Aliens Vol.1 #1

Feb 1991. £1.50
52 pages. Color & B&W.
Trident Comics, Ltd.

Edited by Martin Skidmore.

Cover by Denis Beauvais. r: cover from Aliens: Book Two collection (Dark Horse; 1989).

Contents:

.2 Contents / Title Credits / Indicia

.3 Credits / Story So Far text introduction (uncredited).

.4 Aliens Untitled, part one, w: Mark Verheiden; a: Denis Beauvais, lettering by Bob Pinaha.

r: Aliens (Dark Horse) vol.2 #1 (Aug 1989).

28 Credits / Story So Far text introduction (uncredited).

29 Predator The Heat, part one, w: Mark Verheiden; a: Chris Warner, lettering by Jim Massara, colouring Chris Chalenor.

r: Predator (Dark Horse) #1 (Jun 1989).

40 Credits / Story So Far text introduction (uncredited).

41 Aliens Vs Predator Untitled, part one, w: Randy Stradley; p: Phil Norwood, i: Karl Story, lettering by Pat Brosseau.

r:

51 He's Back, and He's on the Case of his Career... advertisement for Bogie Man: The Manhattan Project.

52 Muto Maniac advertisement.

Despite the cover, this isn't the first appearance of a Xenomorph basketball team, although given scenes in Alien Resurrection...

Rebecca 'Newt' Jorden and Corporal Hicks were two of the few survivors when the Aliens wiped out a colony in the movie Aliens.

Years later, Earth too has fallen to the Aliens. We'll tell you how all that happened some time soon. It's an extraordinary story.

In the course of it, Newt met Butler, and found love for the first time in her tormented life. Then she discovered Butler's secret - something he hadn't even known himself. And that changed everything.

Newt, Butler and Hicks only just managed to get off Earth in time when the Aliens took over, by stowing away on a cargo ship.

Now it's two weeks later. Their only remaining problems are that they haven't the slightest idea where the ship's navigational computers are taking them, nor what cargo might have been important enough to take off-planet in an emergency...

Newt and Hicks are alive and well. So far, anyway, as there are aliens aboard their ship. Hicks manages to kill one, leaving two aliens to deal with, but with only four rounds for his blaster the situation isn't exactly optimistic. Worse still, when dealing with the alien, Hicks was exposed to open space and is suffering from the bends. Locating the remaining aliens with the ship's cameras, aft dock doors are opened, sucking them out into space. Newt isn't satisfied with this, putting on a spacesuit to go see for herself. An alien surprises her, forcing her to use the blaster, which is how she comes to lose it.

Attempting to retrieve her blaster from inside the rear thrusters, she discovers a second alien waiting. Listening to events unfolding outside, Butler - an android who is missing his legs - fires up the thrusters to kill the alien. With imminent threat seemingly over, they continue to their destination. Reaching the ship's preprogrammed coordinates they are told that the cargo they were hauling are the very thing they have been so scared of for so long.

Despite being at odds with Alien³, the main Aliens strip isn't at all bad, though there is a sense of trying to one-up horrors which have appeared in the films. Events unfold in a manner which suggests that, despite the difficulty in doing so without things getting silly, there will be an increase in unfolding anarchy. Butler is interesting, though is barely used in this opening part of the story, while Newt is far more competent and mature than when she appeared in Aliens. It isn't clear how they managed to move around on the ship for two weeks without discovering the nature of the cargo, but hopefully that will be explained.

It was supposedly a mission to rescue a senator held hostage by terrorists in the jungles of Latin America. It turned out Dutch and his crack commando squad had been conned by the CIA into doing their dirty work, but, in the end, that didn't matter - they dealt with the 'terrorists' easily. Then the trouble started.

America's toughest team of fighters was being picked off, apparently at will, by an invisible hunter. Soon, only Dutch is left, unarmed, in a face-to-face confrontation with a monstrous alien hunter. Miraculously, he survives, and the alien destroys itself after suffering defeat.

The people of the jungle had legends about these hunters. They appeared only when the weather was at its hottest.

Schaefer, Dutch's big brother, is a homicide cop in New York, trying to cope with rising tensions as the Summer heats up - but the mounting gang wars will be the least of his worries.

Because it's the hottest New York's ever been. As hot as the jungle. And even alien hunters like a change of scenery occasionally...

A man shooting his wife to death because she watched a Green Acres marathon is just the start of Schaefer's problems, and multiple gunshots take him to a run-down building where he is told to wait on the captain arriving. A body falling from the roof onto a police car forces his hand, and he enters the building - only to discover the Suits and the Muchachos (two competing gangs) massacred by a third party.

The Predator story, encumbered with rather stilted artwork, and garishly coloured, is nevertheless a rather good set-up for an inner-city battle reminiscent of Predator 2. It is difficult to imagine any fresh ground being broken with such a similar opening, yet it manages to introduce a few interesting characters.

The race called the Aliens are the most deadly natural predators in the known universe. They're incredibly vicious and virtually unstoppable. The only sure defence against them is to be on a different planet.

The Race called the Predators may have less fearsome natural assets, but they make up for it with sophisticated weaponry, intelligence and hunting skill. They may be the universe's most formidable hunters.

Now they're after the toughest prey of all: the Aliens.

It's the greatest confrontation of all time - and guess whose planet they're holding it on?

Not a lot happens in Aliens Vs Predator save for a Predator ship moving through space with Aliens aboard. You might suppose this to be a weakness, but the art is so sharp that there isn't much problem with this lack of narrative progression - things are going to get very violent, very quickly (the story is about Aliens and Predators), so enjoying the journey to that point is the point.

There is a great difference between the strips which goes beyond pacing, tone, and presentation, and despite the best intentions of everyone involved in repackaging the material, it isn't a wholly successful package. The painfully obvious lack of features, when so much could have been done to fill readers in on the backgrounds of the franchises involved, means that the success or failure of the issue lies with the strips. It is unfortunate that they aren't the best stories for a first issue.

By asking readers to commit to a series of ongoing narratives (of indeterminate length), without throwing them a bone or two, is simply asking too much. Short complete stories are essential in teasing readers into a world which is this complex, and allow for that warm "value for money" feeling which publishers desperately want us to feel. And really, no free gifts? The least this issue should have had was a poster.