Despite the fact that Disney purchased the Alien franchise’s rights in 2019, they took their time before putting their creative minds to work on new Alien comics. But that changed in the first few months of this year. On March 24th, 2021, Marvel Comics issued the first issue of the continuing Alien comics, written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson (0:08) and illustrated by Salvador Larroca.
The comics contain several arcs and rich, but vast storylines that appear to be potential works of art, not just because they expand on the lore, but also because they solve several critical issues. We’ll go through the two arcs that have been covered in the comics in this video, but we’ll also go over the following topics.
ExplorationOf Story Arcs
The Psychic Bonds That Xenomorph Chestbursters Form With Their Hosts
The Real Meaning Of Prometheus
Uncovering The Mystery Behind The Existence Of Xenomorphs
What Does Weyland Yutani Want FromXenomorphs Apart From Creating Bioweapons
Mystery Behind The Existence Of Predators
Xenomorph Weaknesses That No One Cared About Until Now
The Alpha Xenomorph And The Stone Cold Mutated Xenomorph From Hadley’s Hope
How Big A Threat Are The Synthetics?
Why Do Chestbursters Run Away Frantically After Ejecting From A Host?
What’s Happening InAlien Comics? The Basic Plot
The first narrative follows Gabriel Cruz, the only human known to have survived the removal of a chestburster embryo implanted by a facehugger. One of Gabriel’s sons had died during the early years of his posting at Epsilon Orbital Research and Development Station by falling into a ventilation shaft.
Nevertheless, being a dedicated man, Gabriel continued to serve WeylandYutani, and after years of service, he retired as the head of security. After coming back to Earth, Gabriel’s estranged son Danny pays a visit, but Danny has come only to steal Gabriel’s security card so that he and anti-corporate colleagues can go to Epsilon, take pictures of what’s going on there, and reveal the real truth behind WeylandYutani to the world.
Danny, his fiancée Iris, and the others, on the other hand, were not expecting to encounter a swarm of Xenomorphs on Epsilon. It wasn’t before long that Ted Reynolds, the current chief of Epsilon Station, gives Gabriel a sudden visit and briefs him about the situation. He tells Gabriel that if he didn’t retrieve the Alpha specimen from Epsilon, both he and Danny would be charged with corporate espionage.
Gabriel leaves Earth with two young colonial marines. Upon reaching Epsilon, he finds that everyone was either dead or impregnated, and the only survivor was Danny’s girlfriend and team leader Iris. Unfortunately, though, Gabriel was late, and Danny had already been cocooned and face-hugged. The rest of the story deals with Gabriel’s attempts to save his son.
Xenomorphs Can Form Psychic Bond With The Hosts
We didn’t knew what a person who had been implanted with a chestburster embryo thought before these cartoons. Well, now we do. While rescuing his unconscious and face-hugged son, Gabriel tries to talk to him and unload the emotional burden by explaining his past. In that monologue, Gabriel reveals that he learned quite a few things about the Xenomorphs when he was face-hugged.
So, face huggers don’t just implant an embryo into a host; when they are attached to a host, they become connected to the hive mind of Xenomorphs. In his unconscious state, Gabriel not only saw the Xenomorphs that took down his team but also the ones who were millions of miles away, including the creators of the Xenomorphs. It was like a tidal wave of living nightmares blanketing the universe. And in that unconscious state, he also saw a humanoid Xenomorph, whom he resorted to calling The Woman in Dark.
What Is The Meaning Of Prometheus And Why Xenomorph Exists?
Danny’s lover Iris was revealed to be a free-thinking synthetic who had gone rogue from WeylandYutani and joined the anti-corporate resistance later in the comics. She explains that because of the chestburster within Danny, the world would turn into a post-organic utopia or a world without sapient life forms.
Furthermore, according to Iris, humans were not the first life form who attempted to leave their own solar system in search of other worlds and alien lives. But when such arrogant species begin to travel the stars, they are met with the cleansing fire of Prometheus, in this case, the Xenomorphs.
This fire keeps the Universe clean of such species which behave like parasites. According to her, many such arrogant species have perished because they first try to use the Xenomorphs as weapons, but when that doesn’t work out, they try to assemble themselves with the Xenomorphs to become better, stronger creatures.
And this time, Gabriel Cruz had brought the Xenomorph into the fold of humanity. And it seems that the Woman in the Dark and her Xenomorphs would turn out to be the inevitable result and the unavoidable end of humanity.
Naturally, the Xenomorph has a considerably broader function in Marvel comics than that of a dangerous parasitic creature. They are the purifying fire that keeps the cosmic system in balance by maintaining millions of species in their proper positions and preventing any one species from becoming dominant.
This was essentially the underlying theme of Ridley Scott ’s 2012 film Prometheus, and it seems that the comics just seconded the film. Naturally, the Xenomorphs also serve as a cosmic test for advanced worlds and their civilizations. And while humans should maintain a safe distance from these creatures, WeylandYutani would continue to act like a child and play with fire.
What Does Weyland-Yutani Really Want From Xenomorphs?
It is plainly evident from Iris’ portrayal of Earth’s future that by bringing the Xenomorph to Earth, mankind has set itself on a road to its own annihilation. However, this wouldn’t necessarily come with a global Xenomorph infestation. It would, in parts, be accelerated because of WeylandYutani’s naïve efforts to carry out cross-species experiments between humans and Xenomorphs and splicing the DNAs of the two species.
Up until today, the Alien films and comics have revealed that WeylandYutani carried out their experiments to make biological weapons, but Marvel’s Aliens is taking the company’s agenda to a whole different level. And, while the future of the Alien franchise looks bright, such grand plans will require equally grand execution.
Why Do Yautjas Exist?
According to what Iris mentioned in the comics, the Xenomorphs serve as Prometheus’ purifying fire for space-faring species. According to this theory, the Predators should have been exterminated a long time ago. But the explanation lies in the other things that she says. According to her, the space-faring species behave in two successive steps when they come across Xenomorphs. First, they attempt to weaponize the Xenomorphs, and then they try to assimilate themselves with the Xenomorphs to become stronger as a species.
However, the Predators never wanted anything to do with the Xenomorphs, to the extent that they kill Xenomorphs on sight. This way, they have managed to move out of the vicious circle of weaponization and assimilation. Naturally, their chancesof survival have increased.
Whether the Predators knew if this was the only way to escape the Xenomorph cycle or if they were unaware of it is largely unknown. However, now that Marvel owns the rights to both Predators and Xenomorphs, it wouldn’t be a long wait to know the real reason behind the mystery of Predators’ existence.
Major Weaknesses Of Xenomorphs That Can Help Us All!
We’ve witnessed Xenomorphs overlook synthetics several times, even when they were in close proximity. For example, the synthetic Bishop in James Cameron’s 1986 picture Aliens trekked kilometres across a Xenomorph-infested zone to reach a dropship so that Ripley Newt, and Hicks could escape.
Furthermore, in that same film, when Ripley and Newt get trapped in a room with a facehugger, she ensures that the creepy alien doesn’t get to her face. It’s interesting how films and comics have simply gone past these two weaknesses over the years. It is not that WeylandYutani didn’t have the brains or means to create more synthetics or a device that could shield the colonial marines and other staff from the facehuggers.
We believe narrative necessity demanded that humans got impregnated by the facehuggers. If there were no Xenomorphs running around, there would be no progress in the story. However, Marvel Comics’ Aliens takes care of these issues in issue number four of the comics. As mentioned earlier, Gabriel Cruz heads for Epsilon with two colonial marines and meets Bishop there.
When Colonial Marine Hamilton asks Bishop how he managed to survive when everyone else was dead, Bishop mentions that the Xenomorph drones ignore synthetics until the synthetics are perceived as a threat. Furthermore, right after entering Epsilon and witnessing the carnage, Cruz strictly warns his men to either not let a facehugger attach itself on the faces, and if somehow that comes to pass, the men should do themselves a favor by shooting themselves.
Fans have always seemed to come up with these two simple solutions, but the filmmakers went with narrative and cinematic ease. However, it is nice to see that the creative team of Marvel Comics is paying closer attention to detail and filling up the loopholes.
New Extremely Powerful Xenomorph Variant Has Arrived!
Aside from all of these important revelations, the Alpha Xenomorph needs to be the star of the show, which is why WeylandYutani decided to send Gabriel Cruz back to Epsilon. When he had left the space station after retirement, the Alpha was locked up with heightened security in stasis.
However, Danny, Iris, and the others inadvertently freed the uber-powerful Xenomorph, after which it matured rapidly. Later, when Cruz and the others came face to face with the Alpha, it seemed that it had matured completely, but there’s no telling if there was potential for further growth.
Even in its existing stage of development, the Alpha looked horribly strong and huge. Xenomorph drones themselves are all things nasty, but the Alpha made them look tame. It had two huge pairs of wild buffalo-like horns instead of a head crest. It was most certainly more humanoid than most drones and possessed a sleek muscular body.
If you’ll look closely, it almost seems that the Alpha had abs below its rib cage and a pair of muscular arms with chiseled biceps. Furthermore, the Alpha had a certain psychic connection with the chestburster embryo inside Danny. Now, one theory is that the Alpha could have been a Praetorian, but that’s unlikely because the Praetorians are necessarily royal guards who serve the Queen, and there was no mention of any Queen in the Xenomorph hive on Epsilon Station.
Therefore, it’s quite likely that the Alpha was indeed the result of genetic experimentation on a Xenomorph by WeylandYutani. But we can not be entirely sure about that, and the Alpha might be a naturally existing variant.
Radioactive Xenomorphs Explored
Marvel Comics published Aliens Aftermath, a one-shot comic written by Benjamin Percy and illustrated by Dave Wachter that continued the events of Hadley’s Hope after its Atmospheric Processing Plant was destroyed in a nuclear detonation.
What followed was a nuclear winter, and everything got frozen in sub-zero temperatures. Under these circumstances, a group of investigative journalists headed to Hadley’s Hope to collect pictures and unravel the grave crimes that WeylandYutani has committed over the years.
However, like all such renegade groups of the Alien Franchise, this crew was under-equipped for the monstrosities that were about to present themselves. It is now that we come across the Irradiated Xenomorph drone that had undergone a unique mutation because of the exposure to the nuclear blast and the subsequent nuclear winter. Not only was this mutated drone glowing, but its acidic blood had also transformed into something like liquid nitrogen.
One of the crewmembers had his arm spilled with the drone’s blood, and it immediately froze before crumbling down like a brittle stone. Now, this poses a serious threat to humanity because the incident is proof that even nuclear strikes may prove useless against Xenomorphs. In fact, they can further enhance the capabilities of these horrid creatures.
The Synthetics Could Be The Real Villains Of Alien Franchise
We’ve seen how synthetics have worked nefariously to serve their creators throughout the Alien franchise’s history, frequently putting human lives in jeopardy to fulfil the goal set for them by WeylandYutani. In the original movie, Ash tried to risk the lives of the entire crew so that he could have a specimen, while David from the prequel films ended up creating his own version of the Xenomorphs.
Yes, there have been good synthetics like Bishop from the second film and Walter from Alien Covenant, but then more often than not, synthetics have turned out to be the bad guys. And this trend continues in the two volumes of Marvel Comics’ Alien. In the first issue, we learn that Iris was a synthetic and she wished the destruction of all humanity with the help of the chestburster inside Danny.
In the second volume, which starts with Issue number 7, we meet a colony of Spinners who are living on a moon called Euridice. Spinners are basically a religious cult that didn’t believe in the use of technology and agreed to settle on Euridice with the plan of living without technology.
However, they were first required to terraform the moon, and only after it was made suitable for living, the government of the United Americas would have granted them official permission to stay on Euridice. Everything was going as planned, but then United American vessel UAS Heraclides, the vessel carrying supplies and lawyers, crashed on Euridice unleashing Xenomorphs.
Jane, the leader of the facility, went in to investigate and found a hive, but the claim was negated by most of the colonists, especially by Ambrose, who was the de facto preacher of the church and a close confidant of Jane.
Later, Jane found several Xenomorph Eggs inside Ambrose’s cottage. When he learned about this, he overpowered her while a facehugger hatched from one of the eggs. Clearly, Ambrose wanted the same things as Irisdid. So, it is evident that even though Xenomorphs pose a huge threat, the synthetics pose an equally greater threat.
Where Do Chestbusters Go After They Rip Apart A Host?
When it comes to juvenile Xenomorphs or chestbursters, this is one of the most pressing questions. Until now, it was thought that chestbursters flee furiously to vents or other small locations to hide and develop, but the last panel of Issue #7 explains this enigma. We see that after bursting out of a Spinner named Becca, the chestburster went straight to find an adult Xenomorph drone. This was essentially a survival tactic aided by the psychic link between an infant and a mature Xenomorph.