Alien: The Illustrated Story

This is, on the face of it, the graphic novel version of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien, but there’s some backstory that has to be added to that.

It was published (after parts of it previewed in Heavy Metal magazine) at the same time as the movie’s release, and the writer (Archie Goodwin) and illustrator (Walter Simonson) hadn’t had a chance to see the film. Goodwin was working from the shooting script while Simonson had seen production stills and a rough cut. This helps explain the sense one has reading it that it’s something the same but different from the movie. The biggest difference I was struck by is the use of colour, which isn’t at all like the palette Scott was using. That giant emerald green spaceship, for example. Or the sickly shade of yellow of the facehugger.

It was a huge hit, becoming the first comic to appear on the New York Times bestseller list, and has gone on to be recognized as a classic in the genre of comic adaptations. I think it’s wonderful. The change-ups made to the paneling in the page layouts particularly stand out, though it’s hard to find fault with anything. Maybe the narrative voice, which they may have felt was necessary to explain things to an audience that didn’t already know the story cold. But that said, I don’t think any movie franchise has been better served, for so long, by its comics. And it all started here.

Graphicalex