Aliens: The Original Years

I loved this collection of what originally ran as three Alien-themed miniseries, with an additional prologue and double-barreled coda added to the mix. But before I get to praising it I should give some of the backstory.

First off, despite being a Dark Horse comic this is part of the Marvel Epic Collection line-up because Marvel bought the comic book rights to the Alien franchise in 2020. So I guess they own all this stuff now.

Second, the comics themselves have been “remastered” in various ways over the history of their publication. So if you pay attention to these things you’ll note that the credit for colorist on the first series is given as “Dark Horse Digital.” That’s because the first series originally appeared in black-and-white and was later colorized. Also, the series launched in the wake of James Cameron’s 1986 movie Aliens and follows up with the further adventures of Newt and Hicks (Ripley took a bit longer to appear because of legal issues). As the film franchise went on, however, we found out that Newt and Hicks died at the beginning of Alien3, so in reissues of the comics they went back and changed the names of Newt and Hicks to Billie and Wilks. But for the trade edition they changed them back again, which is how they appear here. Then the final series, Earth War, was renamed Female War and then changed back again to Earth War. Got that straight?

The major change from the original publication is the colorization of the first series (most of the other changes being reversions back to the initial version). I think they did a fair job with the colour, but if you’re a purist you might wonder if it doesn’t take something away from Mark A. Nelson’s underground art, since black-and-white isn’t just an art form that is without colour. It’s its own thing. As with movie colorizations, there’s an artificial feel to these pages and I think something of the original atmosphere is lost. But it didn’t bother me that much.

There are different artists with very different styles in each of the series, but the writer – Mark Verheiden – is constant and there is a strong through narrative. And it’s the story here that I really grooved to, with the arc that takes us from the Xenomorph home planet to Earth having lots of little curves and details along the way. For example there’s one twist that plays off the reveal of who is a cyborg among the ship’s crew that I thought was brilliant. It surprised me and still made perfect sense. Then there’s the cynical video reporter from INS who has been sent out by her boss Kolchak (get it?) to cover the opening of a pyramid with Xenomorph guardians. Going along with the tomb-raiding team is the only known survivor of an alien chest-burster, which is such a cool idea I can’t understand why no screenwriter thought of it. I also loved the idea of how the aliens, who are basically just killing machines or space sharks, have all this meaning projected onto them by humanity. Of course the military-industrial complex is looking to make a weapons program out of them but they’re also worshipped as gods by a bunch of cultists that had me thinking of the plot of Cullen Bunn’s The Empty Man (if only because I’d been reading that title recently).

None of this has much to do with the mythology of the film franchise. And it’s way better than the mystical mumbo-jumbo Ridley Scott gave us with Prometheus. Verheiden was basically off doing his own thing while continuing on from Cameron’s movie and I thought he did a terrific job. Even the “mistakes” turn out to be a lot of fun. Verheiden thought the “Space Jockey” figure from Alien wasn’t wearing a mask but was actually a kind of giant humanoid with an elephant head. And so that’s another alien race that puts in a disturbing appearance here.

I could go on. This was a joy. It’s the Alien franchise that should have been. Just leave the scary monsters as scary monsters and concentrate on the human story. There’s a leitmotif throughout the series that has it that the aliens are basically only props and that humanity is more than capable of destroying itself. That’s the sort of thoughtfulness and liberty toward source material that you don’t get in a lot of comics, and like I say, it’s not even a major theme. It’s just a point that comes up several times in passing.

Though it really diverges from the official Alien canon I think fans of the movies may be the most appreciative audience for this book. As I’ve said, it holds on to the original two movies (the two best, by a long shot) and then goes in a totally original direction that I thought was superior to where the movies ended up. Sure it’s still bubble-gum stuff at heart, but it’s a really nice package that presents a thrilling alternate Alien reality that’s like some giant franchise Easter egg. Or maybe one of those leathery eggs with creatures inside them.

Graphicalex