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Aliens, Comic Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

iSSUE 15 < > iSSUE 17

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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 #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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ALiENS #13: WE JUST GOT OUR ASSES KiCKED

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Back in the early 90s Dark Horse US published a monthly Aliens comic depicting the Earth War starring the Hicks and Newt characters from the second movie. Of course, after Alien³ this was no longer canon but the company’s UK branch was about to start publishing sequel stories anyway. I don’t know if volume one of the comic under previous publisher Trident covered the war but no spoilers please, I’ll read them eventually for the blog.

The UK exclusive strip Crusade picks up after the war but very little background is given to us. Editor Cefn Ridout seems to assume everyone knows about it already. A recap would’ve made all the difference, especially as sales were climbing with new readers coming on board. “As if the opening of London’s own Alien War in August weren’t enough” for Aliens fans? Ah the 90s, when our comics seemed to forget there were readers outside England. The editorial above shows you all the credits for the issue and then we’re launched into 12 pages of Crusade.

It’s fair to say first impressions aren’t great. Coming as it does after Paul Johnson’s artwork last issue and Chris Halls’ cover may be unfair to artist Christian Gorny (Heavy Metal, Haarmaan, Narcangel) whose work in other titles is acclaimed. Mike Cook’s (2000AD, The Real Robin Hood, Dead Meat) story doesn’t get off to a great start either. It’s confusing (not helped by the comic’s lack of background to the war) with dialogue that ’s trying too hard to make it seem conversational between friends, which has the opposite effect and comes across stilted and broken, although Woodrow Pheonix’s (Sonic the Comic, Manga Mania, Dracula) lettering does give it a nice journal feel at times.

From what I can gather London was spared from the alien infestation and the reason remains a mystery. The city is desolate, cut off from the rest of the world and inhabited by Mad Max-like tribes. Elsewhere, Colonial Marines are sent down from orbit to alien hotspots for quick hit-and-run raids. One of their recon teams has gone missing over London, which resides in a country they describe as an “A-grade shithole” that was mainly used for toxic waste before the war.

I say “from what I can gather” because it’s difficult to follow. I couldn’t tell you the name of one individual, there are no main characters standing out and their interactions all feel forced. No one feels remotely real. Instead, they’re just plot points to move things along. It doesn’t help that a lot of the time characters are seen from behind or from strange angles so you’ve no idea who’s talking anyway.

At times the art looks unfinished, such as the second two examples above. At times an interesting scenario tries to squeeze itself in, such as the fact the recon team were shot down by powerful weaponry, something the tribes simply don’t have and the aliens obviously have no need for. So there’s a mystery in there to be solved but I just don’t know if I care enough. Then it just stops. No cliffhanger, it just stops. This strip was made for this comic, it’s not like it was an American strip unceremoniously snipped in half, so there’s no excuse.

There’s still potential in this post-Earth War storyline but so far Crusade isn’t living up to it. This is harsh, I know. I pride myself on positivity on this blog and I’ve loved Aliens so far. Even the worst strips (I’m looking at you, Hive) had moments of redemption but there are none to be found here. Well, except for a moment when a sound effect seemed to indicate the TARDIS was arriving!

On to the Motion Tracker and on the first page of this month’s news we can see the early days of UK Aliens and sci-fi cons, complete with promises of star guests that they simply couldn’t fulfil, expensive tickets and low turnout. I remember those days here in Belfast after Doctor Who returned over a decade later. There’s also a column about toys which always confused me when it came to ’18’-cert films. Collectibles I can understand, but Aliens, RoboCop and Terminator all had children’s toys produced (this was before the days of the RoboCop TV series or cartoon).

What irks me is how there was less of a demand for the female characters among the mainly male buyers. Even for the Alien films?! Films rooted in their lead female characters and themes? I may be a man but geez, men can be such [censored]. On the other news page the comic has the audacity to run a competition with one question in this comic, a second question in Star Wars and the answer in Total Carnage! I wonder if anyone actually entered?

Our eight pages of Colonial Marines finally sees some alien action for our main characters as Lt. Henry and his marines enter the sun gun complex and are immediately at a disadvantage when acid dripping down from a dead alien body above melts through some of their protective suits, forcing them to strip and adding finding new ones to their plans. Henry is convinced this is a hive and thus they can’t waste time retreating to retrieve more from their ship.

This chapter is all about their slow infiltration, building tension as they inch their way inside, now knowing the xenomorphs are behind the loss of communication and instantly putting pressure on each individual member of the team. This is unfortunately undone somewhat when the motion sensor picks up movement and it ends up being a human survivor hiding in a vent. Sound familiar? There’s nothing original here but for the most part it’s executed brilliantly.

As you can see the chapter ends with Vasquez freezing on the spot after all of her previous bravado, showing she’s a different character than her sister in the film. Although, at one stage someone does ask if she’s looking forward to delivering payback for what the aliens did. But how does she know they killed her sister? Ripley, Hicks and Newt were the only survivors. Two of them died before waking up and the third not long after! And it’s not like the company would’ve let on. An oversight perhaps on the part of writer Chris Warner but nothing that spoils this enjoyable little tale.

On to more information about those aforementioned toys with a full-page advert (albeit black and white with poorly reproduced photographs) for Forbidden Planet. Again, these aren’t the kinds of collective figures you can buy today, they are actual toys. Some even sound like the kind featured in The Real Ghostbusters range also by Kenner, with Bishop having a rotating gatling gun, Hicks a mechanical arm for some reason and the A.T.A.X. is a marine in an alien bodysuit!

Moving on, back in the 90s my copy of Alien³ on VHS got a lot of screen time and so did the Alien War trailer before the film. I remember thinking it looked incredible, with James Horner’s searing soundtrack adding to the intense atmosphere. In 1993 it proven to be so successful in Glasgow it was being moved and expanded to a larger building in London. Dave Hughes chatted with its creators Gary Gillies and the appropriately-surnamed John Gorman about the experience.

Am I the only one who reads their reasoning behind halving the experience’s length and thinks it was really a way of getting more paying punters in? Unfortunately, it never became the envisioned franchise spoken about here and after it was closed following a flood in 1996 it never reopened, apart from a short stint in Glasgow again at the turn of the millennium. (Later in 2008 they opened a similar experience in Glasgow unaffiliated with the Alien films.)

Part two of Horror Show also takes up eight pages and surprisingly it concludes next issue. But… nothing’s happened! It also looks like it’ll end with no real aliens taking part, which is a waste of David Roach’s great art. Maybe the point was to introduce this virtual nightmare entertainment company for future stories? It begins with a young woman dressed in a sub-par alien costume sneaking into a nest to destroy the alien queen. Ridiculous? Well, if you’d been paying attention you’d know this is just the young woman’s nightmare.

The company managers are getting angry that all the nightmares they’re recording in their fake dream clinic always end up including the aliens, even if the original scenario had nothing to do with them. Set after the Earth War there seems to be a mass sense of guilt about those that died down on Earth while these people survived in lunar orbit.

This is interesting but unfortunately its reveal towards the end of the strip is spoiled by the recap of what happened last month telling us. Confusingly, one of the volunteers is also called Hicks (it’s not him) and two pages are printed in the wrong order. One of the doctors is sexually abusing the sleeping volunteers, while in their dreams it’s the aliens claws that are all over them. It’s a particularly creepy moment but not much else occurs.

In the next chapter of Steve Bissette’s prose story, Tribes, Rat is the most interesting character by far, albeit in a tragic way. Her job is to be captured by the aliens! She sets herself up in a small space just outside their hive and makes a noise, but she’s sealed herself off with wire-like meshes that slow the aliens down so they don’t rush to an instant kill. By the time they’ve got through to her and she hasn’t put up a fight they’ve calmed down and take her away for implantation instead.

As we know, their captives wake just before the egg placed in front of them opens, this small window of time allowing Rat to send a beacon to her teammates. All the way through this part of the story parentheses appear that act like mental flashbacks to her childhood, echoing the sexual assault she suffered at her father’s hands; a lifetime of abuse and suffering ultimately preparing her for a job no one else is capable of (or wants). It’s horrific and makes for compulsive reading.

This small but still interesting cutaway of the Colonial Marines transport ship Sulaco from Aliens is part of a two-page introductory Technical Readout, the first in a series of features from the always-fascinating Lee Brimmicombe-Wood about the spacecraft. These should make for an interesting series over the coming months. Also coming next month is the final chapter of Alien Vs Predator II, so as previously promised I’ll talk more about that next time.

It’s been a bit of a mixed bag this month. Two stories have been as entertaining as we’d expect, in fact one surpasses previous chapters. On the other hand the other two are completely missable. But this can happen in an anthology comic and with stories ending and others beginning all the time, the Marines and Tribes will see me through until the next shake up. We’ll take a step closer to new tales with the next issue on Tuesday 22nd July 2025.

iSSUE 12 < > iSSUE 14

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Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #12: HEY MAN, i DON’T WANNA RAiN ON YOUR PARADE

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Cefn Ridout’s editorial begins by describing Paul Johnson’s cover as “provocative” and a reminder of the pathological horror in the films. I agree. Aliens #12 from Dark Horse International already has my spine chilling. As I explained last month, anything involving a baby or young child like this will always terrify me. I wonder what people thought when they saw this on their shop shelves back in 1993.

Elsewhere in the editorial (presented here to give you the full issue credits) it sounds like the H.R. Giger interview, which I was really looking forward to after seeing the headline on the cover, will be another rant about Alien³, something I’m getting tired of at this stage. Let’s hope it’s better than that. We’ll find out further below. But first up are the last 12 pages of the UK exclusive strip, Peter Milligan’s Sacrifice.

The first half of this evokes a wonderfully creepy atmosphere and I just love the alien’s entrance and Ann’s reasons for being there, which I detailed last month. It takes what should be a ridiculous set up of one person going up against the alien with nothing but medieval-style weaponry and gives it real heft and purpose. Can her mother forgive her? Does evil really exist? By extension, does her god?

But in the end she finds she isn’t as alone as she thought. Inspired by her words and her bravery the villagers have come to her aid and trap (albeit temporarily) the alien in netting, giving her some breathing room. Even our scar-faced villain Ricketts comes good but pays the ultimate price as the sacrificial lamb of the piece before the alien falls foul of their trap. This is something I have a problem with, though.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the end result and its originality for an aliens story. Its acid blood also slowly leaks out and begins to melt the spikes, allowing it to writhe closer to freedom again. But where did the trap come from? Okay, Ann was gone for hours but if the villagers had been out there making it both she and the alien would’ve heard them. Was it always there? If so, why was it not mentioned before so it didn’t feel like such a handy coincidence? It makes no sense and it’s disappointing as a solution.

Ann is pulled into the pit by the alien’s tail and pulls out her grenade to sacrifice herself. But first she must know the truth. She must know if it really is the devil, to look it in its eyes and know if her faith was even real. Of course, we know the aliens don’t have visible eyes but the image from Ann’s dreams comes back to haunt her as she sees the glow of the villager’s fire torches reflected in this simply superb image by cover artist Paul.

The spikes behind its head giving the impression of horns is a nice touch too. Indeed, while the story has suddenly taken a turn for the worse the art remains sublime. It truly has been revelatory and a key factor in the chilling atmosphere these past few months. But Paul isn’t finished yet. The story may have had a silly resolution but you can’t fault the visuals of it.

Such a shame this is followed up by Ann somehow surviving that explosion despite being in the pit! We also find out she’s now in a relationship with Masters. Yep, the man who wouldn’t listen to a woman saying “no” gets the woman! This in particular has not aged well. It does have a refreshingly bleak ending when she doesn’t find her “god”, but overall the conclusion has not lived up to what came before.

The Motion Tracker news pages by Dave Hughes make the mistake of taking one negative review in an earlier issue of this comic and concluding that the Aliens Special Edition was “divisive”. No it wasn’t! This reminds me of silly online headlines I read now when a Doctor Who episode gets almost universally praised, even getting nearly 100% on sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, but because one or two “fans” give pointedly critical reviews the episode is described as “controversial” or “divisive”. Rubbish!

Speaking of negative reviews, the graphic novel of Hive is announced. I won’t go into that again, you can read back over previous issues to see what I thought of it (it ran from #1 to #9). There’s an interesting Egyptian-themed teaser image for the upcoming Stargate movie which I’ve never seen before. Finally in the details of movies coming out that might interest readers, the comic makes the sacrilegious decision to name Iron Eagle as the definitive Louis Gossett Jr. movie when surely it’s Jaws 3-D.

On to the Colonial Marines strip and it takes up eight pages in the middle of the comic, with things get off to a light, fluffy start.

As you can see it’s full of the usual tensions we got in the film. There’s nothing original here although it’s told in a fresh way with a set of believable characters, even if some of them do seem like copies of those we’ve already seen. This month’s story is basically the next stage in the infiltration of the sun gun complex but it’s highly enjoyable, especially our main character, Lieutenant Joseph Henry.

It’s interesting that the synthetic human isn’t going and I suspect (as does Henry by the looks of it) that there’s more behind that reason than just his cost.  Elsewhere, it appears those cheap 70s sci-fi aliens are somehow controlling the xenomorphs rather than being a separate group of antagonists. It rather depletes the threat of the comic’s title species if I’m being honest. The fact they sometimes look like spoof versions of themselves doesn’t help either.

Let’s hope I’m wrong and the addition of these new aliens doesn’t dilute our regulars too much.

So, on to that interview with the original designer of the aliens and their world, the incredibly talented H.R. Giger. I know his artwork is rather twisted and often his non-Alien work can be quite sensuous, but there are points in this chat that just feel damned creepy. I mean, wanting to make this alien killer more erotic?! I also agree with the decision made not to use his updates to the creature as they would’ve changed too much, especially his plans for its mouth/teeth and hands.

At least David Fincher is talked about positively here. The amazing special edition of Alien³ (which is not a “third sequel”, the clue is in the name) also reinstated the ox and the film can now be seen as Fincher originally intended before all of the studio interference, making it possibly my second favourite of the series after Aliens. I’m not sure who wrote this piece but as a reader they come across a bit obsequious. Were they hoping Giger would read this and be so grateful of their sucking up he’d hire them? I jest of course, but you get my point.

Replacing the Predator strip is the first part of Horror Show, an eight-page Aliens strip written by Sarah Byam (Billi 99, Black Canary, What If), drawn by David Roach (Nemesis the Warlock, Batman and Demon, Tales of the Jedi), coloured by Alex Wald (Shaolin Cowboy, American Splendor, Playboy) and lettered by Phil Owen (Dark Horse Comics). A character who is very clearly a pastiche of Orson Welles runs a company that uses technology to research people’s fears. They pay his company to place them into a realistic nightmare scenario as a form of therapy, to help them overcome it.

In reality the dream sequences are being recorded and used to create virtual Total Recall-like horror entertainment for profit. We see someone attacked by a shark and lose a leg, only to be confronted by an alien, their near-meltdown being music to Orson Masch’s ears. Even an alien costume turns up. This could be an interesting ‘Aliens meets Total Recall strip’, but I have this niggling feeling this could be another Hive, a strip that also reduced the aliens to a man-made version of some form.

In the continuing publication of the Tribes novella the team are infiltrating a hospital that was formerly an alien hive. However, in an interesting twist they suspect the hospital staff of leading some form of pro-alien religion and the reader discovers a doctor who appears to be gestating an alien queen inside themselves. However, they’re trying to delay it to a specific time. We don’t know why yet.

The Technical Readout feels like a bit of a cop out this month, being little more than a paragraph about the Colonial Marines and a quick sketch. On the Bug Hunt letters page a reader has the terrible idea of treating Alien³ as a Dallas-style dream sequence and the comic’s recent changes have been met with high praise. The call for Aliens: Countdown’s artist Denis Beauvais’ return is met with the news that his Frankenstein strip will be appearing in Dracula (it didn’t). Of course, with hindsight we know that comic would be cancelled in a few months, so will we get to see any of that strip before then? We’ll find out in its real time read through.

This issue may have struggled to reach the heights of the simply amazing #11 but that’s not to say it isn’t without its highlights. Paul’s artwork always shines, Tribes is the best read this time and Colonial Marines is still enjoyable and has bags of potential. I’m very hyped to see what the new exclusive UK strip is next time, to see more of Lt. Henry and his crew and to see if the Mars-based Schwarzenegger movie can work its magic into Horror Show. I’ll catch you (or if not, a facehugger will) on Tuesday 24th June 2025.

iSSUE 11 < > iSSUE 13

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