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Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #3: GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU BiTCH!

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Beginning with another Paul Johnson cover, the third issue of Dark Horse International’s first (and ultimately flagship) comic really settles into its format this month with a whopping four strips and well written features across its 52 pages. Aliens is a meaty read and even for the time it was great value for £1.50. I’ve so many issues remaining but already I’m really glad I chose to cover this in real time on the blog.

So, inside the first strip is part two of Newt’s Tale, Mike Richardson’s retelling of the film from the young girl’s perspective. Over its 13 pages there are some genuinely shocking moments that, with hindsight, really seem to add to the character so brilliantly portrayed by Carrie Henn (amazingly, her first acting role) and the haunted child that first appeared to Ripley and the marines. 

In a secured bunker the colonists shelter in hiding from the creatures that have appeared out of nowhere, seemingly not piecing together they’ve come from the thing that had attached itself to Newt’s dad’s face. Of course, the reader knows that alien was the queen Ripley would ultimately face. We see Newt’s mum and brother Timmy here also, her mum Annie convincing someone to give her a gun and she stays awake all night as the kids rest.

Banging noises from outside suddenly occur and arguments begin. We know what’s out there but the colonists have lost contact with their men sent to the nest to exterminate the creatures, thinking they’d easily outnumber them and just set it alight, not knowing what the aliens are actually capable of. In a moment deliberately intended to frustrate the reader we see two sides argue over opening the door. It’s frustrating because we know which side will win, that their self-imposed macho superiority will lead to disaster for everyone, including all of the children.

But there’s no reasoning with them and as soon as we turn the page they’re overrun in seconds. This page (pencils by Jim Somerville, inks by Brian Garvey, colours by Gregory Wright, letters by Pat Brosseau) is so much better than the overly cartoonish chest burster scene last time, but it’s only the beginning of the horrors over the next few pages. Such as Annie telling her children she’s sorry before aiming her gun at Timmy!

Clearly she sees what’s happening around her and, as heartbreaking and terrifying as the moment is for her, at least it would be instant and they wouldn’t suffer at the hands of the aliens. It’s only a few panels but it hits hard. Newt begs her not to and instead they make a run for the ventilation shafts where we’ve previously seen the kids playing. They know where they lead; they can escape.

To see it played out, even if it is in comic form rather than celluloid brings the cold, harsh reality of it to bear

Timmy and Newt are bundled inside just before Annie is grabbed from behind and a curtain of blood pours down in front of the shaft entrance a few feet from the kids. The most shocking moment of all sees Timmy jump out and pick up Annie’s gun, shouting that he’ll save his mummy. He shoots the alien, its acid blood squirting over his face and blinding him. But as if that wasn’t enough for the small child, he’s killed right in front of Newt, and this is where the chapter ends.

Of course we already knew Newt would end up being the only survivor, we knew all of the mums and dads and their children died, but it all happened off screen. To see it played out, even if it is in comic form rather than celluloid brings the cold, harsh reality of it to bear. After this part of the story it’s gone from being an interesting curiosity to the best strip of the comic.

The middle pages might initially feel like a strange place to have a back up strip, but that’s where Mark Verheiden’s Predator: Cold War tale is, sandwiched between the two Aliens stories and, while I don’t really understand a lot of what’s going on in its 12 pages, I’m still enjoying it and am eager to learn more about these particular extra-terrestrials. As Lt. Ligachev makes her way back to Siberia the aliens are preparing for another hunt at the oil pumping station.

As you can see there are pages set on board their spacecraft somewhere in the frozen wastes (pencils by Ron Randall, inks by Steve Mitchell, colours by Chris Chalenor and Rachelle Menashe, letters by Clem Robins) and while Ligachev’s internal narration of what she’s about to face again is well written, I’m pretty lost when it comes to the images. What is that disc-shaped object it’s taken from the walls and why is it discarded like that? This would probably makes sense if I’d seen the film of course.

As I’ve said before I’ll be doing so this Hallowe’en so I’ll assume (hopefully correctly) that this is all self-explanatory to Predator fans. I look forward to finding out for myself though, and the air of mystery around these creatures while I read only acts to heighten my interest. So please, as much as you might think explaining it would help, let me discover it for myself (the spooky season isn’t far off anyway).

The attack has begun and the first victim is a dog, which lures in one of the men, who then sees the aliens and makes a desperate run back to his colleagues, giving away the location of everyone else. The way they move through the complex and dispose of anyone in their path is chilling, even with the still images of a comic it’s clear to me they’re doing it for sport, for recreation, and there are some brutal moments.

Instead of running for safety, some of the men grab shotguns in an attempt to slow down the attackers. They know they’re no match for them, they know they’re alien and can’t be stopped, but they also know Ligachev is on her way and their last desperate gambit is to hold them off until their reinforcements arrive. But the first thing they come across is a load of their men strung up by their feet, blood pouring out from the gaping holes where their heads used to be.

Upon seeing it, one of them comments, “What kind of hell is this?” After a few more pages of gruesome killings, one man at a time, we arrive at the final moments of the strip and one of the Predators repeats back the very same line as the man’s torso slides down its spear. All dead, the Predators lie in wait for Ligachev and her military might. It’s atmospheric, I’ll give it that, and as an introduction to these creatures it works. I’m just impatient to see more of the interesting lead character, so I’m looking forward to the next issue.

The other main Aliens strip is the third chapter of Jerry Prosser’s Hive, originally the main story in the first issue. Mayakovsky and Lish send Norbert (the alien synthetic) and their poor dog, Max down to the surface of the planet where they find the aliens around the hive are sleeping! Max soon finds another lander ship with humans and it’s surrounded by more sleeping aliens who appear to have nodded off mid-attack.

Is it wrong of me to kind of love Norbert? I mean, he’s still programmed to act like a proper alien as you’ll soon see, but to see this frightening beast looking after Max and reporting back is genuinely funny without ever breaking the illusion of the universe created by the films. However, over the next two pages that affection soon disappears as his programming takes over with some horrific results, as drawn by Kelly Jones with Les Dorscheid’s colours and Clem’s letters.

It appears these humans (hinted at last time) have used something called “infrasonic suppression” to put the xenomorphs into a deep state of hibernation while they collected the slime our lead characters have also come for. Mayakovsky is rather jealous of their idea; it could’ve saved him a lot of time and money in developing XL1 (Norbert). But as Norbert tracks down and kills all of the crew one-by-one, part of the ship’s computer systems becomes damaged, and you just know what that part controlled, don’t you?

Yep, the aliens are now awake and have surrounded the ship. Will they realise Norbert is a synth? After all, in the films it’s established they won’t attack a synthetic human unless they’re attacked first, that they know the difference. Surely they’ll see through this? Anyway, the chapter ends with a worrying development for Max. Given Norbert’s goodbye, I don’t know if I want to see what happens next!

At the very back of the issue is the next instalment of the strange little Alien Vs Predator strip I mentioned in #1 of Alien³ (actually, it’s called Alien Vs Predator II, so I must’ve missed the original in the first volume of the comic). The strip was written in two-page chunks for Dark Horse Insider magazine in the US and ran for 14 issues. It’s written by Dark Horse co-founder Randy Stradley (Marvel Star Wars, Crimson Empire, Jedi Council) and illustrated by Chris Warner (Terminator, Alien Legion, co-creator of Barb Wire).

As you can see there’s not a lot of story to tell in two pages but by the end it’ll have lasted for 28 pages in total so we’ll see if it develops beyond a long battle between the two alien species. As I said in the review for #1 of Alien³ these two franchises hadn’t met yet on film, so this could’ve been exciting for fans of both in 1992. This will take until next summer to complete so I’m hoping there’s scope over that time for more depth.

There are the usual plethora of features in this issue including news and the Technical Readout section, the latter also containing this spread about synthetic humans, a key part of the Alien universe. There was an interview with Lance Henrikson in that one issue I bought as a teenager and I remember being disappointed that he didn’t mention the Super Mario Bros movie he was in for all of five seconds. As if he would! (No pictures of Ash from the first film though, which is a shame.)

The beginning of the Alien³ video had an exciting trailer for Alien War, a place in London where fans could experience the terror of the second film by being led through an area by Colonial Marines while being stalked by a giant xenomorph. It actually began life in Glasgow and it’s this original setting that gets its own feature in this issue. I always thought the trailer looked fantastic and would’ve given anything to have gone with my like-minded friends but alas these things just never came to Northern Ireland at the time.

At the back of the comic underneath the letters page is the latest comics checklist and the first non-Aliens title from DHI was about to launch at the end of September. Featuring an Indiana Jones back up strip (because of George Lucas’ connection), Star Wars #1 surely couldn’t miss, right? Thing is, it’s not mentioned in any of the checklists or adverts in Jurassic Park which launched the following year, so it mustn’t have lasted long, which is surprising.

Upon checking I can confirm it only lasted ten months and was abruptly cancelled even though it advertised the next issue and #11 appeared in the checklists. It’s another franchise (alongside Predator) that I haven’t really seen (I know – unforgivable!) so until I do I doubt I’ll collect this particular DHI comic, but it’s good to see them expanding already by this point in this read through, and I can’t wait to see what else they released that I might bring to the blog.

(Actually, I already have a completed set of one of their other comics! That’ll start in January 2025 and I’ll leave its name a mystery for just a bit longer.)

Three issues down and plenty to go. This comic is already pretty incredible, it’s going to be a great read through if it keeps on improving as it has already from one month to the next. Aside from the crossover strip I’m eager for the next chapter of all the stories, there’s not one of the three main stories that I’d say is a weak link. A great selection of extras too this month. Aliens #4 will be reviewed on Tuesday 24th September 2024, but before then is both #2 (Monday 26th August) and #3 (Monday 16th September) of Alien³! A busy month ahead. Bring it.

ALiEN³ iSSUE 1 < > ALiEN³ iSSUE 2

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Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #2: TiMMY, THEY’VE BEEN GONE A LONG TIME

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From the moment I picked up this sophomore issue of Dark Horse International’s Aliens comic with Paul Johnson‘s (Legends of the Dark Knight, Spinechiller Collection, Janus: Psi-Division) cover I was excited. Not just because this last month has felt like an age and I’ve been looking forward to it, I was excited to see a third strip has been added. Inside it’s explained that there were meant to be three strips last time but an issue with resizing Newt’s Tale for the larger pages of the UK comic delayed it. So here we are with the proper format now of two main Aliens strips and a Predator back up, plus all the extras of course.

One of those extras leaves a nasty taste in the mouth this month (and contradicts the comic itself) and I’ll get to that further along in the review. There’s also the first letters page, the next Technical Readout and the latest Xenomorph news. There’s also exciting Alien³ news which will mean more blog content too. But we’ll start with that new story, written by Mike Richardson and credited as “Based on the screenplay by James Cameron”. This is because it’s a retelling of the movie’s story but from the perspective of a different character, which is rather special.

Anyone who’s seen the Special Edition of Aliens (which is the default version today) should recognise this scene. We’re on LV-426 near Hadley’s Hope and Newt’s prospector dad has struck gold. Sent by the Wayland-Yutani company to a specific spot he’s taken his whole family along for the ride. Finding the massive alien ship from the first movie they think they’ve struck it rich, and the company has given him the rights to whatever he finds! Of course they knew what he’d find, and that he won’t be around long enough to claim anything.

So far, so familiar but this moves beyond a basic movie adaptation pretty quickly as we see Newt and her brother creep into the air ducts of the settlement they call home to find out if their dad is alright, since they haven’t been allowed near him while the doctors fail to get an unknown (to them) creature detached from his face. But in trying to protect them it’s just led to the kids being kids, and now they’re about to be witness to something much more terrifying.

The artwork here is by Jim Somerville (The Walking Dead – not that one, Maelstrom, Warlock 5) on pencils and Brian Garvey (Transformers, Gunfire, The New Gods) on inks with colours by Gregory Wright (Elephantmen, co-creator of the 90’s Deathlok, co-writer of Sensational She-Hulk) and the lettering is by Pat Brosseau (Hellboy, Wonder Woman, Wolverine). It reminds me of Stephen Baskerville’s inking (especially when working with Andrew Wildman) on The Real Ghostbusters and as such it feels a bit too cartoony for the subject, especially for this scene.

But I do love the idea behind it and I’m intrigued to see the rest of a story I know so well played out from a different viewpoint, even if one of this very publication’s feature writers thinks otherwise. I’m getting to that. Up next though is our back up strip. In between the two Aliens tales is Predator: Cold War written by Mark Verheiden, with pencils by Ron Randall, inks by Steve Mitchell, colours by Chris Chalenor and Rachelle Menashe, with letters by Clem Robins. In this chapter we continue getting to know Arnie’s apparent brother, Detective Schaefer as his drugs bust goes wrong.

This takes up pretty much all of the strip’s eight pages, although to be fair to editor Dick Hansom the chunks of story presented were originally meant to be different until that technical fault last month. What we end up with here as a result is a rather clichéd 80s police flick, but it ends with Schaefer being kidnapped by some Men In Black-types for the general and then we head back to Serbia and the rig workers are getting panicked that there’s something out in the snow coming for them. They’re not wrong.

As someone who has only seen the second film many decades ago (I’ve decided I’ll get around to them this Hallowe’en) this comic is basically my introduction to the Predator and so far I’m just getting impatient to find out exactly what we’re dealing with. That’s not the strip’s fault obviously, it’s my own, and I’m sure fans of the original movie would get a kick out of this.

The Aliens Special Edition video had proven to be a huge success for 20th Century

Before we move on to the funnier (no, really) of our strips we’ll take a look at some of the extras. On the news pages it’s Alien³ release season with news on dates and box office numbers, a special mention for the poster design and (alongside a spot of Batman) the Aliens Special Edition video had proven to be a huge success for 20th Century. This particular news item and the inclusion of Newt’s Tale make another page in this comic even more surprising.

Quite a lot of my friends were huge fans of the Alien films and not a single one of them had anything but utter love for James Cameron’s Special Edition of his sequel, happily contributing to the sales figures above. (Then happily buying it again several years later in widescreen, then DVD, BluRay, iTunes 4K… you get the idea.) At the time of writing this review Disney’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte has proven very successful but there are some dark corners of the internet that I’ve heard are attacking it and this page reminds me of that to some degree.

This page of the comic reads like one of those Threads posts bulked up to a full article

Of course, a lot of the hate for the Star Wars show is because of ‘reasons’ from some very horrible types that we won’t get into here, but some others are just complaining because it’s adding to the lore. Surely that’s a good thing? It reminds me of when Doctor Who had mystery injected back into the character with The Timeless Child (when we found out they’d led many more lives than we’d thought, which even brought a lot of classic episodes/scenes back into canon). Some fans online don’t like not knowing everything about whatever they’re a fan of, and will instead say something “isn’t canon” and is an example of “bad writing” instead.

This page of the comic reads like one of those Threads posts bulked up to a full article. It also doesn’t sit well within a comic that has a strip (Newt’s Tale) that takes scenes from that very same Special Edition to explain more of a character’s backstory, the exact scenes that are being complained about here. If I’m not mistaken, while buying these comics for the blog I’m sure I noticed a future cover promoting a competition to win this video! This really is rather strange and not what I would expect from an otherwise quality comic. So let’s get back to the good stuff with part two of Aliens: Hive.

Regular readers of the blog may be familiar with how the Jurassic Park comic’s editorial recaps of previous chapters were described as ‘What Has Gone Before’ and here we get a full page of this for each strip, using cover images from the original US comics. I really like these. It’s like they’re announcing the next strip’s arrival as I read through the issue. As the crew leave the Dolomite for the surface we see Norbert has been able to keep its name after all and this produces some of the lighter and, surprisingly, funny moments. At least until we meet Gill, a synthetic human the likes of which is synonymous with the Alien films.

Always drawn with shadows covering his face, Gill is suitably creepy. As they move towards the 1000-meter high alien nest on the surface, the main ship has been scanning the debris encircling the planet and they’ve detected the remains of a ship, so of course they send a couple of people to recover the black box. Shockingly, they make it back safely. The recording shows the captain warning another ship of criminal trespass before the tape just stops. The Dolomite commander contacts Gill to tell him said criminals could still be about so to watch out, but instructs him not to tell the crew, not even the expedition leaders. This back-stabbing between humans who all have their own agendas fits perfectly into the Alien universe; human greed is basically the cause of all the horrific events in the movies. 

Down on the planet we get to see their landing disturb one of the sleeping residents. As you can see this is a very stylised version of the alien, its head isn’t one long smooth curve for example. I do like this style of art though by Kelley Jones (with colours by Les Dorschield and letters by Clem Robins), and in the years since we’ve seen how the alien species can adapt to whatever living being its transplanted into by its facehugger (beginning in Alien³) so we can always describe it away.

I’m eagerly anticipating the gruesome moments (if last month is anything to go by) and action-packed scenes we’ll see drawn in this very particular way in the following chapters. It’s very 90s, isn’t it? I love it. The strip ends with Doctor Mayakovsky in another alien slime-induced trance while Julian Lish looks on and thinks about the two of them together. It appears, contrary to the impression given last month, that they’re very much in love. Or is one using the other? More intrigue.

There’s another Technical Readout and this time it goes into a lot of detail about the drop ship we saw in the film before the issue rounds off with the first letters page, Bug Hunt. It might seem very quick to have this in the second issue but that’s because the last comic of volume one (all of which we’ll get around to eventually, I promise) saw Dark Horse come in and shake the comic up before their full relaunch. There’s the explanation about Newt’s Tale, a brief description of how setting up their UK office has opened the doors to talent in this part of the world working on their American comics, and there are hints about future Dark Horse International titles.

One isn’t just a hint though, backed up as it is with a back page advert.

While I’m not usually a fan of comics adaptations I’m looking forward to this regardless, especially the extra features. Just like Jurassic Park’s first few issues this had a three-weekly release schedule so of course that’ll be the case on the blog too. I’ll talk more about the movie itself during those issue, however I’ll just say that those friends of mine I mentioned above weren’t that crash hot about it on its initial release but I always enjoyed it.

However, the Collector’s Edition released since then has turned even them into die-hard Alien³ fans and in my eyes it puts the film on a level peg with the first two! So it’ll be interesting to see what the adaptation includes and you can come along and find out from Monday 5th August 2024 when Alien³ #1 hits the blog. Then it’s not a long wait at all until Aliens #3 (this could get confusing) arrives on Tuesday 20th August. See you then.

ALiENS iSSUE 1 < > ALiEN³ iSSUE 1

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Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #1: STOP YOUR GRiNNiN’ AND DROP YOUR LiNEN

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Off we go with the latest real time read through and this one is rather different than anything that’s been covered on the blog so far, being the first aimed at a mature audience. After licensing their Aliens comics to Trident in the UK, Dark Horse US decided to set up shop in London and print their strips in their own titles. Thus Dark Horse International was created. This was their first, and flagship, title.

I’ve already covered one of their comics. Jurassic Park not only adapted the movie into comic form it also contained the first ever official sequel to the film and book. Similarly, Dark Horse US’ Aliens continued the story of James Cameron’s amazing hit movie and lasted for decades, only coming to an end in recent years when Marvel rebooted it now that Disney owns both the comic publisher and 20th Century, the company behind the films.

As much as I do love the new Marvel series (it really is superb) I’ve been really excited to sink my teeth (just the one set) into these original stories. As explained in the introductory post I’m concentrating on the comics after Dark Horse International took over with Volume Two. At least for now. This is because these were the comics my friends collected at the time and the one I owned was part of this series too. So let’s get down to reliving it.

After John Bolton’s (Hellraiser, Man-Bat, The Evil Dead, and one of the first British artists to work on American comics) incredible, exclusive new front cover the editorial welcomes us to Dark Horse’s vision of what an Aliens comic should be, with Jurassic Park editor Dick Hansom given the title of ‘New Bug’. To place the comic in its time you can see Alien³’s release was imminent and in fact Dark Horse would publish a three-weekly, three-part (bit of a theme there) special series to commemorate. More on that movie as we go along.

So the first strip in the read through is Hive, part one of which takes up 20 pages. Altogether there are 52 pages with a good quality gloss cover and a matt stock inside, all in colour apart from the occasional advert. There’s also a 16-page Predator back up and a good selection of features, the overall format making it a very UK comic indeed. Let’s get started with Hive first of all. In the States each story was released as a mini-series whereas here they’d be printed in an ongoing comic, much like Jurassic Park. It opens with this scene-setting spread below.

This is the perfect opening for the first issue, feeling very much like the movie, complete with the heroine having a somewhat Sigourney Weaver-esque look. The Alien is brilliantly realised by Kelley Jones (The Sandman, Batman: Endgame, Micronauts), with Les Dorscheid’s (Dungeons & Dragons, Deadman, Nazz) muted colours adding to the atmosphere and Clem Robins‘(Amazing Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Guardians of the Galaxy) letters. Of course in the film the Aliens are black, but conveying that in comic form can be difficult. Les’ use of colours here is inspired, fooling us into accepting this creature as black even though it has to be coloured differently for its details to stand out on the page.

Jerry Prosser’s (The Crow, Predator, editor on Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) story begins with Julian Lish trying to escape from an Alien in a scene that could’ve been lifted straight from the movie with its tight, dark corridors, motion tracking sensors and in the end the alien’s second jaw sliding out for the kill. That is, until an “Override Code” is announced over a loudspeaker and it just… stops.

This is Dr. Stan Mayakovsky and any initial confusion you might feel from this turn of events was echoed by me. That’s the whole point. He enters with his dog in tow who seems completely nonplussed with the H.R. Giger creation standing over them. What happens next continued the confusion as the dog drops their ball from their slobbery mouth and it rolls underneath the alien’s legs.

Didn’t expect that, did you? What with this bit of alien playfulness and our two human characters just standing next to it, even after it looked like Julian was about to be its victim, something is obviously amiss. (It hadn’t been released yet, but the dog in the original cut of Alien³ certainly didn’t get this treatment!) On the next page the alien sizes up to the professor, baring its teeth and hissing, my mind instantly remembering the accompanying scary sound from the films. Then it takes off down the corridor and… well…

I admit I laughed at this! And laughter is not something I thought this comic would produce a lot of. Yes, the film had its moments but those definitely didn’t come from the alien side of things. It does explain things though with its clearly robotic speech bubble. As ridiculous as it sounds to have a robotic alien in the story we must remember this is set in a future where completely convincing human androids also exist, so why not?

We get an insight into his addiction to a particular drug, a raw form of the slime produced by the aliens

The question is, why exactly has this thing been created? Not only that, but it’s being trained to hunt humans, or at the very least act convincingly like a killer. Called XL1, an out-of-breath Julian tells Stan it keeps getting better, that she’s struggling to stay ahead of it anymore, which pleases Stan immensely. However, Julian wonders what 10,000 of them would be like! It’s a terrifying thought and we know that the plans of greedy humans always lead to disaster in the film series. So what’s the reasoning?

It’s not clear yet if the professor works for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the films but we do get an insight into his addiction to a particular drug, a raw form of the slime (or “jelly” as it’s called here) produced by the aliens. It relieves his cancer symptoms and puts him into a sort of trance state where time slows down, his world goes blue and he revisits his memories of how he got to this point. It’s essentially a bit of exposition for the readers.

Having to buy the substance from drug dealers, he eventually met Julian and devised a plan to build an alien android to infiltrate a hive (that explains the reference to thousand of aliens and the title) and bring back the jelly. Stan is in it for himself, Julian appears to be in it for the money, and their mutual desire for the same outcome results in a passionate, mutually selfish love affair. Using the example of ants above and the aforementioned ability to make convincing androids, it’s an interesting set up for the first story in the comic series. There’s also a funny moment when Julian even suggests naming their alien ‘Norbert’!

In their ship The Dolomite they take a crew to a far-flung planet called A6 454 upon which humans have never set foot, and Stan and Julian stand up in front of their crew and ask for volunteers before showing them what they’re there for. As a bit of foreshadowing, revealing their android goes horribly wrong. Not that either seems to care.

I remember seeing scenes like this when I flicked through my friend’s Aliens comics as a teenager and being amazed it could show such images. I’d never seen anything like this in comics before. Anyway, Stan finally uses his override command to stop his android from continuing its killing spree and the final image of the strip has it holding another man’s head and looking directly at Stan. Whether this is where the original first part ended in the US comic or this is where the UK’s comic has cut it off is difficult to say, although the sudden end makes it feel more like the latter.

The first part of Hive is intriguing, full of atmosphere, has plenty of horrific moments and really sucked me into its world. It’s a fantastic start to the comic and this already has the potential to be an excellent read through. As a teen it was no wonder I loved the one issue I picked up if this is anything to go by. It would’ve shocked and scared me, and I would’ve been loving every page of it. Before moving on to the back up strip there’s a bit of news in The Motion Tracker segment and a middle-page spread about the making of Alien³.

I wonder if anyone actually went and rented The Commitments back then just to get a glimpse of the film? It’s interesting that there was a different direction for the film originally planned, so much so that a teaser was made. The Unnatural Selection spread isn’t the easiest to read but it does explain a lot of the infamous difficulties in making Alien³. I’m particularly interested in the various writers and script drafts and the evolution (hence the subtitle) of the story over the years before filming began. If this is an indication of the extras the comic will contain I can’t wait for future issues.

In case you’re wondering, the “Free Comic” on the cover is a sequel to Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons’ Give Me Liberty (which I’d never heard of until now despite it being a best seller) and nothing to do with the Aliens franchise. While the Predator movies would eventually cross over into the Aliens universe, at the time they had nothing to do with the franchise either. However, in comics they were always closely related and thus a perfect choice of back up strip.

Predator: Cold War is written by Mark Verheiden (Phantom, co-executive producer on Battlestar Galactica and Falling Skies), with pencils by Ron Randall (The Dreaming, Action Comics, Supergirl), inks by Steve Mitchell (Aquaman, Batman, G.I. Joe), colours by Chris Chalenor (Barb Wire, The Mask, Hieroglyph) and Rachelle Menashe (The Terminator, Icon, Virus), and letters are by Clem Robins again. Lieutenant Ligachev has been promoted by a General of her army just so he could send her to take charge of an oil field pumping station in the middle of the Siberian nowhere. When their equipment discovers large seismic activity accompanied by high levels of radiation they go to investigate, discovering the decapitated body of a local deer herder, strung up on a pole as if he’s on display, like an animal at the end of a successful hunt.

Soon they’re under attack by a Predator and, upon being hit and half buried in the snow, Ligachev can only watch as her young team are cut down one-by-one by this strange creature. Setting the beginning of the story in desolate ice fields adds a level of desperation to her plight but we soon find out she’s recounting it to a military tribunal who wants to send her back! 

If this is anything like Aliens then she’s probably being sent back out to face certain death in order for the government (rather than a private company) to get access to powerful weapons. As someone who has only ever seen the second movie a long, long time ago this plays out like a typical 80s monster movie, which is no bad thing of course. More interesting is how the rest of this 16-page chunk of the story tries hard to tie it in closer to the film series.

The American military have picked up on the weapons fire and automatically assumed the Soviets were test-firing nuclear weapons, so they reach out to General Philips. He was played by R.G. Armstrong in the first film although here he’s described as having something to do with the “business in New York last summer” and I’m not sure what that’s in reference to. After all, the first film was set in Central America and the second in Los Angeles.

A second character, a New York sheriff, is seen having flashbacks to being attacked by a Predator (while at the dentist no less, so double the horror!) so maybe it’s in reference to an earlier Predator comic, perhaps one printed in Trident’s first volume. Meanwhile, the general goes to meet a Detective Schaefer who turns out to be the brother of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character Dutch, still M.I.A. from the first film. As you can see he’s drawn as another version of Arnie and basically feels like a way of getting the big name star into the strip without actually doing so.

So far, as someone who knows next to nothing about Predator the opening scenes were exciting but the introduction of Schaefer feels a bit like the Jurassic Park comic’s own desperate attempt to get another character from the film into its sequel strip, when it reintroduced Robert Muldoon who had clearly been killed by the Velociraptors in the movie. I’ll not dwell. Going into the Predator strips essentially blind means I can just enjoy them for what they are.

Towards the rear of the comic are three pages detailing some of the weaponry used by the Colonial Marines in the Aliens movie. For fictional weapons the Technical Readout really does go into a lot of detail. If this is the beginning of the comic adding some background depth to not only itself but also the universe of the films then it’s another great start. These pages bring back exciting memories of their onscreen use, especially the M56 Smart Gun as used by Jenette Goldstein’s Vasquez character, decades before “smart” devices became the things to own.

Finally, just as in Jurassic Park (and many Marvel UK comics) we get a comics checklist, although at this stage Aliens was Dark Horse International’s only UK title so it focusses solely on the imported comics available in specialist comics shops. These weren’t as easily found at the time (Northern Ireland only had two such shops back then) so for most of us these were beyond our reach. It’ll be interesting to see this develop as the company settled (at least temporarily) into this part of the world.

With that we come to the end of the first issue and it’s off to a cracking start. The Aliens strip itself is fantastic and it hasn’t really got going yet, but the set up has plenty of potential for things to go horribly wrong for the cocky humans. Predator is also enjoyable and might be more so once I actually watch the films (which I now want to do, so that’s another good point) and the extras are interesting. Lots of potential here. This is a lengthy read through that’ll take us all the way to March 2026, so settle in and come back on Tuesday 23rd July 2024 for the next instalment.

GO TO iSSUE TWO

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