowed down the tense ending. Later, Aliens would reinvent how the eggs are produced and Ridley didn’t want to contradict James Cameron’s film.
“You think you know what’s going on, but I’m telling you – you don’t have a clue.”
General Mavis, Predator: Cold War
Also, $100 for a laserdisc release? No wonder those things never took off over here! Finally, under the ‘Sly Fox’ section about the upcoming releases of videos in the series, for some reason it’s stated Aliens wasn’t shot in widescreen when it very definitely was. A strange error there. Did the writer assume it wasn’t when it was released on video in 4:3 ratio? All films were released that way into the home market until widescreen transfers really took off in the 90s.
Mark Verheiden’s Predator strip, Cold War (pencilled by Ron Randall, inked by Steve Mitchell, coloured by Chris Chalenor and Rachelle Menashe, lettered by Clem) finally sees Russian Lt. Ligachev reappear but unfortunately not until the final page. Before this we’re treated to more human tension between America and the Soviet Union and, while it all starts off rather well with secretive manipulation by the US, it all boils down to a plot involving the sole survivor of a Predator attack (Ligachev) being sent to the site of another attack while coming up against people who wish to exploit the situation for profit and who don’t care about who is expendable (the Americans).
So basically, it’s the plot of Aliens reworked to fit the Predator series. Surely this isn’t a great fit for a comic based on Aliens? Wouldn’t fans see this for what it is? It might have been a decision out of editor Dick Hansom’s hands depending on what the parent company and the UK branch wanted to print over here. Oh, and it appears Detective Schaefer was in a previous Predator strip and that’s why he’s been brought in for the mission. But my point from previous reviews still stands. It still feels like he’s nothing more than a way to bring in Arnold Schwarzenegger without actually doing so (he’s the brother of Arnie’s character).
In the middle of the comic are four extra, glossy pages which make up a survey for the readers. I can’t see how useful listing favourite artists etc. would be to DHI, it’s not like they had any say over who would be creating the strips in the States, but I do find it intriguing that text stories are mentioned. Something tells me they appear later and I hope they do, it could be like reading those exciting novels again, but don’t ruin the surprise for me if you know. The readers are also given the option of choosing whether the comic should stay as a monthly or change to a fortnightly, or even a weekly! I doubt these answers had much sway though.
The Technical Readout page this month details the Remote Sentry Weapons, perhaps to the chagrin of one of the comic’s contributors, seeing as how they were used exclusively in one of the deleted scenes (the Special Edition was heavily criticised in an earlier issue). Then in the two-page Aliens Vs Predator II strip (written by Randy Stradley, drawn by Chris Warner) we find out one of the Predators is actually a human woman!
This could possibly be following on from the original strip but of course it hasn’t been printed in this volume. Regular blog readers will know that this and the chapter in Alien³ #3 were printed in the wrong order so at least the naming of Shorty is explained at last. Still, I want to find out a lot more and only getting two pages at once makes for a frustrating read, and now it’s only going to be two pages a month!
The final strip is Mike Richardson’s Newt’s Tale, which began as the brilliant idea of retelling the story of Aliens from the perspective of Newt. We’ve had some nice building of character and tension, and then last month the scenes where Newt witnessed the death of her mum and brother were truly horrific. You really felt for the child. It brought home the horrors she had to have seen in order to be in the situation we found her in during the film. Chapter three begins in suitable fashion too, as she discovers she can go places the aliens aren’t aware of simply because she’s so small, and we get this great double-page spread of her trying to survive over the next few days pencilled by Jim Somerville, inked by Brian Garvey, coloured by Gregory Wright and lettered by Pat Brosseau.
These were the moments I was looking forward to the most in the story. After the horrors she’d faced already, how exactly did Newt learn to survive in the complex, surrounded by the terrifying aliens. Unfortunately, these two pages are all we get. You can see at the top it says “Days pass…” and yet that last panel continues on to the next page and the moment Ellen and the Colonial Marines find her. Days? When Burke recruits Ripley they’d already lost contact and it took what I thought were at least weeks, possibly longer, to get there!
The rest of these pages see the interesting set up jettisoned for a typical, bland comics adaptation of the movie. We start to see scenes that don’t involve Newt and eventually she’s completely ignored for scenes of the Marines infiltrating the alien nest. The moment where Newt finally breaks her silence and tells Ellen her name is heavy with emotion and plays brilliantly after the trauma we saw her face last month, but then she just disappears from her own story for several pages.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind prompted the trend of re-thinking a movie after its initial showing and releasing it in a new cut
This is hugely disappointing. That cover promised so much and I hope next issue we’ll see more of Newt’s own story that we don’t already know. The particular section of the tale used for this issue might just be a blip in the overall original comic, unfortunately highlighted by being a chapter in and of itself in the UK comic. I can but hope, because right now I’m feeling like we’ve been sold one thing and are suddenly getting something else entirely. The issue does end on a high note however, with an interesting two-page feature on the new fad of Director’s Cuts, written by Dave Hughes.
I remember my friends and I being particularly excited for certain Director’s Cuts of films back then. Aliens is the obvious one, The Lawnmower Man was a completely different film in its lengthier cut, and some of my peers cheered when news of a Blade Runner special edition was announced. Here, some information on scenes cut from the original Alien film are notable and it goes into depth about Ridley Scott’s cyberpunk thriller. I’m glad the Aliens scene with Burke that’s mentioned was never reinstated because it was clear from his final moment that he was being killed, not taken away for implantation.
It may not have been recut by its director, but my favourite special edition is still that for Alien³ which reinstates a lot of David Fincher’s original vision, cut scenes, effects and whole story and character arcs the studio originally excised. It’s a phenomenal recut and the version which should’ve been released into cinemas at the time. It takes Alien³ (a film I already enjoyed) up to the level of the first two masterpieces and concludes an incredible trilogy for Sigourney Weaver and Ellen Ripley.
To round off the issue it’s nice to see I wasn’t alone in my thoughts about the review for the Aliens Special Edition a couple of issues back, although I do hope they don’t change their heading font, I think it’s perfectly readable and highly unique. With a comics checklist that shows how Dark Horse International was just beginning to grow, the fourth edition of Aliens comes to an end.
These may not have been the most enjoyable chapters of any of the main stories but Predator and Newt’s Tale still have the potential to correct course and, if nothing else, at least I can enjoy the humans in Hive meeting a predictably grisly end soon enough. Including the Alien³ Movie Special mini-series I can’t believe we’re already seven issues deep into this real time read through. The fact there are still so many to go, with many different stories for this anthology to tell yet, I can’t wait for #5 on Tuesday 22nd October 2024.
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