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Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #21: FOUR MORE WEEKS AND OUT

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This month’s cover by Ilya (Ed Hillyer – Crisis, Manga Mania, Jean Genii) isn’t one of my favourites I have to say. It feels unfinished but his style certainly has its fans and so it’s just not for me I guess. It represents the final part of Salvation, even if the headlines make it look like it’s for Colonial Marines. There’s also a feature about H.R. Giger in this issue, so let’s get stuck in and see what we think.

I can’t believe it! With hindsight we know the next issue will be the last, so for Crusade to take a month off is devastating, meaning it definitely won’t be completed in time. The strip may have started off poorly but it’s become a real treat these last six months or so. Let’s hope we at least get some closure next time. It’s funny to read about the readers writing in requesting the comic change to a weekly schedule too.

We just didn’t consider the amount of work that went into our comics and always wanted more of them. I personally never looked at the date my next issue of the monthly Jurassic Park was due because then it’d feel like forever, instead I just let its arrival in the shop surprise me. The response here also reminds me of OiNK’s co-editor Tony Husband and how he felt that comic’s transition to a weekly (from a fortnightly) sucked the fun out of it for him. I do get the irony of this topic coming up in the penultimate issue of Aliens, too.

Dave Gibbon’s Salvation finale is first up with a huge 16-page chunk of the issue, and as Selkirk fights for his life atop the crashed spaceship the ground caves in and he finds himself dangling in front of a nightmare. There are bodies of the crew and the local creatures everywhere with holes in their chests but somehow he’s able to creep into the escape pod and meet back up with Dean. I said last time there was something more about her and I was right, she’s an artificial person (as Bishop would say).

In a shocking turn of events, Selkirk’s prejudices come to the fore and he tortures her for information, all while his internal monologue preys to his Christian god about how he’s doing good. Mike Mignola’s bold, shadowy art adds to the horror of this moment. Yes, she’s a synth but it’s gruesome stuff! Then, when he gets what he needs he simply kills her. He’s a twisted character and it’s a bleak strip because of this. Selkirk’s hatred for synths makes him blind to the fact that without Dean’s programming to save human life he’d be dead by now too. It’s compulsive reading! I find myself hoping more and more he gets his comeuppance.

Basically, the military wants the aliens wiped out but the company wants its bioweapons. This planet had one land mass and a species that reproduced quickly, so perfect for the company, the ship used to deliver the aliens whether the crew survived or not. Selkirk concludes it’s the company, not the aliens, that has been sent by satan and he takes it upon himself to be a martyr for Christianity, to self-destruct the ship and wipe out the entire land mass and all sentient life.

Wiping out all life not like him, seeing non-Christians as inferior, killing someone he liked when he finds out they were different to him, all while going “god’s work” is a scary enough conclusion until we get to the last page. Seeing this huge ship with its even bigger cross traversing the universe and bringing their god’s word to alien worlds is a more terrifying conclusion than anything I’ve read in this comic to date.

The next story is called Alien. Which isn’t confusing at all, is it? Seriously, Aliens: Alien is the name of a new short tale (will we see it conclude next issue?) written by John Arcudi (Barb Wire, The Mask, BPRD), drawn by Paul Mendoza (Tensor Matrix, Rage Across Las Vegas, Dark Horse Comics) and lettered by Vickie Williams (The Web, Star Wars Legends, Spider-Man 2099). Given the name of the original film couldn’t they have thought of another title for this? Very strange.

Set on an alien planet in a small village where the men are in charge and the women are subservient (yawn, how original), their individual face paint markings indicate they’ve made kills during their hunts for food. A teen is the star of this strip and he’s not allowed to join the hunts yet, but while the ‘big, powerful men, ug, ug, ug’ are out on a hunt an alien attacks the village and kills a family, leaving the boy as the only witness.

In fact, the alien has attacked every time the men have been on a hunt recently but there have been no male witnesses until now, so the boy is ordered to join them the next night. They’re going to find and kill the alien. That’s it for this part so there’s not much of a story to sink two jaws into yet, but the art and lettering make up for this. I particularly like Paul’s xenomorph and Vickie’s lettering in speech balloons (you’ll see them next month) which suggests everything is being spoken in an alien tongue and translated for us mere humans.

The H.R. Giger feature is actually written by horror writer and creator of Hellraiser and Candyman, Clive Barker. Initially I thought this was a hell of a coup for the comic, so it’s almost criminal how it’s presented on the page. The choice of background and text colours makes it difficult to read, in particular the first page is almost unreadable. Then there’s the admission at the end that it’s actually an introduction from an already released book, so not the coup I thought it was.

It’s more of an essay on general fantasy art rather than Giger (which makes it a strange introduction to a Giger book) and Clive rightly criticises the “pseudo-sophisticated” rubbish that people often use to write about art and how Giger doesn’t need that kind of review. Yet this reads just like that at times! It’s a bit of a disappointment overall, however I’m intrigued by the image of what looks like a female alien, as it’s very similar to the mysterious female the current Alien comic from Marvel have in their stories. Clearly they went back to the original inspiration.

The last strip this month is the next part of Colonial Marines, an epically-long tale when cut up into chunks for this comic, and one I’ve known from the off we wouldn’t get to the end of because I remembered reading a chapter of it in the final issue, the only one I owned as a kid. Back then I didn’t know anything about the characters but today I’ve been following them from the beginning and so I can’t help feeling somewhat betrayed by the main character, Lt. Henry.

Basically, he’s turned into a bit of a bastard. He doesn’t care at all about helping any of the innocent people he and his team’s actions have hurt by thinking they could outwit the aliens. He also doesn’t care about said team placing their lives on the line for him, as he’s placed explosives in their necks while they were in cryogenic sleep! So now, if they don’t follow his brutish orders he can threaten to detonate them! What?!

What happened to the fun character we got introduced to months ago, the character that’s meant to be someone we care about? Now I’m hoping he gets implanted! The story has changed writers a couple of times and perhaps this is part of the problem. There doesn’t seem to have been any coordination between them to ensure continuity, or any kind of long form plan or overall writer to steer this particular ship.

The new mission is to rid Alpha Tech of the bug men who have infiltrated the company, Beliveau not being a villain after all but someone trying to do the same thing from within. But subtlety is no longer an option. Things don’t get off to a great start when their captured bug man deals some alien jelly to the pilot of their space cruiser, deliberately overdosing him. High as a kite, instead of coming into orbit to collect the team he ends up getting too close and burns the whole thing up on reentry, the bug man sacrificing himself for his cause.

What’s so frustrating is how this started off so well way back in #9 and Henry was the main reason. I’m all for character development and when dealing with the aliens of course people are going to come undone somewhat. But Colonial Marines now feels like a collection of different stories with completely different characters, like each writer wanted to write something else. Such a shame it’s all come crashing down towards the end. No pun intended.

The Technical Readout is nothing to write home about this month, being a simple drawing of the comms panel of the Armoured Personnel Carrier and a lot of bland text, so the final highlight of the issue is a page reporting on the release of the Terminator 2: Judgement Day Special Edition on Laserdisc. Back then I used to lap up details like this about restored deleted scenes etc., but today I much prefer to find out for myself by watching the movies instead, like I did with the superb Alien³ Special Edition.

I have to laugh at the “Why bother with video?” comment. VHS would continue to dominate for a long time after this and even made advances in picture and sound quality. It only eventually gave way when DVD took off. The extortionately-priced Laserdisc could only dream of such success. Saying that, remember this was 1994 and as such we’ll forgive Terry Jones here. After all, who am I to judge when I went all-in on the supposed new entertainment standard, 3DO around the same time?

Oh now I’m reminiscing… how I loved those 3DO machines!

Ahem, anyway, a quick glance of the comics checklist on the letters page confirms Crusade will return next month for its penultimate chapter. Noooo! So close! Oh well, I’ll get back into my 90s head space and try to forget #22 will be the final issue until it’s all over. It feels like no time at all since I kicked off this real time read through, I can’t quite believe we’ve been on this ride together for over 20 months. Just the one terrifying (hopefully) trip to go on Tuesday 24th March 2026.

BACK TO iSSUE 20

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Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #20: APPARENTLY SHE SAW AN ALiEN ONCE

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This month’s cover by Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead, Nikolai Dante, Savage) may be more comic book-like than the usual painted images we’re used to, but you can’t deny it would’ve stood out on the newsagent shelves. The comic really does appear to being in rude health, not that this would matter in a couple of months. On the editorial page I’ve already had my doubts about Alien War and what’s mentioned here does little to assuage them.

You’d think they’d have had more than one person to play the alien! Anyway, there are your credits for the issue and it’s straight on to the strips and their recap pages have all been given a fresh new look. These are much better, more informative, look great and carry the credits so you don’t have to look back at the editorial to see whose work is terrorising you. Up first is part 13 of Colonial Marines written by Kelley Puckett and unfortunately it’s one of the weakest chapters thus far.

I simply can’t recognise anyone anymore. No one is distinctive so you can’t tell who’s talking or doing something unless their name is mentioned in response, negating any kind of character drama or suspense. Main character Lt. Joseph Henry’s plan is shockingly heartless and not like the character we met and enjoyed so much in the early chapters. To set the kelp beds on fire with a chemical that’ll never stop burning is extreme, and will leave the innocent people here hungry and penniless! To add insult to injury the fire is just forgotten about in the story, its consequences completely ignored.

At one point Vasquez is rescued by a new random character called Herk Mondo, some “legendary” alien killer. This was his first appearance and I instantly disliked his inclusion. Having a lone man capable of destroying hundreds of aliens reduces the xenomorphs to nothing more than pests. It feels like Kelley has backed himself into a corner; a cleansing fire and sudden appearance of a randomer to save the day at the last second is a hugely unsatisfying resolution to a months-long part of this story. Mondo would go on to star in his own comic but that doesn’t make this feel any less than a conclusion plucked out of thin air at the last moment.

Surely the biggest announcement on the cover is the interview with Sigourney Weaver. It’s only two pages but full of fascinating tidbits, even more so with the gift of hindsight. The question of returning to the franchise after Ripley’s death foreshadows what would eventually be the fourth film, although it certainly wouldn’t have the quality she speaks of here. There’s some information about the making of the first two films which should put to rest the silly myth surrounding the filming of the original chest burster scene. It’s telling how she doesn’t mention Alien³ director David Fincher, it appears her project with Dave writer Gary Ross never materialised according to their filmographies and the penultimate question is surely a sad indictment of the times.

I have to say I question the editing of this interview. Sigourney’s answers read like very stilted responses, certainly not like her from the countless interviews I’ve watched over the years. Maybe they’ve been badly edited to fit two pages, or taken from quickly scrawled notes at the Alien War grand opening. A shame, as the information in here is fascinating.

The second part of Dave Gibbon’s Salvation takes up a whopping 16 pages of the issue. Days after killing his captain, Selkirk is still eating his rotting flesh when he finally stumbles across the crashed ship, but he’s being driven mad by fear while he’s awake and by terrifying nightmares when asleep. First Officer Dean shows up to rescue him and of course Selkirk instantly believes this proves god is watching over him.

Dean knows how to get to the escape shuttle, so she takes charge and they slowly make their way through the jungle, coming across some of the primitive ape-like creatures who live there. Taking cover, they witness an alien jump out of the tree canopies and tear one of the creatures apart. Selkirk immediately panics and screams to his god, which of course is an idiotic thing to do. Dean chastises him and tells him to “Shut…”

Too late. Over the next few pages they run through the overgrowth firing in all directions as swarms of aliens descend. I have to say I’ve been loving this tension-filled strip up to this point but let out a bit of a sigh here. I generally prefer stories with one solitary alien, they’re just so much more suspenseful. Now, the movie Aliens is the exception to the rule of course (because it’s perfect) and is my favourite of the franchise. But it was expertly crafted. In everything from Alien: Romulus to these comic strips, when it was one alien it’s more suspenseful and was disappointed when loads turned up. Having our two characters so easily outrun them kind of ruins things here too.

Falling down a multi-tiered waterfall gives them ample distance from the xenomorphs and a chance to catch their breath. Quietly, mind you, as they shelter in a hideout and the aliens begin to stalk nearby. Selkirk starts thinking Dean likes him, that that’s why she came back for him and he starts imagining having sex with her, before coming to the conclusion that god didn’t send her to rescue him, but to test him. The guy is quackers. And a creep.

Dean sets a charge, attracts the aliens, then they make a run for it and detonate the bomb, taking out most of the creatures. Not all though, as Selkirk finds out when he doesn’t see a wire on the ground, trips over it and falls flat on his back in front of an alien for this month’s cliffhanger. There’s a lot to like here, and a lot to love above Mike Mignola’s shadowy, atmospheric art in particular.

I like the fact Selkirk isn’t likeable, in fact he’s a real piece of work. Its original. There’s also something about Dean which makes me believe there’s something we don’t know about her. Is she a figment of his imagination? By the end, after she sets explosives I realised she has to be real, but that initial feeling of ‘something’ is still there. Wonderfully bleak, only the unnecessary inclusion of so many aliens keeps this from being the best strip in the comic’s run so far.

Motion Tracker brings back more happy memories of those days when I began transitioning my VHS collection to widescreen, always excited to learn of a favourite movie being released in the format, and then enjoying seeing more on the screen. Around that time I was also discovering the vast catalogue of movies at my local rental store instead of repeatedly renting favourite films and shows over and over again.

I always knew I should’ve been trying new movies, but it was like wanting to try something different from your local takeaway; after perusing the menu (or the video store) for ages we always pick what we already know we like. But this was indeed a time of discovery and Solar Crisis was one such weekend rental, although I remember absolutely nothing about it. It’s exciting to see Stargate mentioned, I’d loved to have seen the news stories develop if the comic wasn’t coming to its end soon.

UK strip Crusade’s eighth part runs to eight pages and while the art can once again be confusing in places, for the first time every single character featured is well developed and the inter-personal drama is superb. So it appears the Archbishop has been trying to save the city, albeit with human sacrifices! The missing ship crashed through the church, spilling the alien eggs into the Thames from where he’d been able to contain the threat, tying up two of the mysteries including why London had apparently been spared (it hadn’t).

Just as with Selkirk in Salvation, here was another nut job who thought his prayers were being answered and he was doing god’s work when really he’s just twisted. Meanwhile, Channon’s plan is for her and Lesley to slip under the cathedral in their boat and plant enough explosives to take the whole building out. But there are aliens in their way. As always. Inside the church, Foster and Rani discover a crystal boinging to Martha.

Given to her by Rani years before, the Archbishop can’t say whether Martha still lives in the complex or not, he’s seen many pass through these walls… and sacrificed so many! This is getting really good; I’m really caring about the individual characters and the mismatch of settings have come together into one clearly defined whole. If only it hadn’t got off to such a shaky start, we could’ve had this level of quality storytelling for over half a year already.

The Technical Readout this month is intricately drawn but lacks the in-depth prose from early issues. At least the cutaways are back after a long absence. This reminds me of the cutaways from Thunderbirds The Comic in the 90s, even if it does read a little dry by comparison. The drop ship was a cool design in the film though and the model work was top class, so this is a fun look at how it was supposed to work.

Back in #7 of Jurassic Park there was a teaser advert for the upcoming gaming magazine/comic hybrid, Max Overload. I remember later adverts focussed on certain videogame characters alongside a random list of features and it always seemed like a rather cringey idea, even back when I was the target audience. We had our computer and video game magazines, we had our comics, but to join them together always seemed unnecessary. This launch advert from the back page doesn’t change my mind.

A good allrounder of an issue. The initial disappointment with Colonial Marines dissipated with both Salvation and Crusade. However, I can’t help having that nagging feeling over the first strip because it was just so good when it first began. If it had retained that quality this could’ve been a near-perfect issue. Only two more to go. The penultimate trip into the world of the Aliens will be here on Tuesday 17th February 2026.

iSSUE 19 < > iSSUE 21

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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.

iSSUE 18 < > iSSUE 20

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Comic Reviews, Dragon's Claws

DRAGON’S CLAWS #7: NO MERCY!

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As I mentioned last month the cover for this issue of Dragon’s Claws caught my eye. Finally, I’ve been able to take a closer look at the first guest artist cover and it’s none other than Dave Gibbons. Dave’s work has featured on the blog before, namely in the hilarious Superhero’s Day Off in OiNK, written by Lew Stringer which lampooned the comics Dave would draw. This is a great Dragon’s Claws cover, but does the inside match up to this first impression?

The Fastfax catches us up on the secondary plot from last issue which spills over to become our main story this month, with Mercy stopping herself from falling to certain death by grabbing a power line, nearly dislocating her shoulder and ploughing through a barber shop window! The Fastfax sums up the whole “criminals who operate about the law” Knight Rider-esque vibe of the people she used to hunt and who her copycat is now killing.

We also get a quick introduction to the L.W.J., the League of World Justice which is investigating the World Development Council, the organisation behind The Game and the bosses of N.U.R.S.E. Will the LWJ prove to be just as corrupt in this future Earth of 8162? Will we find out more in the next three months?

For now, Mercy is not as down-and-out as we think as she springs back up to confront her copycat, Scourge.

Simon Furman is paying homage to the Marvel UK series that made him

Hmm, last month in Dragon’s fact-file a previous Claws member was called ’Megaton’ and now this lady is called Scourge. I don’t think these are coincidences somehow, so either writer Simon Furman can’t think of any new names or he’s paying homage to the Marvel UK series that made him, namely The Transformers. Clearly, I think it’s the latter.

Scourge is hunting a villain named Judden, a small, fat slimy guy who reminds me a bit of Penguin. He was cleared of all charges but Scourge is convinced the system is corrupt and that he bought his freedom. (Now we know the Fastfax was laying some groundwork.) Interestingly, it’s never revealed if he’s innocent or not. Perhaps it was to be picked up on in a later issue but his story isn’t the point here.

Scourge is very much a mirror image of Mercy before she accidentally killed an innocent woman and joined the Claws, now fighting from the right side of the law. Scourge even carries the same Black Dagger symbol Mercy used. Meanwhile, while assessing the mess at Dragon’s farm in Norwich, Stenson mentions someone called ‘Matron’ for the first time, giving the smallest of clues to the real boss.

Scavenger’s mutt also gets an easier name to roll off the tongue than ‘Lady Killer’. Scratch will end up playing an important role in this issue’s story, more important than any of the other male members of the team. Then a couple of pages later we catch a glimpse of this Matron person and how the all-important Stenson is really nothing more than another gopher, another cog in the machine.

It’s all very cloak and dagger and I hope we have time over the next three months to get some answers. Having the head of N.U.R.S.E. called ‘Matron’ and wearing what appears to be a nurse-like hat behind the shadows has me intrigued as to the real nature of this organisation. Obviously the Claws are key to her plans but what is this empire she’s built up? What is N.U.R.S.E. really? What do they control already?

Mercy easily tracks Scourge down to the roof of a shopping mall as she’s basically living Mercy’s earlier life. Knowing she’d need a place just like this to rest, recuperate and stash weapons, Mercy reveals she killed an innocent woman during her revenge spree, that she’d become a murderous menace just like those she was fighting against. But it falls on deaf ears as Scourge is just as entrenched in her vendetta as Mercy was.

Accusing Mercy of being brainwashed a fight ensues and once again our heroine finds herself falling off another tall building. At least this time the landing is much easier on her. Meanwhile, the “guest” referred to is Ambassador Golding of the W.D.C., who Dragon’s Claws rescued from a rebel group gone rogue in #4. Back then he got to speak to the group and Dragon promised him he had a lot more to find out.

It appears he’s done so. He tells Stenson while inspecting the Claws’ HQ that N.U.R.S.E.’s independence has come into question, that there are fears of the Game team being misused against their knowledge and he demands to meet Matron. Stenson objects but then Deller pops up for the first time after last issue’s shoot-out, ready and willing to be questioned. I’m finding all of this particularly fascinating but for now it’s just ticking over until it can be addressed further in an upcoming issue (I hope).

Back to the action and the object of Scourge’s revenge is having a night out at a club so the Claws are assigned to undercover protection detail, although Dragon’s more concerned about the whereabouts of Mercy and why she didn’t talk to the team about what’s going on. Distracted, they miss Scourge, who’s easily able to identify the team in their weak disguises and sets off the fire alarms with a smoke bomb.

Among the chaotic evacuation she grabs Mister Judden and takes him to a back corridor to force him to confess to some previous killings. Adamant that he’s innocent, Scourge doesn’t care, she wants a confession to justify what she’s about to do. As I said, we don’t find out if he’s innocent or not but that’s not the point, judgement has come first and the evidence will bend to it rather than the other way around.

After this page comes my only disappointment with this chapter when the final confrontation isn’t even seen! Although, story-wise, I can understand why the fight between Mercy and Scourge happens off-camera (as the phrase goes) it still feels like an anti-climax. The Claws come to her rescue to find Judden saved but Scourge lying dead. Mercy just tells Dragon she’s faced some of her own demons that day and walks off. As she leaves a confused Dragon turns to Steel who simply says, “There but for the grace of God”, pointing out how Mercy could’ve shot to wound.

Mercy’s fact-file essentially ruins all of the drama surrounding the character

A cliffhanger involving the return of a newly assembled Evil Dead takes second place to this temporary (I hope only temporary) end to Mercy’s development as the most interesting of the Dragon’s Claws team. It has expertly answered some questions and opened her up a bit while at the same time leaving plenty of mysteries (and adding new ones) to solve in the future. That is, until we come to the next page in the comic which somewhat ruins that brilliantly written ending.

Mercy is the star of this month’s fact-file and while it starts off with some interesting background, such as her father being of Irish descent and the tragic loss of her mother to cystic fibrosis, it goes into far too much of her own mysterious background which I’ve enjoyed being drip fed in these past two issues, essentially ruining all of the drama surrounding the character. In fact, by the time I finished this page it felt like there were no more mysteries to be discovered!

This feels like a very strange thing for the comic to do. Why give the game away for so much of her character in an extra page separate from the strip? Maybe as a kid I’d have enjoyed getting these insights but all I can think of now is that the intrigue is completely gone. Not through intelligent, enjoyable storytelling like the other characters either, but in a chunk of text instead. It’d also mean any graphic novel reprint would most likely leave readers unaware of these details. Strange, indeed.

On the letters page a reader asks how Digit ended up with a computer instead of a human brain and the answer given is that this will form the basis of a future storyline. Seems rather unfair on Mercy to be honest, unless of course a future Digit fact-file spoils this for us too. Anyway, not wishing to end on a sour note I’ll leave the final words to Mercy who got the whole back page to herself as a nice extra and tell you that the date for the review of Dragon’s Claws #8 will be Sunday 7th January 2024.

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CONFABULATiON: DAVE GiBBONS AUTOBiOGRAPHY

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Many people will know the name Dave Gibbons from his seminal artwork on Watchmen or for co-creating Rogue Trooper, a staple 2000AD character, or for his work on everything from Batman and Aliens to Doctor Who and Dan Dare. His legacy of work is vast, far too much for any one blog post to even hope to cover a fraction of. He even collaborated on the classic videogame Beneath a Steel Sky (and its Apple Arcade remake) and worked on Kingsman: The Secret Service which led to the successful movie series.

He may have been appointed Comics Laureate nine years ago but for pig pals he’ll forever be associated with one page of our piggy publication. In #49 Lew Stringer’s script for The Superhero’s Day Off was brought to stunning (and incredibly funny) life by one of the greatest superhero comics artists of all time. Lew and Dave had been friends for a long time by this stage and Dave’s son was a pig pal, so he was on board to work for Uncle Pigg for a special one-off collaboration.

Back in the review for this issue Lew told me how Dave added in little extra gags where he could, such as the kid reading an issue, the newspaper headline and the dog’s face turning blue from lack of air in the depths of space, our superhero blissfully unaware. I explained that while at the time I didn’t have a clue why this strip’s artist was being hyped on the cover, “as a child I loved this page and having been a fan of Christopher Reeve’s Superman films I got all the little jokes (my personal favourite being him signalling the bus) even if I didn’t appreciate the significance of its inclusion in the first place.”

I also asked co-editor Patrick Gallagher what it was like to have Dave working on their comic. “Yes, when Mark (Rodgers) told Tony (Husband) and me Lew’s idea to collaborate on a page with his friend Dave Gibbons,” he said, “we were thrilled and all gave it the big OiNK thumbs up with our trotters! And all credit to Lew’s brilliant writing talent for providing Dave with a killer script that matched the super-heroic credibility of his drawing talent.”

Now Dave has decided to write a memoir of his comics work over the years and OiNK has been included.

Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography is being billed as “a comprehensive, in-depth and personal journey through the eyes of one of the world’s most famous comics creators”. Inside its gorgeous hardback cover you’ll find a series of alphabetically chaptered stories, each described as an “extensive anecdote”. It also contains a staggering 300+ pieces of art and photographs in its 256 pages, many of which have never been published before. Dave also discusses (for the first time) the reasons why Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore and he no longer speak.

Lew Stringer has already got his hands on a copy and says it’s a great book, hugely entertaining and extremely informative. According to Lew, “[Dave] talks about his earliest days on D.C. Thomson comics, through to the Watchmen era, The Originals, and beyond. This really is one of the best autobiographies by a comics creator that you’re likely to see. Dave’s had (and is still having) a significant career in the business and his affable personality comes across well in his illuminating writing style.”

As for that word, what does ‘confabulation’ actually mean? According to the Bing dictionary it means, “to fabricate imaginary experiences as compensation for loss of memory”. I think this book could be a fun read!

Written by Dave with Tim Pilcher, Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography is published by Dark Horse and is on sale now at all good book and comic shops. If you live in Northern Ireland may I recommend Coffee & Heroes in Belfast, a simply superb shop that would be more than happy to order it for you. You can also read Lew’s post about the book and see his own photographs in his Lew Stringer Comics blog post.

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