Writer: Dave Gibbons
Pencils: Mike Mignola
Inks: Kevin Nowlan
Colorist: Matt Hollingsworth
On the heels of “Sacrifice” comes “Salvation” as the next one-shot in the Aliens series while we all watch the lengthy “Colonial Marines” series march on. I suppose “Salvation” is a concept to expect next after “Sacrifice”. Where “Sacrifice” loses someone’s religion “Salvation” sort of finds it. It’s an interesting story, but I am curious as to what all the sudden religious obsession is with this series.
“Salvation” deals with another concept of Aliens in transport and having a ship crash land on a world. This time the world is not inhabited by humans, but was an attempt at one of the large biotech firms on Earth to save some of the Alien species for research. As can be expected with an Aliens comic things don’t go the way they had planned. The Aliens, being always unpredictable, escape and cause the ship to crash leaving very few survivors. One of the two survivors to make it to the escape pod are the captain and a very religious cook. The cook justifies all of his insane actions as what “god” would expect of him. It has a strangely interesting message in that sense. As if it says something about humans can justify almost any action via religion and will of “god”. An interesting concept and I think it’s a lot more powerful than “Sacrifice” in that regard. The unfortunate part is that the story arc involving the Aliens themselves is kind of cut and pasted from other great series.
Now normally you’d think I would be ultra critical of Mike Mignola’s art, but for some reason it just kind of worked with this concept. Certainly it’s nowhere near as beautifully drawn as “Sacrifice”, but it felt right for this story. I’ve noticed that when constructing these kinds of limited series where you change the authors and artists out all the time, sometimes it’s hard to match up the script with the right art. I wouldn’t consider Mike an incredible artist, but he was just right for Dave’s script.
Overall this is a bit cliché even by Aliens standards. The art was nothing to impress you, but it was a lot more action packed than most one-shots tend to be. The religious message is certainly an interesting one. I’m not sure how much one should expect to glean from this issue, but in some respects it both had more and less than “Sacrifice”. I did like the fact this had a lot more Aliens though. The more the better, I say.
Overall Rating: 3/5