Script: Mark Vehelden
Art: Denis Beauvais
Mark continues with his great script that we were first introduced in the first Aliens series. In some respects I think Mark has really outdone himself this time and really gotten a feel for the Aliens universe. This series strikes me as being more maturely written and the story just feels so much more complete. It takes the time to develop the characters extremely well. When you read the first series I felt the doctors at Bionational were not very well developed and mostly mentioned in passing. Even Massey’s character felt rushed, but here we get to see a bit more of the main bad guy General Spears.
The second series picks right up where we left off without missing a beat. The Alien infestation on Earth has gotten so bad that people have just abandoned Earth altogether. Hicks, Newt and Butler managed to stow away on a military transport heading to a destination on auto-pilot. They didn’t really know where they were going, but even on that ship they couldn’t escape the Alien threat. This military vessel was transporting them to another planet… but why? They land on a planet that was terra-formed similar to LV426 (Acheron) where the movie Aliens takes place. They meet a mad general who hopes to breed a different set of Aliens on that world so he can bring them back to Earth and fight the infestation there. Will Hicks, Newt, and Butler make it out alive? I’ll leave my plot summary there and you’ll just have to read the comics to find out what happens.
One of the most standout differences for this series versus the first is that this series is entirely in color. They’ve also gotten a new artist to take care of the drawing aspect as well. Honestly this is one of the most amazing comics I have. The art, to me, is simply incredible. Denis did a phenomenal job and the pictures are all air brushed. Not to mention we get, probably, the most amazing cover sets found in the entire Aliens series! I won’t even try to go into detail on how well drawn this stuff is, but for a non-artist it looks great to me. One of the other really cool features for these issues is that the back covers of all four issues combine to make a giant poster sized image of the Alien Queen! (See end of review for image)
Overall this is a great comic and there’s nothing I can think of to really criticize it. It’s even better than the first, which is amazing because I really liked the first. Like I said, the story feels stronger and is more self contained in the four issues here. The first series was a bit broader, but I think that’s because they were trying to do more. If you’re an Aliens fan you’ll surely enjoy reading this. Not to mention there’s a character surprise at the close of this series!
Overall Rating: 5/5
