Aliens vs Predator (first Darkhorse Series): A Review

This is probably one of the first comics I ever got.

At 11 years of age I'd discovered 'Tumbleweeds Comics' in the janky mall of my small city of 35,000. It was probably 15 x 20 feet and was quite lacking. But it did enough for THIS guy. In any case, my poor parents who loved me, but were probably quite concerned with my budding hobby of collecting gory, violent comic books based on science-fiction movies not suitable for children... and who inspired comic books that were probably best kept away from children under 17, they acquiesced to my pleas and took me to a GIGANTIC comic shop in our distant provincial capital while we were there for other familial reasons. They waited patiently for at least an hour as I flipped through box after box of past editions of Alien, Predator, and Alien vs Predator comics. I don't recall buying that much, but of my selections were some of the above comics. And I was rather captivated by them.

Eventually as an older teen of 17 or so I'd finally collect the missing issues from 1-4, and then later on while in the military I'd download hundreds and hundreds of comics from my favorite titles (or just ones I was interested in) for later reading. It was by this means that I found issue '0'... (oddly released a month after issue 1 it would appear - or maybe I'm wrong, I don't care).

Anyway, the story shoots off from the Alien story line where the aliens have used telepathy to draw the humans to them, and the writers here apparently the reason we have two clans of predators and more 'canon' fleshed out around how they disperse and hunt the 'xenomorph' alien around the galaxy, which the films seem to have inherited.

This book does a fantastic job telling the story of how all this falls together so we can see the trifecta of battle on a distant, colonized planet. The story is actually quite good compared to some of the other alien and predator comics we've looked at thus far. More than that this artwork is fairly consistent in terms of quality and stacks up well against the other stuff of the day. Not NEARLY as good as Aliens: Rogue, it certainly wasn't the worst we've seen so far.

What really grabs the reader in this is the awesome bouts between predators and aliens (although the predators oddly throw themselves into battles with awful odds - is this a test for them or a tactical blunder?). There's one frame where the predator swings through a number of xenomorph parts and I really enjoyed how that looked.

Like usual with the Alien comics and movies I MUST complain that the timeline of gestation to full maturity of the aliens and queen are MUCH, MUCH too short for any thinking person to believe in (but having just done some googling, apparently in ALIEN the adult xenomorph reached that size in "several hours"... It still seemed much longer than goofy AvP where it seemed like twenty minutes). I read somewhere when I was a teenager that the alien got the energy to grow from metabolizing carbon from metal in the ships it was in by melting it down with its saliva. It was also able to digest animal flesh too. A 'fandom' article I just looked at said Ridley Scott and the original writer compared this to the house fly or butterfly. The big difference to me is the final MASS of this organism. It takes copious amounts of energy to grow to this size. Whatever the case I guess I have to FORCE MYSELF to 'believe'...

In the end I quite enjoyed this series and would happily allot it a 4/5 stars **** and it's good enough to keep on my hard drive, even buy. Here it is as a graphic novel if you want to: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506715680/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_E19aFb9RH1F90

To view and hear this comic being read by MOI, click here: https://youtu.be/hp20cXziwWs


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