Category: Aliens
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Thirty-six years after its release, recreating the original Aliens (albeit on home media) experience is difficult. Not only has there been a direct sequel, there have been multiple reboot sequels, and the extended, “special edition” version has been readily available for nineteen years now. I’m not ready for an Aliens canon deep-dive, but when did…
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Stokoe finishes up Dead Orbit with an awesome all-action issue. There’s very little in the way of story. There’s very little in the way of characters. There are characters–it’s been so long since the last issue, I only remember the lead and don’t remember how the bookends work–but there’s no characterization. It’s about Aliens after…
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This issue finally delivers Stokoe action violence with Aliens. There’s not a lot, he mostly goes for the terror of the crew, but it’s also terrorized crew members by Stokoe. This issue is exactly what Dead Orbit has always promised. And it’s still just an Aliens comic. Stokoe needs more room, he needs more pages.…
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Dead Orbit continues–James Stokoe drawing chestbursters alert!–without any bumps. Stokoe’s script is solid; most of the issue is flashback explaining how the aliens got onboard, then the aliens finally show up at the end. The issue leaves the protagonist in a precarious situation but it doesn’t really matter. Stokoe, even in his reduced, licensed-title friendly…
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What’s Aliens: Dead Orbit about? Too soon to tell. Aliens, most likely. And a refueling station in a dead orbit. Maybe. It’s really all about James Stokoe doing an Aliens comic. There aren’t even aliens in this issue–not really–just that wonderful Stokoe art. Great detail for the spacecrafts, great detail for the cast. It’s not…
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Maybe doing a sequel to an in name only movie franchise isn’t a good idea. Because Paul Tobin’s script for Prometheus doesn’t have much to do with the movie. Anything yet, actually. Except the planet. It’s actually a sequel to Aliens, the movie, not the comics (near as I can tell). Tobin sends a group…
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I always think of Aliens as a precisely choreographed ballet. Director Cameron moves his large cast–though it does winnow over time–around in these cramped sets and everyone has something to do; Cameron draws the viewer’s attention to one character, but the rest are in motion setting up the next moment in the scene. Watching the…
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I feel like I need to send Dan Jolley a thank you letter for making this issue of Dark Horse Comics tolerable. Well, for his Aliens story anyway. It’s got an unexpected conclusion. There’s not a lot of story—it’s a chase sequence and a resolution—but Jolley plays with expectations a little. Nadeau and Pallot do…
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So is Dark Horse Comics where Dark Horse stuck all their licensed properties once Presents’s sales dropped? The creative teams are mildly interesting. Jim Woodring writing Aliens—nothing happens, it’s an all action story—with Kilian Plunkett on the art? It looks good anyway. Ted Naifeh pencilling a Thing story? It’s more distinct because Edward Martin III’s…
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For a Presents annual (or oversized special), this one has a lot of solid work. Pearson’s Body Bags is a fun diversion. The art’s great and the story moves. It gets a little visually confusing, but it’s good. And Verheiden (with Marrinan) finally produces a decent installment of The American. It’s a thoughtful story, very…
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The issue opens with Zero Boy and Pander’s Jack Zero, which starts out a little awkwardly… but then quickly establishes itself as a good Western. Pander’s art looks fantastic, bringing a lot of energy to the setting and Zero Boy’s script is thoughtful. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about Nixey’s Trout installment this issue.…
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Shockingly, the Niles story story this issue–one of his Cal McDonald ones–is mildly inoffensive. It’s poorly written detective narration, but at least he’s work in a recognized genre (badly written detective narration). It’s stupid and Casey Jones’s art isn’t any good… but it’s not intolerable. Oh, the Marz and Wrightson Aliens story ends this issue…
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Wow, has Steve Niles ever been able to write? He has a story in this issue and it’s the worst written police procedural I think I’ve ever read. A hundred issues or no, if Dark Horse was publishing Niles… imagine what made the reject pile. The Paul Lee art on the story is bad, but…
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This special is far from an accurate representation of Dark Horse Presents. Everything looks very professional. The Aerialist and Heartbreakers installments are both long needed establishments of the series’ ground situation. I even liked the Heartbreakers one (Bennett’s writing is far stronger from the clones’ perspective, versus their creator). There’s also lots of disposable stuff–Concrete,…
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Guinan’s Aliens finish is incredibly weak, featuring not just an Alien reference but some guy in the future running around in an Indiana Jones outfit. The plotting is so weak, it might be construed as a spoof… But I think Guinan’s serious. He’s got some very profound-sounding exposition. Davis does a one page riff on…
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So Guinan’s approach to the Aliens mythology is astonishingly unenthusiastic. By some accounts his Heartbreakers collaborator Anina Bennett assisted on the writing, so maybe some of it is her fault. Guinan sets the story on a planet full of pyramids, with zero wonderment about this awesome alien civilization. Then he does some silly stuff with…
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The Aliens vs. Predator story is most impressive for Norwood’s illustration… but not of aliens or Predators. The story opens on some alien world and it’s just breathtaking. Once the actual story starts (Stradley’s two conversationalists talking about hunting experiences while Predators hunt aliens), it can’t compete with those visuals. Still, for what amounts to…
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Race of Scorpions gets even more amazing this issue… Duranona tells the reader what happens to the story’s protagonists in a little text paragraph at the end of the story. The actual story was spent on some supporting cast members. It’s sort of amazing how poorly plotted this story gets. Dark Horse really just didn’t…
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And here debuts the licensed property… Aliens. Luckily, it’s a really decent eight pages. Nelson and Verheiden almost make it feel like it’s just a comic book, not a movie tie-in. What’s really interesting is the aliens. Nelson’s able to draw so much fluidity into his own creatures, when he’s got to draw the movie…
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It’s a weak close, partially because Stradley probably needed another issue to fully develop the relationship between the protagonist and the friendly Predator (he also needed space to give it a proper ending), but mostly because Chris Warner is no replacement for Norwood. Warner kills that beautiful design sense Norwood brings to the book. Instead…
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The change in inkers makes Aliens vs. Predator look exactly as drab and boring as I’d expected the first few issues to look. Campanella can’t do much to Stradley’s figures, but he rounds out the faces–not all the time, which makes the art disjointed–but definitely in close ups. Everyone looks like they’ve had the definition…
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The issue opens with some weak dream exposition. It doesn’t fit the narrator’s voice–Stradley never establishes why he’s using it (I think it’s a callback to the Aliens series where people have nightmares around the aliens)–and it’s a weak opening. But then Stradley recovers beautifully. Until the end of this issue, Aliens vs. Predator is…
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Norwood’s very design-oriented–he’s a Hollywood storyboard guy–and the art suffers for it. The setting, the designs of the human settlement on an alien planet, is great. The panel composition is stunning. The figures are awkward and bad. Everyone’s proportions are off a little bit. They’re too stout for their height. Stradley’s writing here is really…
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Stradley’s issue is two bored cargo spaceship having a conversation while Norwood’s art shows us all about the Predators getting ready for the Aliens vs. Predator series. First it’s showing the alien eggs, then it’s a bunch of fighting for dominance. The off panel dialogue back and forth constantly relates to the dialogue-less action going…
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The whole series collapses here, thanks to Verheiden’s absurd sense of self-importance. In six issues, he destroys the planet Earth. Wait, no, he doesn’t. In one issue he destroys the planet Earth. He didn’t really hint at that plan until this issue either. He uses Newt as a narrator again and it’s just as bad…
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Yuck. Verheiden writes the majority of the issue–maybe all of it, I can’t remember, my brain is on strike–from Newt’s perspective. He narrates the issue with her. It’s awful female narration by a male comic book writer. Probably not the worst ever, but it’s hideous. The plotting isn’t bad–though I’m not sure why Hicks is…
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Almost the entire issue is told in summary–it’s not bad, actually, since Verheiden is using a layered narrative (he’s gone on to write crappy Superman/Batman comics, hasn’t he? That’s unfortunate). He resolves the whole thing with the aliens on earth, which is both good and bad. It’s nice he was able to resolve it in…
The Stop Button 