Aliens
Dark Horse’s Aliens series SAVED comic books for me.
I’ve been a comic book for as long as I can remember, but in high school I found myself becoming dissatisfied with superhero comics. The costumes started to look silly and dorky, the stories started becoming predictable and elementary… I was outgrowing them.
I was already a rabid Aliens fan, I’d seen both movies several times and gotten my hands on as much Aliens-related merchandise and magazines as I could find, which in a tiny town in the wilds of Montana during the late 80’s wasn’t much. But then a comic shop opened in town, a relatively big one… so big in fact that it collapsed under its own weight in under a year (and to this day I wonder what the hell the owner was thinking, but I thank him for thinking it)… and this comic shop introduced me to a whole new breed of comic book.
The detailed and realistic black and white line art contrasted starkly with the bright kindergarten colorings that were in the superhero comics. The horror, the sheer terror was thrilling in a way that another hokey fakey super-duper duke-out could never be. The blood dripped from every page. The grotesqueness and the gore were cloaked in dreadful darkness. The Aliens were hunting humans once again. And I was cheering them on.
Upon finding Aliens, I went from being just about finished with comic books altogether to geeking on them like I’d never geeked before. Looking back, it was a pretty gutsy move of Dark Horse to take the Aliens franchise to comics with such a unique vision and style. It certainly contributed to their success in growing from an independent startup to the industry powerhouse that they are today. They owe a lot to Aliens, and I think they know it, and I think they are proud of it. And with good reason.
As an interesting side-note, one of the other titles that I first stumbled on at that comic shop before it closed and that showed me comic books were still cool was Judge Dredd. The dystopian future with its raw chaos and brutality really appealed to me, there was a good body count, and of course there was Judge Dredd himself. Aliens and Judge Dredd were my two favorite comic book titles throughout my high school years and beyond. And lo and behold, so many years later, Dark Horse did a crossover with Aliens and Judge Dredd! Unlike most Aliens/superhero crossovers, such as Aliens/Superman, Aliens/Judge Dredd does not stretch the imagination across the bullshit barrier. It not too hard to see the reality in which the two would meet, and the story plays out with so much respect and accuracy to both titles that they seem more than merely feasible to combine… they seem complimentary. Definitely recommended reading, but then again so are all of the Aliens comics!
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