Continuing the Dark Horse Aliens kick I seem to be on at the moment:
Comic #2: Aliens #2 (Volume 2)
Art by Denis Beauvais, Written by Mark Verheiden
Published December 1989
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General Spears hangin' out with the Aliens. Capcom for-sure had a look at this.
So this issue of this awesomely-violent and incredibly painted miniseries was my first exposure to the Alien movies waaaay back when. The story of how I actually got this particular comic is lost to the ages*, but I remember being super-excited about Alien stuff when the old action figures came out, and getting really confused at the character names. Being all of six, I had it in my head that this was an adaptation of the movie --turns out, not so much. In truth, it is the best possible sequel to Aliens... which I was too young to have seen yet!
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I haven't heard of much in the way of other comics drawn by Denis Beauvais, but he does a hell of a job emulating the look of Cameron's movie.
My main reaction to all this was "what are these scary two-jawed monsters and what is this awesome sci-fi world this is all happening in?" I never even got to track down the rest of the issues until maybe ten years later (the hardcover edition they put out was amazing btw!), but the tone to all this fit exactly to the film, which all good people love to this day. This is very likely the single issue I've held on to the longest, so it's got some special significance to me; Dark Horse always brings up good feelings.
They later re-released the series with a lot of the names changed to go along with the "canon" Alien movies (so Hicks in this is no longer Hicks, and Newt is "Billie" or something), but nevermind all that; the story is kind of an alternate continuation of Aliens, with scarred up Hicks and an older Newt escaping from a now-overrun Earth. Ripley's off missing somewhere, so Hicks and Newt are fending for themselves as they're picked up by a break-off group of Space Marines lead by a deranged General Spears, who has decided he's going to breed his own Aliens and use them to retake the Earth. This goes about as well as you'd expect, but along the way you get SO MUCH cool shit going on.
So yeah! I am entirely happy I haven't managed to trade this away or lose it or destroy it over the last twenty years.
(once again, read the attchments last-to-first, sorry about that!)
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