Adam
Reading all the Aliens comics I could find eventually lead me to the novelizations, which I didn't realize was a thing at first. I want to say, I think I found a copy of this book at Walden Books at my local mall and I remember being super excited about it. The first time I read this book was, I believe, I was in 7th grade. I also recall finding the book rather confusing and not even remotely being aware of what this novel was based on... so, in retrospect, now that I know what was really going on this book makes way more sense!If you don't know “Earth Hive” is actually based on the first comic book series published by Dark Horse comics in 1988: [b:Aliens, Book 1: Graphic Novel 15958195 Aliens, Book 1 Graphic Novel Mark Verheiden https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png 251566]. Unfortunately, between the original publication of the comics and publication of “Earth Hive” Alien 3 was released. If you've read the comics the real problem is that they are a continuation of the movie Aliens and are the stories of Newt and Hicks after they've returned to Earth. However, the stories run into a problem, because in Alien 3 they immediately kill off Newt and Hicks, which single handedly made me hate that film in one swift take. Literally, if Alien 3 was a story that did not involve Ripley and was some other tale about an Alien running loose on a prison planet, I would have thought the movie was awesome, but because they insisted it be a Ripley story, it totally sunk the whole film in my eyes.So, now Dark Horse, the publisher has a problem, and they had Steve Perry step in and sort of correct their story time line. Basically, all he did is change Hicks' name to Wilks and Newt's name to Billie. I thought Billie was kind of a goofy name, but whatever, we'll run with it. He also made Billie a little bit older so she wasn't really a minor as the original comic series let's us know at the time. Throughout the book he makes changes to all sorts of stuff. LV426 is known as Rim now and that planet had a similar fate, but this time it had Wilks as the major rescuer of Billie. All the names of the marines are changed, for whatever reason, Butler is now known as Bueller, I'm not sure why that change needed to happen. He drastically changed up the team though so that it was more gender representative of what you'd expect from Aliens. Even though they were all androids, it does make sense that they would make more than just male androids. I, actually, really liked the character he created in Blake. Her presence in the final fight at the end was really excellent.Certain scenes were overhauled and made a bit more realistic in some ways. Such as when Wilks breaks Billie out of the psych ward. That whole sequence of events felt much more realistic compared to the comic. The ending was changed pretty dramatically at parts. Wilks' fight with the general turned into him killing the general. I was sad to see Blake lose her life in this part of the book, at that point I was holding out hope that she would appear in the second novel. Part of me knew this was not possible, because that's not how the comic ended, hell, she wasn't even in the original comic book!Having read the comics and this novel back to back for the purpose of doing these reviews, I know why I thought this novel was so confusing when I was a kid. In the comics Verheiden throws in a lot of little details about the current state of the world on Earth. Details that we don't quite get out of Alien or Aliens, or he threw in little ad libs about what other characters were doing. When switching around to these different scenes, like the dream sequences of patience for example, Perry did not do a great job of conveying this to the readers. Or when his characters were actually dreaming, for example, Nelson was able to convey this through the art, but Perry didn't do a great job of really making it clear that a dream sequence was happening, until it was over really. In some cases it was obvious, in others not so much. I also realized how complex of a story this was in my more recent reading. Verhedien actually laid out a lot. So, trying to jump around with what the Bionational corporation did in the past and how that's affecting Wilks' future mission, blended with how Salvaje is affecting Wilks and Billie's return to Earth.... there's just a lot to cover. In not a lot of time either, I felt at least.However, Perry's rendition of the comics is actually pretty good at the end of the day. I think the writing could have been smoothed out a little bit more, but at the same time I liked a lot of the changes he made to the overall story. It no longer really felt like a story about Hicks and Newt, it felt like a Wilks and Billie story, which made the whole absence of Ripley feel a lot better in the grand scheme of things.
More of a 2.5I remember quite liking this when I was in middle school, but I was also entirely unaware that these were based on the original comic book series. However, now that I'm diving into my re-reading and am reading the comics right before I read this book, I didn't really like this one as much this time around.For those who have not read the original comics, this picks up where the prior novel, [b:Aliens: Earth Hive 343281 Aliens Earth Hive Steve Perry https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1366133734l/343281.SY75.jpg 333628] leaves off. Billie and Wilks are on a one way trip on a pre-programmed ship and they have no real idea where it is taking them, they don't care much, because as long as they're leaving the infested Earth, that's fine by them. The ship eventually brings them to a planet that has a large military research installation which is being run by an insane general experimenting on creating a trained Alien army. It's a pretty wild notion, but I think this continues the theme of humans researching things they don't understand it back firing on them. But it also touches on that insatiable human need to know about the unknown, which was more present in the first novel. This novel touches more on the idea that some people need to dominate and that's where the crazy General Spears comes into the mix. I think some of the themes that show up in this novel show up in later Aliens stories and even the movies like in Alien: Resurrection (even though I thought this movie had a stupid ending). In the end, I did quite like the overall story idea behind everything, but I thought it was much better executed in the comic books.It was kind of frustrating because I really liked what Perry did with the previous novel, I liked a lot of the embellishing and expanding from the original comics, but with Nightmare Asylum it just didn't work as well. Now, I don't know if it's because the original series was two comic books shorter, but Perry had to add a lot more content probably to hit his required page count. There's a good portion of it that really felt like filler this time around.One of the things I really didn't like, is I feel like Perry expanded on something that happened in the comics and I just found it entirely unrealistic for the characters. In the comic there was a nightmare that Billie (Newt in the comics) had where Wilks (Hicks in the comics) attacked her and was sexually assaulting her before an Alien burst out of his chest. Perry took this two panel scene and just ran with it and added this weird sexual tension between Billie and Wilks... now I don't know if I'm tying them back to the original intent of Newt and Hicks, but it just seemed stupid and made no sense. Like there's one scene Perry added where Billie implied she would be willing to have sex with Wilks and Perry had them showering together at some point, which was all so frivolous. I don't know, just way these characters were setup it made me think this whole thread went way too far for them.I mostly liked the way he handled the unhinged general, which was the main bad guy in the story. I was also really happy to see he didn't change this guys name. Perry changed a bunch of people's names from the first comic in the prior novel, but in this one he largely kept the original names. The additional depth into the generals character made more sense than the expanding on Hicks and Billie's arc. The character expansion I also didn't like much was Powell. It seemed pretty weird making Powell a pacifist, I don't think he ever really came off that way in the comic. It just seemed like he needed help if he was going to take down Spears and he didn't know who to trust.To be honest, I think, instead of fleshing out the characters in the way he did and adding sort of frivolous content, it would have made for a much cooler story to expand on the facility's history. The whole creation of the second hive and why Spears killed off all the original colonists etc. It would have been pretty easy to flesh that out with Wilks talking to Powell! Ugh, such a missed opportunity, oh well.One other difference between the comics that made me annoyed is that he gave Bueller legs. When they get to the military installation they give him mechanical legs to use for the time being. Whereas in the comic no such thing even happened. I felt this was annoying because in the comics, without legs Bueller is nearly useless and it's a massively tragic story in that regard. When they are forced to leave him behind, he's literally just in this Alien infested military base with no legs. He has to walk around on his hands if he wants to get anywhere, it's insanely tragic. With legs, he has a chance to fix things and maybe escape because maybe he can fix a ship etc.In the end, if you haven't read the original comics, I think this novel comes off as far more plausible. I still don't think Wilks and Billie would be so overcome with lust that they can't ignore each other... even within the confines of the novels, it still doesn't work for me. In any event, this was a bit of a weaker adventure compared to the first and either way I'll be moving onto the third installment! We'll see if this one still holds up after all these years.
More like a 2.5
I was pretty skeptical whether or not the epic nature of Diablo would translate into a five issue comic... and that skepticism was pretty rightfully placed. The story feels entirely rushed and I feel like the whole premise tried to capture an “epic journey” rather than try to focus on completing a single quest. I think if they had a much more narrow focus and kind of treated the story as doing one quest within the video game it would have made way more sense. They did try to do that to some degree, but they definitely went after the obligatory big boss fight at the end.
But no... Sword of Justice introduces us to two new hero's Shanar and Jacob and tries to tell their whole background story amidst them taking a long journey in Jacob's home land. The Barbarians of the area are infected with some sort of rage plague, which started happening after the World Stone was destroyed in Diablo II. While Shanar has the makings of an over powered hero as described in the games and other books, Jacob is kind of lame. He's not inspiring and they try to present him as a “hero in the making”, but he never really stops being a boring character.
The one aspect of this tale that makes it somewhat worth reading is because Shanar and Jacob show up in the next novel Storm of Light. The novel does an okay job of explaining Shanar's and Jacob's relationship, but it never delves into the details. So, if you wanted to know what all the references were about Sword of Justice fills you in on the details.
As a standalone story it's only okay. It feels extremely rushed and the overarching constant reminder of Jacob questioning his abilities/being the tragic hero gets tiring. I would say this is only worth reading if you are intent on reading Storm of Light or have already read it. There's only five issues, so it's not a time consuming comic book.
I do wish they would make more of these, but they either need to make a long running series or if they want to have small installments make sub-series be more like a single game quest rather than trying to make it game chapter level like this one seemed to. I'd also send it off to a different publisher... go with Image or Dark Horse, then you can make something edgier and grittier in my opinion. The DC's and the Marvel's try to play it too safe a lot of the times. But it's no surprise this only happened once so far... I imagine it wasn't very popular.
This book was a re-read for me. I haven't read this since high school, and although it took me a while to get through it the second time, it does not me it was boring or a great book to read. It's just that I had read it before. I absolutely devoured these books when I a teenager, so I was already fairly familiar with the story... however, I am pretty shocked at how much I had forgotten. Just major moments in the book, especially towards the end that I had kind of forgotten.
As with the usual literary motives, the title of “Winter Night”, just like the opening scenes of “The Empire Strikes Back” the winter is being used as a warning that this book will be a darker story. While this trope is used all too often, this being the 80's... and me being young at the time, I'll give it a pass. This novel finds our companions truly struggling through the story, as we expected, but sifted throughout are the glimmers of hope that we find to make it to the third and final installment of the trilogy.
I think this book is markedly far better than the first novel. There were no weird “deus ex machina” elements like the grove and pegasus parts to help characters suddenly get from point A to point B. No, every leg of the journey is a struggle. However, despite our characters needing to make fairly vast journeys, I must applaud Weis and Hickman on not forcing us to experience the drudgery of such journeys. Just that they are difficult, I think this is where I found a bit of a preference for high fantasy novels like these and other TSR styled publications. My one issue with novels like Lord of the Rings was that we suffer through the arduous journey with our characters (...and I'm sure many are screaming that is the point)... yes, it is, but I don't enjoy reading it. I really don't. Personally, for me, I get bored with such things and, yes, perhaps I am an action junky, but I would rather move the plot along and get to the bigger meat of the tales. I have exactly the same problems when reading things like “The Stand”... we did not have to go through every leg of that journey. While, I appreciate there is an audience for that type of novel... I just am not that audience.
In any event, after the last novel when the dragon armies made their existence and intent truly known, we see here that full invasion and war has begun. Our companions must find their way through enemy besieged towns to get to the places they need to go. The one thing I couldn't stop thinking about was trying to imagine playing this as an actual Dungeons and Dragons campaign. You see, our party has fractured a bit and different people are off doing different things. This must have been a nightmare to maintain for a Dungeon Master!
The real facturing happens after a dragon orb is secured by some Knights of Solamnia and in fleeing they end up in an encampment of the Silvanesti (the forest elves). Derek Crownguard and Sturm have a massive falling out at this time, which puts storm on trial when they make it back to Solamnia. There they find the Qualinesti (the high elves really) have sought refuge there as well with their cousins. Laurana and her father have a falling out as well and all of this is what sort of serves to fracture the party. The knights want to take the dragon orb them to Solamnia, and some of the others find out another orb has destroyed the Silvanesti forest and they seek to figure out what happened there.
Now that our companions know that dragons have returned and that there are magical objects called dragon orbs, they set about trying to find the orbs and finding a way to make Dragonlances. At this point, I also couldn't help but see the dragon orbs as Dragon Balls... and how the stories are similar in the need to collect them.
Anyway, Tanis, Caramon, Raistlin, and Tika find themselves on their own quite a bit trying to find their way through the silvanesti forest. There they find out what happened to the king of the land and we really get to see how powerful Raistlin really has become and how he is even more sort of shifting away from the red robes. They need to make it back to Solamnia with the rest of the party, but they wind up stuck in the town of Flotsam to find a ship to take them to their main destination. There is a major reveal in this town for Tanis and I won't spoil it here.
Laurana, Sturm, Tas and Flint make their way to Solamnia with the other knights. There Sturm is put on trial for basically telling Derek he's a tool, and it's big political infighting thing. You see, we find out the knights are not very unified in their cause and this is really the catalyst for the “winter” title in my mind. Tas and Fizban get their own entire adventure in Solamnia when they go visit the gnomes... which my god, running this as a game must have been a nightmare!
The climax of the book occurs in the High Clerists Tower a little south of Solamnia where Sturm, Laurana, Flint and Tas find themselves, where the tower and surrounding town is under siege. Supplies have been cut off due to the horrible winter and Dragon Armies have cut off all other routes and are just waiting for the companions and others to starve. As with the arduous journeys, we are not wasted time on the doldrums of the day to day starvation of the peoples and companions, but things are moved along until desperate measures are taken and Derek decides to just march on the Dragon Army. It is, certainly a fools errand, but he does it anway. However, this sets things in motion and the arrival of a Dragon High Lord really gets this moving, because now the Dragon Armies thing they can just take the town, leaving our companions to fend them off with merely a small group of remaining knights and Sturm!
The ending is indeed as epic as one would expect it to be and that “winter” title continues to rear it's ugly head throughout. While I might not want to play this novel as an actual DnD campaign, or even run it as a DM, it made for a very exciting read. I can only hope that some of these mini adventures were author embellishment and not what had happened in their game!
In the end, if you are a fan of classic high fantasy novels, I continue to think these are excellent books. Fast paced and just outright fun to read with a lot of that 80's flair I miss in some of the more modern novels. If you were not a big fan of the first novel because it felt like it jumped around, this novel is a lot better in that regard. It's a lot more focused and just feels massively more well written.
More in the 2 to 2.5 at times.
As someone who grew up with some of the Marvel UK heroes, I rather appreciate Marvel taking a look back to resurrect them and finish off their stories, which ended extremely abruptly. Just read the final Death's Head II and you know that series wasn't ending on a high note at all. It was pretty clear their best artists had left before a lot of the final issues as well, because a huge amount of the books suddenly had new “talent,” and it was often some of the worse art Marvel UK produced. Marvel UK had some pretty decent comics for the time, but around 1993 they started creating all these new characters and new series that were just... well... sort of throw away characters. Like Gun Runner or Genetix and since they kept making these new heroes it felt like they weren't paying much attention to their established heroes. Dark Angel, for example, was an awesome character, but towards the end of her series things started to just get kind of stupid. Same with Death's Head II. Luckily, none of the heroes that were created at the tail end of the publishers life wound up in this series, the whole Plasmer arc was really quite goofy and didn't really need to be there.
Revolutionary War attempts to wrap up the stories of their most popular books like Motormouth and Killpower, Death's Head II, Warheads, Dark Angel, Knights of Pendragon, etc. In this 8 issue series each character basically gets their own book with the beginning and end issues starting and wrapping things up. The premise of the story is that Mys-Tech, the arch villains of the Marvel UK universe are trying to return. They've left seeds of power around the UK for them to tap into. A new breed of their psychowarriors is returning and are called the Psycho Wraiths. Now it's up to these old heroes to return and stop them once and for all.
Hopefully, this is the end of it. While I appreciate the sentiment, this series wound up being quite bad. In some ways I did like their idea of the age of the heroes having been out of the business for near 20 years like in real life. So we find ourselves with Motormouth a middle aged mom now that just wants to take care of her kids. Death's Head II has no real explanation, just appears out of nowhere from a portal. I was a pretty big Death's Head II fan as a kid and I was extremely disappointed in his comic. First they went with the original character design from the mini-series, rather than the newer design from the REST OF THE SERIES. Which, looked way better. Also, they had Death's Head II talking like the original Death's Head with him saying “yes?” at the end of everything. Death's Head II didn't talk this way and it was extremely out of character for him. I was pretty excited to see his return and was immediately disappointed. The rest of the character's issues were equally ho-hum. Nothing all that memorable, I'm sure I'll forget this eight issue series even happened within a few months of reading it. Motormouth's story was probably the better of them, but her art wasn't on the same level of the other issues for some reason. Which, I was excited to see her as well, because the original Motormouth issues were actually quite excellent. Dark Angel's story was actually fairly good, but the tangents it led to as the whole war progressed just went downhill. The rest are probably not worth mentioning.
If you grew up with Marvel UK and were a fan, other than the nostalgia, this series was pretty boring. Sure, it had some good ideas here and there, but the whole overarching aspect of this and how the characters wound up in the end wasn't that interesting. I don't know, Marvel has some pretty good writers in the modern times and this just didn't seem to cut it for me. I think these characters deserved better at the end of the day.
After a less than interesting tale with “Earth Angel” Dark Horse returns to the Aliens franchise with yet another one shot. These one shots don't seem to be as good as a full series, so I rather wish they would drop these one shots altogether sometimes. “Sacrifice” does a decent job setting the tone in a small amount of pages, but it just can't compete with a four issue styled series.
“Sacrifice” attempts to bring the tension and fear of the first movie back into the fold. This story starts with a woman, Ann, waking up after her ship crashed on a planet with a small settlement. She's the sole survivor and the people in the settlement are being terrorized by an Alien. Their hopes of Ann bringing help or weapons is entirely dashed when they find out she is just a regular person and not with the Colonial Marines or anyone that can really help them. One of the characters points out that a single Alien terrorizing a small colony that doesn't produce much of anything doesn't rate very highly on the emergency scale anymore. I thought this was actually a pretty interesting concept in the world of Aliens and it's probably pretty accurate. The part I found rather unbelievable is that these people have no weapons on an Alien world... until later one character hands her a grenade saying it's the only one left. So... they had grenades, but no guns? I don't get it, the whole construction of this colony in the face of Aliens being so common just makes no sense here. However, I think Milligan sacrificed setting logic to tell his specific horror story. (pun intended!)
Anyway, our main character Ann, whose mother was killed by the Aliens, finds out the colonists have figured out a way to keep the Alien at bay from attacking the colony, basically by feeding it. The part that makes no sense to me here is that, Aliens wouldn't really do this it seems to me. Aliens seem to overrun areas and kill nearly everything they can to their own detriment. In some cases it's sort of questioned if they even actually feed on their kills? Throughout the years it seems to be a bit conflicting on that tidbit of information... I like to assume they eat, but on a world filled with other animals, I would think the Alien is looking for hosts for a queen it longs to serve. Ah well, whatever, it just seemed weird that feeding it would keep it away as if they only crave human flesh, which I don't really think is the case.
Milligan tries to craft a story in the Aliens universe that intersects with horror and the question of faith in god. The particular way the story is crafted doesn't feel in line with the Aliens universe, but it's an interesting story as far as stories go. I think it would have been more powerful if not told in the Aliens setting though, if that makes any sense. So, I think the story, for me, is more around a two star.
The comic get a huge boost from Paul Johnson's art though. The art is very well done and every panel is extremely well crafted. The art is pretty stunning and when we are told of Ann's dreams of her mother, the panels take on a blue hue to separate them from the main story. There's a bit of a gritty edge to everything and one of the characters that has actually gone insane has this more unhinged style than the others. It's extremely well done at the end of the day and if we're lucky we'll see more art from Johnson grace the pages of Aliens. There's one panel where Ann faces the Alien as its standing on a stone pillar and that is probably my favorite panel in the whole book.
In the end, is this a must read for Aliens fans? Definitely not. It's rather a throw away tale as far as the universe is concerned. It's not terrible, but it's also not extremely memorable for being extremely compelling either. Hopefully our next installment of Aliens stories fairs a bit better, we'll see though.
This is the final installment of the original Aliens trilogy first published as comic books in the late 80's early 90's. This is the novelization of [b:Aliens: Earth War 1311881 Aliens Earth War Mark Verheiden https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1396979187l/1311881.SY75.jpg 1301171]. Back in middle school, I feel like I really didn't fully understand the relationship between these novels and my comic books, so, now that I'm actual adult, I'm much more aware of how this works. In my last re-reading of the comics the real Ripley was such an integral part of the overall story that I was really curious how in the world The Female War would handle this particular aspect. Well... the answer is they basically just ran with it. There was really no changing her name in this, so it seemed like they were pretty committed. Ripley does show up at the end of [b:Aliens: Nightmare Asylum 20873 Aliens Nightmare Asylum Steve Perry https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388857061l/20873.SY75.jpg 22061], but I was curious how deep that would run given Alien 3 has existed since the writing of this novel.If you've been following my journey, you'll notice I did not really like Nightmare Asylum very much. It seemed Steve Perry was at a low point in writing these stories... so enter his daughter Stephani Perry and my what a difference! The writing is much stronger this time around and just makes way more sense in general. It's such a stark contrast that I really do hope she stays involved, plus, I think it's a real strength to the Aliens series to have a woman's voice in the mix in the creative works. Too much sci-fi is written by men, especially around this time, and Aliens is exactly the type of sci-fi that benefits from more voices all around!So, with all that in mind, this novel is pretty much the most massive re-working or retconning of the original comic book series. You can read my full review of the actual story on the original comics page linked above, but even at the end of Nightmare Asylum I really felt they were just appeasing the demands of the masses to include Ripley in the story again. It still majorly feels that way in this third novel and there really was no escaping that. Mark Verheiden, I felt, was definitely running out of steam by the time this story rolled around.In the original comic books the entire first issue was, essentially, spent explaining why Ripley had not stayed with Newt. Because at that point it really begged the question, but since we're re-working stuff and Billie isn't Newt, the Perry's pretty much do away with that entire first issue altogether. Honestly, I thought this made the story generally better, because it got rid of some fluff, but it does create a gap in the length so they'll have to write a lot more to fill in the gaps. For the most part they added a lot more detail on finding people on Gateway to go on the journey and that whole part got fleshed out and in a better way than the comics.Now, the overall story is still kind of silly to me, the whole idea of the “super queen” is, frankly, kind of dumb, but that is not the Perry's fault, they're being commissioned to tell the story laid out in the comics and make “some” changes to account for Alien 3, not a true overhaul of the tale. So the general goal of get the super queen back to Earth and blow her and the other Aliens up is still the essential idea going on. The one other problem that doesn't align with Alien 3 is what do do about Ripley. In retrospect, I think what they did makes the most sense within the universe, but it is still kind of silly. This Ripley isn't the real Ripley, this one is an android modelled after the real Ripley. If I remember correctly they were pretty vague on this. They sort of alluded to the fact that the Sulaco was intercepted by the company before Alien 3 happened and a copy of Ripley was made after that? So, sort of what is covered in issue 1 of Earth War... but light on details. In any event, given the requirements this was probably the best idea, but it is no less kind of stupid when you think about it. In any other situation I would say this is just bad writing, but the Perry's are kind of backed into a wall on this one, so I applaud their ingenuity in this case to work within the bounds they had to work. The other part of the story that I still think is really bad is this whole sexual tension between Wilks and Billie thing... I really wish they had killed that entire thread altogether. They're a stupid match and it reeks of those “old man with trophy wife” vibes. Just ew. I do like the fact they have many scenes with Wilks working out a lot, probably in an effort to explain why Sam Kieth drew Hicks so jacked in the comics. (Again see my review of the original comics for my rant on that.)In any event they win the day and blow up the super queen with some of her brood. The Earth is completely destroyed, but that's the price you pay to get rid of an Alien infestation. The Ancient Engineer creature that shows up at the end of the comics is basically not even here for this issue. It seems that creature was written out of the stories at this point, even though an attempt is made in the comics to seal off that thread for continuity purposes.Finally, if you were able to slog through Nightmare Asylum you're in for an overall better written story this time around. There are a couple parts I didn't like, sure, but for the most part it was a pretty solid Aliens adventure and I really think the Perry's did the best they could with what Verheiden had originally outlined. I think they made his story quite a bit better in the end.
More in the 3.5 range.After reading [b:Aliens: Sacrifice 18323778 Aliens Sacrifice Peter Milligan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1468551644l/18323778.SY75.jpg 25866231] I was a little worried about yet another religious themed book, because I have vague memories of these somewhat coming out around the same time. These were also repackaged together in a single volume. In any event, I'm happy to report that Salvation really has nothing to do with Sacrifice, nor does it even really feel similar in theme.In Salvation we meet a crew member named Selkirk and he just happens to be very religious. He attributes much of his survival as being “provided for” by God or whatever. This only being a short square bound comic means that it needs to move very fast and it does. This is why Sacrifice was so weird, it felt slow for such a small page count. Salvation brings us onto the ship Nova Maru, a cargo hauler, that we later find out is transporting contraband. Three guesses what they were hauling... but give the series title... something is wrong with you if you can't figure it out in one. Anyway, there's a cargo malfunction and the Captain starts to freak out since he knows what they're hauling. He forces Selkirk, at gunpoint, to abandon ship with him and fly the escape pod to the nearby planet.As we can all guess, this is clearly not the end of the story, because escaping a cargo breach in the Aliens universe to a nearby planet is not really the solution anyone ever thinks it is. So we spend a few pages with these two trying to survive on this planet with no food and little water. It's a dark story and it really solidifies how terrible of a person the captain actually is. Eventually that arc resolves and Selkirk is off to wander the planet. It's not very long before he runs into, guess what? That's right, Aliens. Once this portion of the comic hits it's extremely exciting and I found it to be really well written. For a short and sweet Aliens adventure Gibbons manages to craft an exciting tale, which is often all I'm looking for when I'm diving into the world of Aliens. Gibbons throws in some standard fair concepts of “what would you do to survive?” kind of grey concepts, but we've come upon them so often in literature that it's almost expected. Anyway, if you didn't like Sacrifice and were worried the two were somehow in theme with each other, fear not. This winds up being an action packed adventure that most of us Aliens fans are looking for.
It looks like I read this book about ten years ago and, for some reason, never wrote a review for it. I'm not going to be able to provide the greatest assessment of the book like I would normally prefer. I really have no interest in re-reading this book though, which is why I'd rather go over some parts that I do remember a bit.
The first book tried to give you a feel of the video game as Doom Guy (named Flynn Taggert) could fight his way to the demons appearing on Mars. I was excited to continue the adventure to Earth, because Doom II was one of the games I remember fondly playing when I was middle school. Alas, that whole story was short lived. “Hell on Earth” deviates from the game quite a bit and creates its own story about well armed Mormon's fighting against the demons. I guess the Mormon religion was the right choice? That wasn't really my main issue anyway, the whole problem was that it just devolved into painfully bad writing. Not that the first book was a literary masterpiece, but I, at least, wanted to have another fun adventure. Giving the Doom Guy a name is sort of bad enough, but re-naming all the demonic characters started getting really tedious at this point too. They also add more characters to the entourage that started with Arlene and Fly... and now it feels like Jurassic Park with the plucky child hacker girl... who isn't the worst character, but it's all so cliché.
“Hell on Earth” was a quick read, as you'd expect from this book, but it wasn't entertaining in the way the first book is. They tried to make this like more of its own story instead of doing much of anything with the game and I don't know why. Ah well, if you liked the first book, this is where the series might take a nose dive for most people. Other people might like the more unique story approach, but either way this felt less like a Doom setting to me.
Probably more of a 3.5, but the art is well done.
This is Marvel's first foray into the world of Predator. I do have to say, it was a bit better than how the Alien series started out. I feel like Marvel is going through a bit of “growing pains” as it tries to delve into this franchise. One thing I think they did correctly is to not ignore the existence of what Dark Horse had published in the past and we see that with the release of Omnibus editions, despite the delays in publishing those. I still sort of think it was stupid for Disney to take this franchise away from Dark Horse. Even with Marvel money, I don't really think they're doing a better job than what Dark Horse did most of the time. Were all the Dark Horse comics good? No, but some of them were extremely well done and I have yet to encounter that from Marvel.
One thing I think is quite interesting about the Predator story here is that it pushes humanity further into the future. It's sitting in a time frame around where Aliens is set as a franchise. I've seen some people speculate because they will eventually do an Aliens vs. Predator comic, which will hopefully have the presence of the Colonial Marines, but we shall see. This series starts off with more of an Aliens vibe, where you have a prospector type of goal on a family ship, but this time a Predator wipes out everyone on the ship. Since children aren't exactly worthy of the Predator they leave behind a lone child, a young girl named Theta. She grows up with the ship AI as her only companion basically and as she gets older she fosters the desire for revenge against the monster that killed her family. Now Theta is on the hunt for the hunters and surprisingly she gets quite good at killing them. By the time the majority of this story catches up to us, she has managed to kill a surprising amount of Predators (20+, which is a LOT given their abilities) and she has salvaged enough of their equipment to make her own armor and weapons collection. This is totally a head nod toward the original Aliens vs. Predator series which featured the character Machiko Noguchi, who was taken in by the Predators and trained. Theta takes a very different path and wants to see their entire race wiped out. Which I'm sure is painfully unrealistic.
Overall, it was a pretty entertaining comic. It was interesting to see the Predators engage with humans of the future, which is something a lot of the movies even ignore at this point. Whereas the popular classic video games rendition always featured the ability to play as a Colonial Marine, hell, even the collectible card game had that! I still await the AVP film that actually features these classic settings rather than modern man running around fighting the super tech of Aliens... it does get boring over and over again. While Theta is a pretty good character to get behind, she's no Noguchi and this is one of the reasons that I'm sort of walking away with... but Dark Horse was writing such good stories for this franchise. Disney obviously isn't super loyal, they let Hulu franchise out the latest Predator film and look how incredible that was? It was so well done, and I just don't think Disney would think to write content like that. In the end, I really just hope it's going to take Disney a little while to get a handle on this franchise and what fans are really looking for. It seems like it has trouble with the Star Wars franchise from time to time, but it also feels like the Disney strategy there is to inundate it's fans with content whether or not it's worth making. At least with the Aliens/Predator franchises they seem to be taking a bit of a slower feel, so that I do appreciate on their part. I'll keep reading for a time and see if these get any better... but I still sorely wish they would just hand it all back to Dark Horse, who generally wrote better stories in the first place as far as I'm concerned.
I remember this being really hard to find when I was a kid. I started getting into the Aliens comics around ‘93 or ‘94 and by then this thing was probably sold out in my area. I don't think I got a copy of this until years later when I found it for sale online. I was pretty excited to get it because if the cover was any indication of what I'd find inside I was ready for it!All that being said Tribes was not exactly what I had expected, but it was good nonetheless. This really isn't a graphic novel, it's not a comic or anything at all like that. Instead this is more like a Light Novel, similar to what they would publish in Japan. Back when this was released, I had absolutely no idea what a Light Novel was, but Tribes definitely fits that description best. It's essentially a novel with a relevant picture every few pages. There's no dialogue or anything on the pictures it's just a scene from the story. The big difference here is that Tribes features these incredibly beautifully painted pieces. Usually the Light Novels out of Japan are in black and white, so Tribes is a bit different in that regard. David Dorman's art is simply incredible though. He has brought us some of the best art in Aliens so far. John Bolton and Denis Beauvais have brought us some great art too and this is definitely on par, if not better, than that. Every image is a cover worthy picture, which makes this a truly wonderful read in that regard.Bissette's story is pretty good overall, there were a couple parts of it I didn't like, but the general idea was a pretty solid Aliens tale. Tribes is taking place after the [b:Aliens: Genocide 438269 Aliens Genocide John Arcudi https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1174772819l/438269.SY75.jpg 427129] series and products like Xeno Zip are specifically referenced. Tribes is the story of a medical facility in space that has become infested with the Aliens and a military team is sent in to clear it out. What is unclear is if the infestation was intentional or not. If you remember back to the first Aliens series, [b:Aliens: Book One 950807 Aliens Book One Mark Verheiden https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347591922l/950807.SY75.jpg 90689096] you'll remember that a religious cult that worships the Aliens was instrumental in the spread on Earth. Well, Tribes tugs on that thread a bit more and brings it into the post Alien invasion of Earth. Also, if you remember from the first issue of Genocide we learned that Xeno Zip could have particular military applications and in Tribes Bissette explores that with having a berserker named MOX 16 as part of the military clean up crew. This “person” is sealed in an iron suit and then pumped with Xeno Zip when it's time to infiltrate the hive and kill the queen. I think this concept really inspired a later comic series called [b:Aliens: Stronghold 1157973 Aliens Stronghold John Arcudi https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1341070156l/1157973.SY75.jpg 1145562].Our military team arrives at the medical facility and their first task is to find the hive's location on this massive space station. It is noted that this is the teams eleventh mission and all priors have been successful, which is why they have fairly high confidence. However, what they don't plan on much and is part of their undoing is how to handle betrayal from those they are trying to save. I feel like most Aliens stories are semi-tragic tales, in the sense that often humanity wants to believe in itself to have the same goals... such as the goal of survival, but not everyone has the same goals and the implicit trust that we think they will is often our undoing. That's usually where a lot of these Aliens tales run, it's a totally taken from the first two films and sometimes I wish there would be a more straightforward tale. Every story I've picked up so far I'm always just “okay, where's the betrayal...” Sure, it comes in different and sometimes creative ways, but it's something I've started to expect at this point.While the crack team we are introduced to in Tribes has some very good characters, I also got annoyed with a lot of the nick names. It was hard at first to keep everyone straight, because sometimes they would use a real name and then a nick name or whatever. It had that Dostoyevsky effect with [b:Crime and Punishment 7144 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1382846449l/7144.SY75.jpg 3393917], people don't need a million different names. In fact, it makes the story harder to read. I would argue that having a couple people with a nick name is fine, but all of them? It gets annoying to read and really only serves better in an actual comic book format. So, that's the one real gripe I have with this.In the end, this story is a pretty solid Aliens adventure, albeit pretty standard fair at this point. It was kind of cool to see in what ways the military applications of Xeno Zip would be applied, but the real joy of this book is the art. This is one of those releases that would be worth owning for the art alone and we get a pretty good story to go with it.
In my drive to finish off the Dragonlance comic books I bought years ago and am finally getting around to reading I am brought to the last book The Legend of Huma. Of all the novels in the Dragonlance series to adapt, I thought this was a rather odd choice. It is true that Richard A. Knaak is a wonderful author and I rank him as one of my favorites in the fantasy genre, but I figured the Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman stories would be more of a priority. It is true that the story of Huma is a major legend in the world of Dragonlance, so that probably had some motivation beyond this being a story told by Knaak in the first place.The comic adaptation is quite good, but it seems unfinished. When we get to the end of the comics it says continued in [b:The Legend of Huma 632520 The Legend of Huma (Dragonlance Heroes, #1) Richard A. Knaak https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312063728l/632520.SY75.jpg 618823], so I thought this was a prequel. Even though the original novel was published in 1988 and I've owned it for many years, I just have never read this novel. I flipped through the first parts of the book and this graphic novel is not a prequel, it is really just first few chapters of the actual novel it seems. it's almost like DDP had lost the funds to keep publishing these comics mid-series. For those who read the novel these comics go up to the point where Huma escapes from Magius' tower. I'm not sure how deep into the novel that is, but it didn't seem all that far...Oh well, it really is a shame, because I feel like DDP was finally gaining some traction in adapting these novels and doing a very excellent job. Instead of trying to rush through the story of Huma in five issues, it looks like they were ready to take their time and maybe tell it across twelve issues just like Dragons of Spring Dawning. Either way, it's a shame that just as they were doing a good job interest in the publications began to wane. I feel like this is a common Dragonlance tale and it feels like they constantly try to relaunch the franchise starting with [b:Dragons of Autumn Twilight 259836 Dragons of Autumn Twilight (Dragonlance Chronicles, #1) Margaret Weis https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1390668127l/259836.SY75.jpg 251833]. So this story keeps getting told over and over... maybe in the future, if they try to relaunch this they'll try something else, because I feel, at this point in time, people are relatively well acquainted with the Chronicles Trilogy or they can easily access those stories if need be. Sadly, I don't know if there's a better starting point though...
More of a 1.5 maybe...
I must confess that I'm usually not too into one-shot comics like this, so perhaps rating is a bit biased in that regard. However, being an immense fan of the Aliens universe, I tend to collect and read everything I can that is published. When I do seem to enjoy a one-shot comic it is usually a double sized comic or so and about 64 pages. I think that page length gives the author more time to develop a fuller story which feels more like a proper episode of something you'd wathc on TV. Whereas with a single comic length, like this, it's like only being exposed to a couple scenes and nothing more. So, there's never really much in the way of character development, just people doing things or responding to some action etc.
All that being said “Earth Angel” is a short story in the Aliens universe which takes place in the 50's. I sort of feel like the author was watching Back to the Future or Grease or something and was suddenly inspired to write a horror tale. Basically, two people witness a space ship crash and when they go to investigate it they find the pilot with a face hugger attached to them. This, naturally, kicks off the usual Alien tale.
After the two people find the space ship, they quickly bring the face huggered alien to a doctor... makes sense for 50's stuff. No one really says much about it being an alien, probably because there just aren't enough pages. Well, the author had to take some liberties with the gestation to full growth concept to fit this all into a small amount of pages, fine. However, their artistic representation just looked ridiculous really. I feel like they tried to follow in the footsteps of the Action figures and make the Alien look like the creature it was spawned from, but that was only kind of true for it's face. The body looked more like it was inspired by Violator from the Spawn comics. This kind of pulled me away from this even remotely being related to Aliens and seemed more like a generic monster attack tale.
The Alien creature finds its way to a biker bar and terrorizes some bikers. The strange part is that amidst all this, there are more Alien eggs and the Alien was taking the bikers to spawn more creatures. I don't think it was shown anywhere that this was a Queen Alien, so this story makes no real sense even within the Aliens universe. Like I said, it seems more like generic monster tale inspired by some Aliens stuff.
In the end... I didn't even really like it very much. Just seemed campy and not part of the actual universe. I don't mind the idea of Aliens showing up with a space crash in the 50's, but it would be nice if they were actually from Aliens...
This is a re-read for me, because I originally read this all the way back when it came out, but I didn't remember it too well beyond just liking it. This is, once again, a novelization of the four issue comic series of the same name: [b:Aliens: Labyrinth 405637 Aliens Labyrinth (Dark Horse Collection) Jim Woodring https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347731502l/405637.SY75.jpg 394987] written by James Woodring. S.D. Perry and her father have worked on Aliens novels before and I'm happy to report that the daughter is just as good! Actually, I rather like Stephani's books a little bit more if I'm being perfectly honest and Labyrinth is no exception. She did an excellent job fleshing out the original story created by Woodring.This is another mad scientist styled story in the Aliens universe and this story features one of my favorite mad scientists in the universe. I was getting rather tired of these characters in the series, but luckily we have one that steals the show. I really liked, the villain, Dr. Church in the comics, but Perry fleshed him out so well. The tension between all the characters was perfectly arranged and felt even more tense in this expanded form.In the comics we meet two people, Dr. Crespi and Lt. McGuinness arriving on a covert military research station in some corner of galaxy. Crespi arrives to be a new assistant to Dr. Church who is conducting experiments on the Xenomorph. As usual with covert research facilities and the Aliens setting perhaps not everyone there is working for the best interest of the government research. In many instances some pharmaceutical company is often trying to infiltrate these facilities and steal research, and Labyrinth really isn't an exception to this concept that has been driven throughout the Aliens comics and novels so far.If you liked the comic book, I imagine you'll like this novel. Sure, some might find this a cliché story to a certain degree, but given the source material I really think Perry did an awesome job. Far better than some of the other authors that have adapted other comic series in Aliens so far. So, I welcome her on the job and I really hope she is commissioned to do many more.
I don't know why, but I find parasites interesting. However, I wasn't exactly looking for a book on this particular subject; rather I merely stumbled upon it. When I go to the book store I typically peruse my favorite sections, one of which is science. On the shelf I came across the title “Parasite Rex”... so I picked it up “King Parasite...huh.” Then I made the mistake of reading the back of the book and found out what it was about. I had to buy this book immediately!
I'm always reading, so I had to finish up a couple other books before I could start reading this one, so I waited patiently in eager anticipation. I'll usually read two or three books at a time, and when I finally got freed up, I started this book. I didn't read another book until I finished this. It is one of the most engrossing scientific books I have in my collection. Carl Zimmer is actually a phenomenal writer. I'm not a scientist, but I enjoy reading about it and it's written in a manner just about anyone should be able to understand. It's like a science report that flows, but doesn't sound overly scientific, yet it's still science!
Parasite Rex doesn't just deal with one specific parasite, like the title might suggest, rather it's a veritable tour of the parasitic world. The reader finds themselves enthralled with each creature. It really changes your perspective on the world as a whole, realizing that the major importance of sex is so that we can vary up our genetic code to better defend against such parasites. It also makes you realize that for all intents and purposes the fetuses of mammals would also be parasites as well because they force the mother to change her chemical reactions to support the fetus. Also the mother treats the fetus initially as a threat to her system. I personally found all this very fascinating and made me realize that perhaps Agent Smith in the Matrix, when he assessed the human race as a virus, probably should have identified them as a parasite.
The book is also terrifying in some regards because there are parts where it explains where parasites go wrong. Parasites are essentially programmed to thrive in specific locations in your body (or some other creatures). So a parasite that gets lodged in your brain, but it's supposed to be in your stomach could end up killing the host. Or screw up which species it attaches itself to. From what I gathered, the parasites main focus isn't to kill the host, but to feed off of the host's life, so when a parasite is in the wrong spot it executes its program, but it ends up having terrifying affects on the host.
In the end this was a phenomenal read and I can't recommend this enough. In fact I will probably read this a second time because when I read it the first time through I read it pretty quickly. One other thing this book made me not want to do is visit any location that's in the central area of the earth, such as the Amazon. Considering there have been 2,500 different parasites identified in one small location. Carl Zimmer is seriously the kind of writer we need in science to help transfer complex knowledge to the lay population.
I really thought this series was starting to get a bit derailed after the last sub-story and in some ways this volume isn't that much different. It's weird, I found it both better and, not necessarily worse, just less directed on the stories main mission. It feels like the search for The Massive has been put on hold entirely and now the author just wanted to show more parts of our world in ruins. More of what other societies were trying to do to survive. This is all well and good, but this really feels like filler content at the end of the day. It feels like they are trying to extend this story beyond it's normal plan, maybe because the comics were selling well at the time?
That being said, the overarching part of these stories is not bad at all, in fact I quite liked them. It's really the conclusion of both of these tales that made no sense or was just plain poorly written, in my opinion. It's almost like Wood had an idea for a story, then couldn't figure out a logical way to end it, so he went with whatever whimsy crossed his mind at the time. This may not actually be true, but this is absolutely how these stories read.
Americana: This three issue story finally finds us in the U.S. One of the reasons why I did enjoy The Massive quite a bit is because it sort of avoided the usual American centric tales of a lot of comic books. I like how it downplayed the American presence as not being that important for the survival of the world, something I find a breath of fresh air considering how much “American exceptionalism” those of us who live in this country run into on the daily.
We don't see very much of the U.S. in this series and they never make landfall. Instead the Kapital is on the outskirts of the very flooded New York City. It's basically the same as the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”. The excuse is not hunting The Massive this time, instead they've been following Georg, the guy who stole the nuclear sub from Moksha. I thought this was a very cool way to side-track things. Then the U.S. Navy shows up trying to stop the Kapitel, but they don't know about the sub! So, it created a really interesting and tense situation. It also hinted to the fact that while America was substantially in ruins, the military were kind of doing their own thing despite what the formal government might demand. The tense stand off was well written and great... until we get to the end.
For whatever reason, Georg launches the full compliment of nuclear missiles to strike around the world. I thought this was a cool idea and would make the world even crazier... but then Mary does something? Something, supernatural, maybe? And the compliment of missiles never detonates. They cut to a news scene of someone say “nothing short of a miracle...”, seriously, what happened? There was no explanation. There was no explanation of why Georg launched. It was like Wood decided at the last minute he didn't want the missiles to hit their targets after launch and rather than come up with realistic scenarios of anti ICBM defense systems... he went with “Mary did something??? Utterly unsatisfying and kind of stupid.”
Longship The second story arc brings us to Norway. If you thought the “Americana” story would move to this one seamlessly, think again. We're in Norway now and we're stopping whalers. Just, uhm... because this is what we're doing now. Callum finds an old enemy named Bors who has founded a new early age community in Norway. They've basically gone back to basics and live like Vikings, even down to hunting the whales in longships. They've designed a community that lives off the land in such a way that they take only what they need to survive. They do not hunt to excess etc. Some members of Callum's crew are fine with that, because they will not be hunting animals to extinction as was the case before the collapse. So, Mag, the second in command doesn't see why they are going after these people. Instead this is more about Callum's vendetta against Bors. Also... Mary left. Why did Mary leave? We never find out, she's just gone etc.
Anyway, Callum decides he needs to stop these whalers and they go to task trying to put and end to it. Eventually, the Kapitel being a huge ship facing off against ancient Viking boats doesn't really work. The old boats are too fast and the Kapitel doesn't really have enough of a crew, and the long ships can use anti-whaling tactics against the Kapitel itself by throwing rope into the propeller. In the end Callum kind of loses it and goes after Bors personally.
The face off in the third issue with Bors was actually pretty good. Right up until the very end. It was almost as if Bors and Callum had come to an understanding of everything that happened. But then at the end Bors jumps off a cliff and dies... why? No one knows. It seems like Wood just wanted to have a scene with a Viking funeral at the end and this was the only way he could think to ever get there...
In the end, two bad endings to the two story arcs here are what kind of ruined the tales for me. They were well illustrated and well written up until the very end. Ugh, so unsatisfying. This series could be so much better, because the effort Wood is putting into his world building is actually quite wonderful. I love almost everything about this, almost.
Maybe hitting 3.5 at times.I feel like I'm one of the few people that quite enjoyed the Dark Sun setting from the old days of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. There was something about the whole desert world that was so intriguing. Coupled with a really fascinating magic system and a sort of mysterious ancient setting made it just really fun to think about. Despite this, I felt like the setting wasn't as popular as Forgotten Realms or even Dragonlance, so I thought it was interesting when it came to resurrect some of these settings they turned to this setting. I would have expected them to go after Planescape over Dark Sun, but Planescape is probably very over complicated and hard to throw a reader into.Well, for the comic series amidst Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms we return to the desert world of Athas from the Dark Sun setting. The Dark Sun setting first started showing up in this comic relaunch with [b:The Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1 2648792 The Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1 R.A. Salvatore https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388210531l/2648792.SY75.jpg 2673532] and I thought they did a wonderful job bringing Dark Sun to life even amidst a very short tale. So, when I saw a five issue series was out I was instantly interested and picked it up.The art and overall story were pretty good. I found the covers particularly well done and the interior art did it all justice as well. I think the story took a few liberties with the magic system not being very well explained in this setting, probably leveraging the idea that magic is just magic, so it can't be that drastically different? In any event, like the short story in Worlds of Dungeons and Dragons this story involved a gladiator character. This time the character escaped slavery and was initially being hunted, however, the hunter turns companion at one point and together they seek bigger treasure! This is par for the course in D&D of course. One of the craziest parts was how they turned this into a total dungeon crawl story. It sort of made sense, but it just felt like a cliché thing to do. It got them away from the desert setting and put them underground looking for treasure as with any extremely general D&D campaign, I think this is where the story lost a couple points for me.The way the characters were arrayed reminded, for some reason, of the original Dark Sun novels by Troy Denning, [b:The Verdant Passage 497317 The Verdant Passage (Dark Sun Prism Pentad, #1) Troy Denning https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175246444l/497317.SY75.jpg 906139]. While I think this story bore some influence, it just never could get even close to the amazing story Denning crafted in those novels. So, if you really want to explore the Dark Sun setting more, or found the whole setting pretty cool, I highly recommend those five novels, they were a wonderful read. The other part I found painfully bad was at the end. All of a sudden the love interest for the Mul gladiator just up and leaves. They seriously find the treasure room, get the stuff, and then she's all like “okay, I have to leave you now.” And takes a portal out of the final room... there was never any inclination that this was necessary, nor did she even really explain why. It just sort of happens. I felt like this was just bad at this point. In the end, the comic was entertaining. I'm not sure it did the best job of doing this setting justice, I actually thought the ultra short story in Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons was a better introduction to a certain degree. If they had ever been able to print more, I think I would have read them, but it is unlikely they'll relaunch these settings again. At least, I would be pretty shocked if they even tried to go down this route again.
I'm going to come right out and say that this really should have been book one! Seriously, I think this book would have been a lot better if this was the first one. I highly recommend that if you haven't read this series you begin with this book, and then read the second book, as all the events in this book come before the first one. I have no idea whose idea it was to put this book second, but it was a terrible idea.
Basically “Prophet's Power” is designed the same way as “Hard Crash” in the sense that the chapters switch between the two different time frames according to the Skaarj occupation of Na Pali. So we have all the same characters from the first occupation like Haute and Ablee; and from the second occupation with Zofia, Melnori and Gerrick. However, this book entirely takes place prior to “Hard Crash” and is really the story of how everyone kind of met and got together in order to fight against the Skaarj. Reading this first would have made the initial chapters of the first novel seem a lot less random and the bridge between books would have been very seamless. Naturally this story moves a lot slower and has way more character development than we ever found in the fast paced novel of “Hard Crash”. I think this is where I had a huge problem, “Hard Crash” was basically the climax of the story line, so the reader is all revved up and excited to read more fast paced action... then we get to this. Don't get me wrong, the character development in this novel definitely made up for the lack of it in “Hard Crash”, but this book simply didn't move fast enough for me. My base expectations of an action packed novel were already set by “Hard Crash”, but this one didn't come close to delivering the same amount. There is some action, but there just isn't nearly enough and it really feels like this novel plods along by comparison.
Overall I think this novel is better written, but it got ruined because of its placement. It includes a few more of the creatures you'll find on Na Pali, but not nearly enough to resemble the amount you see in the game. This novel also falls into all the same trappings of the previous book, where the aliens just seem like humans the whole time, but physically look different. This definitely isn't ground breaking Science Fiction by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm really not sure if it truly captures the feel and atmosphere of the game that well. Alright reading, but if you really want to get into these, get this one first.
As usual, I read my original presses of these comics. I first read these around middle school age... so about 30-ish years ago and I remember really enjoying them back then. After consuming a lot more modern Sci-Fi, even within the Aliens universe, these just don't stand the test of time. Through the lens of a child these were far more entertaining and I was definitely much less critical of the story and art at the time... with my re-reading project, now that I'm nearly forty, I'm just not walking away feeling the same way.First off, Verheiden feels like he's losing steam in the storyboard department. In my re-reads I've actually been reading over the letters columns this time around, something I usually don't do when reading comics, mainly because I don't care what other people think about something... but I am quite interested in the editors responses, so those have been rife with information. Now, one of the things that I thought was a real benefit of the series was a lack of Ripley, in fact, I've been coming around to the mind that I wish this wasn't even about Hicks and Newt anymore. When these were initially published I was really excited to read the continued adventures, but in retrospect I think their adventures should be left to just the films mainly. (However, I tend to agree with most people that Alien 3 was a terrible idea. I'd actually say Alien 3 would have been a great Alien story IF it did not involve itself as a sequel to Aliens with Ripley, Newt, and Hicks. Alien 3 should have just been about a different character or something, then I think everyone would have liked it more to be honest.)Either way, the public seemed to really want Ripley back, so at the end of the last issue she was brought back into the fold. I was mildly curious how they would treat her involvement in the story concerning Hicks and Newt, but I was disappointed in the actual outcome. It feels more like Ripley was haphazardly inserted back into the story, literally for the sake of appeasing fans. The entire first issue is dedicated to a story explaining why Ripley abandoned Newt. Which, I'm glad they did that, but it was literally just the same story from the very first [b:Aliens: Book One 950807 Aliens Book One Mark Verheiden https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347591922l/950807.SY75.jpg 90689096]... but like with Ripley now. It was kind of just bad writing. It also served as an excuse to get another team of marines, since those seem to keep dying off...In any event by the second issue we finally start to get into the meat of the story. In this story they try to focus on the reason for the dreams of the Aliens and Ripley thinks she understands all these connections. There's some super queen alien calling to all her children to come home. Apparently, the other queens and drones don't hear this? So humans need to bring them or something? I don't know, it's kind of phenomenally bad writing at this point and I think there could have been a waaaay better explanation for the dreams. So, Ripley hatches a plan to go on a mission to get this super queen and take her back to Earth, then lure all the Aliens on Earth to her and blow them all up. If you're sitting over there and saying “this sounds kind of stupid,” you are correct. There has never been anything in the prior stories to suggest that any of these assertions could possibly true. The make matters worse the characters are all going to the “Alien home world” to get this queen. BUT if you remember Aliens Vol. 1, which apparently Verheiden didn't, the characters WENT there already and they already blew up the giant hive there. That was the whole climactic point of the first series after all... but here we are again... in a fever dream desperate attempt to write a final installment for the sake of Ripley coming back.Needless to say the succeed, because why would you expect any less, I'm not even spoiling it at this point. The crazy part is at the end when they detonate the bombs, I still can't figure out if they blew up Earth? Or at the very least they detonated so many Nukes it must have just made the place unlivable... but it doesn't seem anyone really cares about that aspect of what they did. Hey, at least there's no more Aliens? But, like, the outcome is exactly the same, we still lost Earth. The end.I'm happy to report that I'm pretty sure the future installment of Aliens comics sort of bailed on any aspect of the repurcussions of this tale. They basically act like this whole event didn't happen, perhaps that has a bit of an excuse in the release of Alien 3, but if Alien 3 is the reason this time line got ignored, good. Other comic series pick up and do much better with the franchise anyway. It's a real shame because the first two stories Verheiden wrote were truly spectacular.To end on a further low note, we must now talk about the Sam Kieth controversy, as the letter column editor put it. Back when this was released it seemed it was a pretty solid 50/50 split on whether Kieth's art was good. I tend to fall pretty solidly on the idea that Kieth's art is fine, it just didn't fit with Aliens at all. If you see his work on Maxx it fits, but one of the reasons I never got that comic was because I didn't like the art that much. It's not bad, just not my thing. I think what made the switch worse was after switching gears from artists like Mark Nelson and Denis Beauvais whose art truly fit the atmosphere of Aliens, Sam Kieth steps in with his goofier more cartoony style and it just feels weird. It's weird, Kieth's Aliens were pretty much on point, it's his humans that were all out of whack. Ripley, literally does not even look like Ripley. Hicks looks like some jacked Schwarzenegger guy and Newt looks more like her young self than the woman we got to know in all the prior issues. The real kicker was the “humans” left on Earth... I don't know what in the world Kieth was thinking with this one, but he drew these “creatures” to look like zombies, ghouls, or whatever. No, the humans that worshipped the Aliens were still regular humans, that's the whole point. Worshipping the Aliens doesn't turn you into a weird misshapen monster, it was just so bad.I think part of the other shocking aspect of the bad interior art is that John Bolton was commissioned to draw the covers. And let me say, his covers are amazing. I truly wish Bolton had drawn the comic in general, because his covers are some of the best out there. This series is worth it even for covers alone!A sad end to an otherwise promising set of stories. I still think the first two installments are some of the greatest stories and ideas in the Aliens expanded universe. Verheiden definitely set an excellent tone of voice for future issues, it's just sad to see the final story kind of fall flat and rely on just trying to tell the same story over again... it truly felt like he ran out of ideas, unfortunately. So, this one didn't stand the test of time.