Alien: Revival
It’s easy to get lazy reading comic books. In particular, you can let your eye drift over the art, not paying close attention to everything that’s going on and picking up on all the small but significant details. There was a telling moment for me in this regard when reading Alien: Revival. One of the characters refers to the discovery of a victim of the Xenomorphs that’s found in one of those incubation cocoons, only with her feet torn off. This made me flip back to the scene in question because I hadn’t noticed the victim’s feet. But they had indeed been torn off.
Later in the comic we’ll see other humans who have been given the same treatment, with arms and legs removed. I guess because all that’s needed for gestation is a chest. I don’t recall this ever being a thing in the movies (though I’m not caught up on all the films in the franchise), and it’s a detail that’s pretty damn disturbing, to be honest. But Revival is a comic that takes the Alien mythology and turns up the ick factor quite a bit.
The story is again impressive. As I’ve noted before, the Alien comics beat the pants off the movies in coming up with original plots. I don’t know why they didn’t just film them. Would have avoided all of Ridley Scott’s later mythologizing and the Aliens vs. Predators crap.
The story has it that a bunch of humans have started a religious colony on a terraformed mining moon named Euridice. But wouldn’t you know it, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation wants a place to test out a new strand of Xenomorph and so Euridice is up.
At first I thought the whole religious sect of “Spinners” (because they worship a divine Mother who spins creation on her cosmic loom, or something like that) was overdone. They even talk in frontier or Appalachian folksy dialect, saying things like “I might oughta brought that shotgun.” But after a while it grew on me, and they turned it into something interesting when the Spinners started to question whether any of their beliefs and holy books were real or were just a construct of the Corporation.
There’s a kick-ass heroine named Jane who has a bow. There are some very evil synths (androids), one of which I actually guessed the identity of before the reveal. But it was pretty easy this time (usually this series conceals them really well). One thing I did raise an eyebrow at though was Jane swearing at a wicked synth that she was going to kill it. Is that a threat to a synth? Why would a robot care if you threatened to kill it?
Also included in this volume is Alien Annual #1, which is a standalone story starring the security man Gabriel Cruz and some more space marines facing off against yet another evil synth. Androids really aren’t our allies in these stories. Bishop was the exception to the rule.
Alex Good 
Sounds decent. I saw a couple of the movies but never understood the fanboy effect they had/have, but then I feel the same about Starwars and the MCU.
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I wouldn’t even consider myself an Alien fanboy. But I’ve been really impressed with this line of comics.
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They do sound a cut above.
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I too have never understood why some of these franchises haven’t used the comic book stories as their outlines. They have some cool ones.
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The stories in any of the Alien comics would have been better than the scripts for any of the movies after the first two. I wasn’t expecting much when I started reading them but so far I haven’t read a single dud.
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That’s impressive! Most comics end up having a high point that all the fans remember and then a bunch of duds, just like the movies.
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I think what helps here is that while there is a general timeline that the stories all fit into, each comic is self-contained, telling a standalone story. The only real consistent elements are the Xenomorphs and the Weyland-Yutani Corp.
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I’ve thought trying to get a hold of the Aliens or Predator omnibus editions of the comics, but it’s never seemed worthwhile to me.
Not when I have such high quality manga like Demon Slayer, hahahahahaa.
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The omnibus editions are crazy $$$$$$, like all comics really, unless you get them from a discount seller or at a book sale. Don’t know how expensive Demon Slayer is, buy you’re reading e-versions right? That must be cheaper.
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Oh yeah, I only read comics on my computer now. Papercopies are just too small for me to pick out all the details.
I currently get my books and manga from Z-library. But I’m very comfortable with ebooks, etc this point so it’s not a big issue. I have the various programs I need and I have an ereader so I’m good to go. Not sure how much of a hassle it would be for someone new to get into it.
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I don’t know if it would be a hassle for me to change over now, it’s just that I’m comfortable with paper. Reading anything on a screen I tend to scroll through it and don’t feel I’m paying full attention to what I’m reading. But you young people have brains that work in a different way now.
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For me, it’s more about my diabetic eyes 😀
At least for comics.
Ebooks are because I like the fact that I can have 100+ books in one place and it’s organized how I like it.
I’ve heard anecdotally that GenZ’s and whatever comes after them (those born between 2000-2010) prefer paper again. Good times.
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