It’s the second half of the final story in the Aliens: Space Marines minicomic saga. And yet it’s only the second of three articles.
For those of you who came in late, Aliens was a toyline based on the first two movies. Being a boys line, they opted to shift the “main character” to Hicks, a soldier from the second film, but Ripley, the actual main character for most of the franchise, was still an important part, and they remembered the power loader exosuit from the second movie because they gave that to her since it would make a way cool toy. Like with the Super Powers Collection based on DC Comics characters and Superfriends incarnations, each figure was given their own minicomic, but instead of standalone stories we got a series of arcs that went through numerous figures. Get the human, get the alien, rinse, repeat, until you had the full story. It’s a surprising amount of continuity for a toyline pack-in minicomic; not the only toyline or promo comic set to do this (Drake’s snack cakes did a similar bit with their two Marvel sets, both of which I’ve reviewed in the past), but it was quite rare. The comics are really short, so you’re not quite getting a long story, but thus far it’s been a decent tale each time.
Last time we started looking at the longest and final arc in the line. Our heroes, including characters who died in the movies because that toyline needed filling, tried to go for some R&R on a human colony, only to have the xenomorphs drop in on a nearby farm to start a new hive. We left our crew in the largest stable I’ve ever seen staring down a bunch of xenos whose facehugger parents got a hold of bulls, creating bull/xeno hybrids the toyline called “bull aliens”. Can our heroes make it through alive?
Well, we have a problem starting the next one. Finding these scans are near impossible. I’m guessing the line wasn’t popular enough or the Dark Horse trades including them didn’t warrant the same scans that most of the other comics I’ve reviewed in this series have gotten. The one source I’ve been able to find that actually has the comics to read is missing this issue.This means I have to use the same weird source I did for the first set of comics to finish this story: YouTube. So I can show you #9. I had to do the same thing for the first storyline before I found my current source, so at least I can still complete this review.
At least this time Jolley gets a writing credit, though Nakrosis is still out of luck.
So our heroes are saved by a new member, ATAX. I think that’s his name, because it’s also the name of his designation…it’s not really clear. What matters is that he has armor that resembles the Queen Alien if she was tan (as in the color, not the result of a day at the beach), and he manages to finish the other xenomorphs only for the queen to fly off with him.
What happens? Now I get to read comics again rather than watch videos. It’s a bit less odd for me. You can check Random Vids Guy on YouTube if you want to watch it. I’m a bit nervous about linking to the Flickr I’m using for the comic scans in case it was Dark Horse or 20th Century Fox’s new owners at sue-happy Disney behind the missing scans online.
A face only an alien queen could love.
Aliens: Space Marines #10
Dark Horse/Kenner (1993)
“Swarm”
PACKAGED WITH: Mantis Alien
WRITER: Dan Jolley
ARTIST: John Nadeau & Steve Moncuse
COVER ART: Joe Phillips
LETTERER: Dan Nakrosis
EDITOR: Dan Thorsland
I don’t know why the letterer and editor aren’t credited in the comic or how correct the Xenopedia is but that’s what I’m going with.
In a cliffhanger that would make King Of The Rocketmen proud for how weak it is, Sgt. Apone reports in his log that they return to the colony and find ATAX is just fine, having finished off the queen off-panel. They find the colony empty, but lucky they get reports of the colonists getting off world just fine. We’re only allowed to kill the non-humans in this comic. That’s when our crew is attacked by a swarm of mantis aliens. They head to make sure the colonists get out okay, but on the last ship Ripley notices someone failing to escape, managing to see giant facehuggers capturing some of the colonists before the ship races off to moon base. Apom tells Bishop to warn up the ship because they’re going after them.
I want to know who’s flying the ship? And will the facehuggers actually kill these people and create more “normal” xenomorphs? Let’s see.
Too bad the toyline never got to the kaiju-sized xenomorphs.
Aliens: Space Marines #11
Dark Horse/Kenner (1993)
“Terrordrome”
PACKAGED WITH: Giant Face Hugger Alien
Did they run out of humans to make into action figures? That breaks the pattern we’ve seen thus far.
WRITER: Dan Jolley
ARTISTS: John Nadeau & Billy Ray Marimon
COVER ART: Joe Philips
LETTERER: Dan Nakrosis
EDITOR: Dan Thorsland
The editor gets a credit but the letter still doesn’t. What confuses me is why we’re getting so many artists. Where there a lot of them who really wanted to work on this? These are eight page minicomics probably about the size of your average drink coaster when closed, with only a couple of panels on each page. It’s led to the art being good in some issues and not as good in others. For example the previous issue was quite good, while in this issue Ripley look like a dude with half of Sigourney Weaver’s muscle mass in the second film. You know, the one where she’s not ready for fighting aliens.
Hicks filed this report. The team arrives to find the lunar base is already a big hive but no signs of the facehuggers. At least not until they start dropping on them a few at a time. We see ATAX is more of a jerk than Drake has been. Drake’s been annoying but ATAX can’t even say thank you when Bishop shoots a hugger off of his suit, complaining that the exo-suit cost more than the android. Eventually they finish the huggers off and go to release the humans from the cocoons. I don’t know a lot about this franchise because even sci-fi themed horror isn’t my thing, but when did they start using cocoons? Yes, I know bursting out of someone’s chest isn’t exactly kid friendly but this isn’t from what I know of the series. Someone who does can fill me in on that.
As this issue ends Ripley finds a young girl (what else is new…she collects them, you know) who warns of “bull monsters”. This story is still going. I wish my source was. This is the last issue he has up. That means the last two issues have to come in video form again to finally wrap this up. It’s all I have to work with, so let’s…watch…#12, “Ice Storm”, packaged with the Rhino alien. Can’t wait to see how they got rhinoceroses on a lunar colony lightyears from Earth.
Still no love for the letterer. Did Nakrosis do something to upset Thorsland that week?
Our unnamed ATAX officer is the reporter here and he’s still a jerk. Apparently he doesn’t like androids. Yes, the guy in the queen alien style exosuit hates robots. Go figure. Bishop returns from scouting the agricultural dome to report he found the aliens, but at the cost of his arm. ATAX rags on him for it, but does admit, at least in the report, that he likes Bishop’s plan to rescue the girl’s parents. Girl’s name is Kim by the way. This wasn’t an attempt to introduce Newt to the toyline. Hardwired into a power loader, Bishop uses missiles to damage the dome, which will freeze the aliens, while ATAK uses his “clever” disguise armor to rescue Kim’s parents and shoot up the facehugger eggs. The plan works and the family is reunited while Bishop make a freeze joke.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad story. The pacing was what you’d expect for an eight page minicomic serial but Jolley figured out how to tell it in a way that when read together gives us a decent enough narrative. The revolving art teams was an issue, leading to some good art and some bad art from issue to issue, but overall it worked.
I did call this a finale, but there is technically one more of these. A 13th issue was produced for the Aliens Vs. Predator series, and this one is longer than eight pages. It also features none of the Aliens toyline characters. So to finish this off for good join me next week for the epilogue, and I actually have a place to read it. (Though Random Vids Guy does have a video version of it if you’re impatient.)
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