Everytime I consider ending the site, usually after a readership drop, something comes up that reminds me why I keep going. I have learned the most interesting things since starting the Sing Me A Story article series for example. Sometimes I even learn interesting things about stuff I’m not normally interested. Take the sci-horror Alien series. You know what I just learned?
The character of Colonel Hicks also survived the second movie in the Alien franchise, Aliens only to die offscreen in the next movie, Alien 3, in a text report about his stasis pod failing and getting impaled. Possibly because the actor, Michael Bien didn’t want to die to a chestburster and they said “screw you, die in a lame manner”, but that’s a guess on my part. Also, Bien wasn’t the first actor chosen to play Hicks, and was a last-minute replacement when the chosen actor was found on drugs two weeks into filming. Bien is also Reese from The Terminator so this dude has a habit of playing heroes who die. Poor guy.
Meanwhile, Hicks being dead messed with various Dark Horse stories that expected one of the survivors of the second film to not suddenly die out of some strange insistence that Ripley be the only not-dead person at the start the next movie in the series except for the time she died and was cloned. So in reprints of adventures that Hicks appeared in very much alive the character was renamed “David Wilks”. What does that have to do with minicomics?
For those of you who haven’t figure it out, we’re back to the minicomics connected to the Aliens: Space Marines toyline, or as I like to call it during today’s research “not @#$%$#% COLONIAL Marines, SPACE Marines! That’s a different comic you stupid search engine!” This one came with the Colonel Hicks action figure, so no love for you Wilks fans. Apparently the minicomics exist in some alternate timeline given how many other characters aren’t dead despite being so at the time the toyline came out. After all, you need more than one human, especially a girl in a boys line, to fight the various types of xenomorph. So let’s check out another installment of Ripley And Her Not Dead Friends.
This is actually a multi-part story, and do you know how many times I’ve had to rewrite this? Get the Marine, and then get the xenomorph introduced, rinse and repeat. Every time I think we’ve reached the final issue, the story gets continued. Considering how short they are, that’s hardly the bargain it sounds. I finally got to #8 before I stopped. I guess the comic story isn’t the only thing that’s going to be a multi-parter.
BW Media Spotlight 