Story: Jerry Prosser
Arist: Kelley Jones
Colorist: Les Dorscheid
Cover Art: Kelley Jones
After reading “Genocide” I was quite eager to see what the Aliens series had in store for us next. “Hive” kind of sticks with the same theme where the characters are after the Queen’s “Royal Jelly” in order to make the hallucinogenic drug. After seeing this story for the second time now… I’m getting kind of worried the Aliens franchise is running out of ideas. Don’t get me wrong, “Hive” is a cool story, but its concept is almost the exact same as “Genocide”. We need to get to the Alien home world so we can get the jelly from the Queen. Things go wrong and it doesn’t work out like we thought, que action, and end story. I’m sorry, but they need to start moving in a different direction at some point.
“Hive” is only slightly different in the sense that the people looking to score a supply of “Royal Jelly” are a doctor that builds androids and a thief, rather than the large bio corporations on Earth. The only main difference is that the perspective on the need is different and honestly I think they should’ve held out on releasing this right after “Genocide”. It feels a bit too soon in my opinion. That being said, I did like the characters, especially the doctor. His character was the most interesting and one thing that makes this series kind of special in its own way is that it’s tied together with another comic called “Cyberantics”, which is a bit of prequel story of our doctor. Basic premise there is he builds an android ant to study how the ant colony reacts, etc. “Hive” has sort of the same concept, except he builds an android Alien to infiltrate the hive. The female thief, Julian, calls him Norbert. I thought this concept was simply brilliant! I loved the android Alien part more than just about anything else.
In reading through the letters column at the end I noticed a lot of people criticizing the art a ton. Some even said it was worse or the same as we saw in “Earth War.” Let me just say that the art in here isn’t nearly as bad. While I would never rank Kelley Jones as a great artist in the Aliens series, I honestly didn’t think her art was that out of touch. It was almost average comic art. Could it have been better? Yeah, probably, but it didn’t really hurt my reading the story, not nearly as much as what happened in “Earth War”. Les Dorschied did a great job in coloring this series though. He gave it that very dark and moody atmosphere that I think people expect from an Aliens comic.
Overall this was just an okay read. I think my main problem is it felt like this story had essentially already been told, we’re only seeing it from a slightly different perspective. Although, this is probably more of what Aliens readers probably wanted, because I think some people felt “Genocide” was a bit too much in the way of an action series. Which is fine by me, I personally like both styles, which is probably why reading the same motivations a second time around was kind of daunting. If you were disappointed that “Genocide” was too much of an action series, then the suspenseful aspects of “Hive” might be more to your liking. I just think the art in “Genocide” was superior. Ah well, to each their own, I suppose.
Overall Rating: 3.4/5