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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.

BACK TO iSSUE 17

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Aliens, Comic Reviews

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 #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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ALiENS #15: THERE’S MOVEMENT ALL OVER THE PLACE!

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This review was due on Tuesday 26th August
but was delayed due to a health issue

Well that’s one competition I wouldn’t have been entering. Anyway, Irish artist Killian Plunkett returns with this great cover for #15 of Dark Horse Intertnational’s Aliens as well as the first strip. One of the headlines on the cover notes the similarities in subject matter for two of the tales, something I’d noticed previously. The cover is printed on lovely glossy paper once more, which is highlighted by editor Cefn Ridout in the editorial, shown below to include all of the credits in the review.

He also mentions extra pages but in reality the comic has returned to its original page count. Perhaps in light of the cancellation of both Star Wars and Dracula there were a few extra pence in the pagination budget? Cefn welcomes Killian to the Aliens fold for the first time even though he’d previously drawn the even better cover to #8 (and Dracula #7) and I do like his answer to the question of whether the Colonial Marines will ever learn. He’s right, you know.

Proof comes in the form of part one of Backsplash, an American story written by Jim Woodring (The Book of Jim, Frank, Star Wars) with Killian as artist that was originally printed in Dark Horse Comics over there. It follows a team of marines as they try out a new eco-suit weapon in an alien hive, something they believe is so good the aliens will no longer be a threat. Of course, such talk is always going to jinx us humans in the Alien universe! The leader’s name is Gibbs, so maybe he can slap the marine who said that across the back of the head.

That’s basically it for the plot and things go wrong even more quickly than I anticipated, as the aliens swarm the two marines sent out in the suits. To begin with the particle-plasma projectors see off the xenomorphs easily, exploding their bodies at a safe distance. But then the aliens gang up and such a large amount of them exploding at once produces a wave of acid that instantly starts to eat through the suits. Even worse, it covers the transport holding the rest of the team, dissolving its armour and filling the interior with deadly fumes.

As they try to escape the surviving aliens attack, the extra weight leading the cliff edge they were parked on (because of course they were) to crumble, taking everyone with it. A prequel to a strip called Labyrinth, don’t expect to get to know any of the characters in this short story but it’s a fun little tale nonetheless that once again shows the universe humbling humanity. Great art on the part of Killian too, it feels like stills from an ace Aliens cartoon.

Part 3 of Michael Cook’s Crusade is reduced to 9 pages but it continues its positive ascent through the ranks of the stories after a rather dodgy beginning. The Minecorp mercenaries are imprisoned by the tribe’s leader, who accuses them of kidnapping those taken last time, despite the fact the mercenaries are still there. Go figure. But tribeswoman Rani isn’t convinced. She can see in the stones they aren’t the monsters of her visions and wants to go with them to find their lost people.

More world building is included when Britain is simply called ‘an unnamed mining island off the coast of Europe’. (I could make a dig about Brexit here but you’ve probably beaten me to it.) We also briefly see the Archbishop either tearing chunks out of the dead Beresford or stitching him up as the Alien Queen watches on, it’s unclear what he’s doing as the art remains too messy for me personally.

However his followers, who live in the abbey and never venture outside, are beginning to question his King-like leadership. They’ve heard tales of kidnappings, are suspicious of Bereford’s death and want to know what’s really in the tower. The Archbishop simply says doubts are the devil’s work and walks off. That won’t come back to haunt him, I’m sure. Back at the camp a rather basic escape plan is put in motion as Rani smuggles an electrical cutter inside the prisoners’ food like some clichéd cartoon.

Once free some of the mercs are all too ready to kill their captors, setting up some tense character dynamics within the group. However, the strip now suffers from that 90s action flick syndrome of a lack of clothing. As the tribes took the troopers’ clothes and they themselves wear only basic coverings, what Rani brings as their disguises is little more than an excuse for some tits and ass. A shame, there’s real depth within the story so it doesn’t need to do this.

I was looking forward to this month’s Technical Readout and the next part in the Sulaco series but instead it’s about the drop ship that took the marines down to the planet in the film. Actually, it’s not even about that, it’s a rather bland two pages about the individual missiles it could fire. Much more exciting was the realisation Chris Warner’s Colonial Marines strip had doubled in size to 16 pages. We were told it’d be a few more months until this happened so it’s a nice surprise.

This moment perfectly captures their panic, the claustrophobia and the ensuing tension.

This strip has been gagging to breathe a bit more in each issue. Each chunk has been really enjoyable but they’ve been over so quickly, partly because of the amount of pages but also because of the speed of the action, so the plot hasn’t really had a chance to shine. This changes somewhat here so I hope this is an ongoing change.

However, first up is this comic’s constant problem of giving things away in the round up of the story so far, with the writer of that page stating certain things have happened already when they haven’t. The reveal of the new alien species actually being a hybrid between humans and xenomorphs is spoiled before I even get to the strip.

How the characters can tell they’re hybrids is unknown, it certainly wasn’t clear to me. The man they found Newt-like in the air ducts tells them the hostiles are men “but bugged out”. Meanwhile, corporation man Beliveau is screaming at the huge synth that he’s built for alien encounters, only to be told by the synth they’ll have to wait for the team to re-establish contact because he costs too much to risk going in.

Beliveau’s inner thoughts betray him to the reader. He thinks he knows who’s responsible and in the hive the “Father” figure tells his men, “The Judas is here”, so there’s more to the company man. The main highlight of not only this strip but the whole issue is their escape up a zero-g well to an air lock. This moment, portrayed over the two spreads I’ve photographed, perfectly captures their panic, the claustrophobia and the ensuing tension.

Having one panel with all the captions displayed vertically is a nice touch too, highlighting the disorientation of being in zero-gravity. They manage to take one of the hybrids prisoner but all he does is lecture them about humanity polluting space and how The Father believes the aliens are cleansing it for the greater good. There’s an environmental message in there somewhere that I’m sure James Cameron would be proud of.

“The alien behind Point struck, its extended tongue tearing effortlessly through the helmet’s metal to taste the soft grey yolk that lay under the bone.”

Tribes, Steve Bissette

The new Q&Aliens feature takes individual questions asked in letters and gives them prominence in a double-page spread. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking in any of the questions asked, although we do get to see these two interesting early designs for the original movie’s poster, complete with different fonts. Both were created by David Pelsue.

The questions may be of the usual sort but one answer stood out. A clearly frustrated reader wanted to know “Where the **~!” the facehuggers came from at the beginning of Alien³. I always thought it was obvious, the Queen had been hiding out on the drop ship so she planted them. Interestingly, the answer states the sound of an alien egg schlopping open could be heard at the very end of the credits to Aliens, director James Cameron indicating an egg was on board the EEV with the survivors (or perhaps just to freak out the audience a bit). I had to go and give it a listen and yep, it’s there! I’d never heard it before!

Tribes’ penultimate chapter (written by Steve Bissette) somehow escalates the heart-pumping excitement even more than it already had. Things are certainly shaping up for a heart-stopping climax next issue. My favourite character Rat may not be as prominent but it hardly matters because everything else happening around her has been dialled up. The shrunken images by Dave Dorman should still give you an idea of the action taking place here.

While we’re used to things going wrong in an Alien story, the fact absolutely everything (including things you’d never think could go wrong) goes wrong makes this a shocking read. Quite the feat. There are a lot of surprising deaths, Shitkicker goes on a rampage and the more things go wrong the more his metal shell injects drugs into him to combat the escalating situation, which of course just makes things worse. As the marines now fight their own amongst the aliens I was almost breathless by the end of the four pages. What a thrill ride!

What an issue. Aliens is back on top of its game! All four stories were a thrill to read this month. Backsplash is incredibly fun hokem, Crusade continues to develop something very interesting, Colonial Marines was just superb and Tribes… wow! There’s even mention on the letters page of a possible Technical Readout book, which I searched for and I found it. That’ll be a future purchase for the blog, no doubt. With two finales next month there’s every possibility #16 could (somehow) be even better than this issue. We’ll find out on Tuesday 23rd September 2025.

iSSUE 14 < > iSSUE 16

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Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #14: MOST OF THE TiME iT’S TRUE

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This fantastic cover by Styx (real name Steve Kane and not to be confused with classic cartoonist Leslie Harding who also went by that moniker) welcomes us to the 14th edition of Dark Horse International’s Aliens monthly, the matte paper lending itself perfectly to this dark image. Inside, we’ve another 48 pages of a somewhat mixed bag but the highs have kept me going again this month.

Editor Cefn Ridout’s editorial hypes an import comic as a suitable replacement for the lack of Predator material in the comic despite the fact specialist shops weren’t as prolific in the UK at the time, especially over here in Northern Ireland. As always, I’ve included this page so you’ve access to all the credits for the issue and turning over we come face-to-facehugger with the 12-page second part of Michael Cook’s Crusade.

In the recap of part one we’re told those weren’t Colonial Marines but employees of a corporation called Minecorp. This wasn’t clear at all last time. Anyway, the company thinks there are profits to be made if they can suss out why London remains clear of aliens after the Earth War, but the people they’ve sent actually seem less concerned about that than they are about helping the tribe they’ve met. Not that the dialogue helps work this out.

The speech is still awful, the overuse of ellipses an attempt to make it feel like they’re in natural conversations, to give the illusion of speech patterns, but instead it’s just broken. The fact there are no captions means the story relies completely on that dialogue too. So from what I can gather London had broken into tribal warfare long before the aliens arrived, even though the comic’s editorials these past two months gave me the impression this happened because of the alien war.

The Minecorp troops need guides and in return they’ve brought food and weapons for the tribe they’ve met. However, one night another tribe infiltrates their camp and kidnaps some of them, including a small child. They take them across the Thames to a large church but floating in the water, almost dealt with incidentally by the story are loads of alien eggs.

Of course when one of these pops up in an Alien story someone has to be stupid enough to look in and that’s exactly what happens here. Then back at the camp we finally get a little bit of character development. Foston’s wife was on the missing recon team, Channon says she’ll go with him even if they don’t have a guide and upon hearing this one of the unnamed tribeswomen agrees to help as she can read the stars and mythical stones to predict the future.

Meanwhile, the archbishop of the church appears to be the leader of a group of Christian fanatics. Seeing Beresford with a facehugger attached he simply tells the rest he’ll attend to it. Instead, he sneaks the body away and inside the tower presents him to an Alien Queen, albeit a very badly drawn one. While reciting the Lord’s Prayer the newborn alien bursts out of Bereford’s chest on a page the editorial described as “horrific”. If I didn’t know better I’d say Cefn was describing the apparently psychedelic art.

In the ongoing prose story Tribes the marines are up against a fanatical religious group who see the aliens as gods, and Crusade follows on from previous lead strip Sacrifice, which saw a priest go up against an alien on her own to test her Christian faith. Then, to add to all of this our Colonial Marines strip this month begins with Vasquez frozen to the spot in fear as an alien approaches and inside her head she’s reciting the Lord’s Prayer!

Perhaps there was a theme being explored across various Dark Horse US Aliens comic strips at the time, some form of larger arc the UK writers wanted to explore too? If that’s the case then I can understand, but if not this is all beginning to get very repetitive and unimaginative. Just as Crusade was beginning to get interesting too. I’ll wait to see how it develops next month. Next up, a one-page reprieve with a look at The Abyss Special Edition.

Dave Hughes has a much more positive view of directors’ cuts than Jim Campbell had previously. The Abyss’ new cut contained almost double the amount of new material as the Aliens Special Edition. This is also how I found out about the rat scene, when one was pushed into breathable liquid. Shockingly it was filmed for real with actual breathable liquid that was in development! Given how the rat reacted I can completely understand why it’s been cut in the UK where we have stricter animal cruelty laws in entertainment.

Despite some online rumour mills, the rats did all survive and received plenty of loving aftercare. But still, imagine if someone suddenly held you underwater without you knowing you could breathe! Even with that particular liquid I still think it was unnecessarily cruel. It could’ve been achieved with special effects and well-timed edits. Cameron has since made a name for himself in his endeavours to protect the planet and all life on it so I’ll assume he never meant to be cruel. I’ll hold on to that belief.

Our 8-page sixth chapter of Chris Warner’s Colonial Marines is next and after Vasquez’s prayer comes this double-page spread showing the potential of Tony Akins’, Paul Guinan’s and Matt Hollingsworth’s art. It’s the same team but it feels more solid than before, especially in its depictions of the new alien race apparently controlling the xenomorphs, the latter thankfully looking more horrific and less cartoon-like as you can.

Unaware they’re being watched on camera by one of the humanoid aliens, this page shows the chaos of the suddenly escalating situation for the marines. It’s an all-action chapter that doesn’t move the plot forward but does see off quite a few of the peripheral characters in more and more horrific ways, not least of which is this accidental death when one marine is grabbed from above and fires their weapon in desperation. These small chunks are great fun every month.

On the Motion Tracker news page we find out the toy competition from last month which required people to buy a handful of Dark Horse International comics is now going to be printed in full in Aliens. No reason is given but Star Wars had been cancelled after surprisingly poor sales. Then it’s on to eight pages of the “mind-blowing conclusion to Horror Show”, according to the cover. So, is it?

On the moon the inhabitants of Luna City live with daily guilt over the loss of their loved ones down on Earth during the recent Earth War, hence why the creatures are infiltrating everyone’s nightmares in the sleep clinic/entertainment company we’ve been introduced to. It’s an intriguing set up that’s produced quite the boring strip so far, but here on page one I find myself feeling for the father of one of their ‘patients’. Is something interesting finally happening?

His daughter is the same person who had the shark/alien dream previously. After a dream involving an alien infiltrating the apparent hospital and chasing her (in which she finds herself outside and back in deep water with the alien in place of the shark), she awakens to find the whole lab has been seized in a rebellion and all the patients are awake. Somehow, her father helped them but it all happens off-camera (as it were). As a reader I immediately felt cheated. The only thing that actually happens and we’re just told about it?

That hyped conclusion sees revenge taken out on the doctor who was not only lying to these people about their treatment but also sexually abusing them. We (and he) are left not knowing if the above is real or part of the virtual reality. It doesn’t make up for the rest of the story but it’s a good idea, despite looking more like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors than an alien egg. Personally, I’m glad to see the back of Horror Show.

Much, much (much!) better is the latest part of Tribes, the comic’s serialisation of the novella released in the States. It’s really interesting when it’s written from the Alien Queen’s perspective and Rat’s near fatal escape is real edge-of-the-seat stuff, no exaggeration. I honestly thought she was a goner and she’s my favourite character so it was an exciting read! Again, the italics in her part of the story are intended as flashbacks to the horrors her father forced upon her as a young child and they add to the scares.

One of the aliens dies in a suitably horrifying way, its elongated head slowly sliced in half by a cutting wire as it pushes itself through, trying to get at Rat just beyond. Then, when she sees an x-ray of one of the religious fanatics she recognises the image of the alien inside from an x-ray of her own brother her dad proudly showed her as a child. This is very much Rat’s story and it’s terrific. Writer Steve Bissette’s tale should be on the silver screen!

Alien Vs Predator II isn’t the all-action conclusion you’d think from the cover headline. The Alien Queen was already captured and these final two pages are more about the apparently shocking reveal that one of the Predators is actually a human woman working alongside them. But wasn’t this already obvious from chapters right back at the beginning? I thought that was the whole point of the story and the reveal would be why she was doing this.

So it’s a disappointing ending and makes me miss the separate Predator strip even more. Good news comes on the letters page though. It’s revealed to a reader who has the same opinion as me of the Colonial Marines strip that, with AVP II over and Tribes concluding in two months, more pages will be given to that strip soon. We also find out there’s a comics adaptation of the original Alien film to purchase, written by Vampirella’s Archie Goodwin (whose work I’m enjoying in the publisher’s Dracula) and drawn by Walt Simonson who adapted Jurassic Park.

Colonial Marines and Tribes really carried this issue and boy, did they do a good job of it! Worth the price of admittance, those two. But Crusade could be opening up into something more than I’d previously thought, at least storywise, and we’ve a new two-part Aliens strip called Backsplash beginning in #15 too. Things could be on the up again. We’ll find out if that’s the case on Tuesday 26th August 2025.

iSSUE 13 < > iSSUE 15

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