Writer: Mike Richardson
Penciler: Jim Somerville
Inker: Brian Garvey
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Cover Art: John Bolton
After reading all those comics about continuing the story from Aliens, I decided to read the movie adaptation in comic form. Aside from a few mistakes here and there, I think this adaptation of the film is really a unique idea. It’s not a one hundred percent verbatim comic. It actually adds a bit into the story that we never see in the film! I think it’s a brilliant idea providing a little more background and I wish more movie adaptations would incorporate this idea.
As the title shows, this is the story about Newt. It’s really inventive for the time it was released because it gave us a bit of a prequel to the movie Aliens. Naturally this was released well before we saw the “Special Edition” version which featured the full movie that Cameron made for us all to enjoy. However, “Newt’s Tale” even adds a little bit more to that story. The whole first issue is basically the story of what happened to the colony up until the marines arrive and found Newt. In the “Special Edition” movie we only got to see Newt’s parents finding the derelict craft, and then from there we’d fill the gap. Not so for the comic, here we see the colonists try to battle it out with the Aliens and dealing with the Aliens setting up a nest! I thought this part of the comic was pretty awesome to read. As we all know from the movie, the colonists didn’t stand a chance.
Eventually the marines enter the picture and as far as movie adaptations go, I felt like the comic moved too quickly once it linked into the movie. Maybe a third issue of equal size could’ve given the readers all the parts we wanted to see. One cool part they included that was omitted in the original pressing of the film was the turret gun scene! However, I think they incorporated it a little wrong in the comic and overlapped it with another scene in a strange way. In the movie everyone stood with rapt attention on the ammo count as the guns fired away. The Aliens never made it their command area, but in the comic it seemed like they did. This is all taking place in the second issue and this is where I started having huge problems. First off the turret guns were Hicks’ idea and where they were placed, but the comic has Ripley coming up with the idea. Also the whole part where Bishop finds a way to the antenna array was Bishop’s idea, but in the comic Ripley says it. I don’t know if this was because they had the text bubbles pointing to the wrong person, or they just plain weren’t paying attention in the movie. I felt like they made Ripley know way more than she should have about the area and that made no sense to me. Unfortunately this is the part that will kind of kill the issue for me, but this might have something to do with the fact that I’ve probably seen the Aliens movie like fifty times in my life by now… so I know it pretty well. I had the same problems with what they did with Ripley in “Earth War”. They made her seem like way too much of a military bad ass and it makes even less sense in context of the actual film.
From there the comic is pretty good. They omitted a few lines here and there for the sake of space and naturally took out most of the profanity. They added in a weird scene towards the end in the Queen’s chamber where Ripley runs into a cocooned Burke. If that was originally intended to be in the film, I’m glad it was taken out… it just felt weird in here. Other than that once they get back onto the Sulaco things feel a bit rushed for some reason. Maybe it’s because there isn’t much dialogue and I’m sure it’s a hard scene to incorporate. But it just didn’t feel nearly as intense or powerful as we would see in the film, again, this might have more to do with the fact that you just can’t convey that kind of a scene in the amount pages they were allotting for it.
The art was pretty on par with what you would expect from any comic book. It didn’t really blow me away or stand out in any way. Nor did it hurt the issues either. Some of the full page battle scenes looked awesome though. Especially the one where Vasquez yells out “Lets rock!!” and starts firing into a horde of Aliens with her smart gun. That was so well drawn in here! For the most part the only person that looked really bizarre was Burke. For whatever reason the drawn picture didn’t look anything like Paul Reiser. I will say that it was certainly a welcome sight in comparison to the horrendous art in “Earth War”.
Overall I think this is a worthwhile read. It’s definitely a must for issue one, at least, so we can glean more insight in the battle between the colonists and the Aliens. Other than that the rest of the adaptation is a little shoddy and doesn’t really hold up as well. If you’re not a die-hard collector it can probably be skipped… of course you will miss out on some really cool full page art.
Overall Rating: 3.3/5