Aliens: Dead Orbit

Dead Orbit is a one-man show, being written, drawn, and lettered by Canadian comic artist James Stokoe. It’s impressive when someone can handle all these roles as a comic auteur, but there are times when you think a division of labour might have helped. That’s the feeling I had here anyway. I love Stokoe’s art, which turns a space station into a giant, crumbling oatmeal cookie and sees Xenomorphs hiding in the wicker nests of wiring and machinery. I also liked the visual concept he had of turning the impregnated survivors who are “rescued” being burned to a crisp in their cryo pods so that it looks like rotting zombies are giving birth to chestbursters. That was a great touch, typical of the inventiveness found throughout this comic franchise.

The story, however, is hard to follow. I wasn’t sure of the time scheme, as most of the story is a flashback, but I don’t know how much because within the flashback there are a couple of flashforwards, though not as far forward as the story’s frame. This lost me completely the first time through because I got confused as to when Wascylewski was cocooned by the Xenomorphs. And what happened to the salvagers anyway? It seemed like that might be important, and then it wasn’t.

Things were just moving too fast. At one point there’s even a joke made about how quickly the creatures are growing, which is a poke at Alien that is often picked up on. The point remains however that everything here seems to happen in a rush and even at the end I was still wondering a bit about what was going on and in what order.

The supplemental materials describe Stukoe’s original pitch, which was a much more conventional Aliens story featuring space marines infiltrating a planet infested with Xenomorphs. But at some point he decided to go in a different direction, and this is definitely more like the first film than the second. The crew don’t even have any firearms and have to improvise with whatever tools they can find on the ship. Good luck with that!

Perhaps a little too scrambled in terms of its narrative for its own good, this is still another solid instalment in the Aliens franchise, and not to be missed by franchise fans.

Graphicalex