Under Dark Horse, Alien fans had reveled in thumbing through three decades of celebrated comic book pages featuring the feared extraterrestrial known formally as the xenomorph. From Mark Verheiden’s Aliens: Earth War, to Mike Mignola’s Aliens: Salvation, to Jim Woodring’s grueling Aliens: Labyrinth, many enthusiasts of the franchise might argue that the comics (under Dark Horse’s tactful tutelage) had picked up the slack where the film sequels (sans James Cameron’s Aliens) never could. Regrettably however, with regard to Marvel’s recent tenure over the Alien comics license, fans have yet to show that same prior enthusiasm.
Writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s initial three volumes for Marvel left Alien comic fans cold at best and highly critical at worst. While Johnson (Superman: Action Comics, Marvel Zombies: Resurrection) attempted to world-build, exploring religion, artificial intelligence and what human host’s experience while being implanted by the dreaded facehugger, his plotting and characterizations were, at times, not always up to snuff. This paired with an art style that relied on the alleged tracing of posed/photographed NECA figures left readers (for lack of a better word) alienated. Enter Alien: Thaw.
Thaw represents a new era for Marvel’s Alien, as neither Johnson nor artists Salvador Larroca (X-Men, Star Wars: Darth Vader) or Julius Ohta (Bettie Page: Unbound) return. In their place we have Moon Knight scribe Declan Shalvey and illustrator Andrea Broccardo (Star Wars: Poe Dameron, Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace).
Frozen moon LV-695 is an arctic wasteland. Its corporate instillation (colorfully dubbed The Keg) is far from an ideal work environment for Dr. Batya Zahn, the pregnant mother of a willful teenager and chief scientist for Talbot Engineering Inc., to go about her research (let alone give birth). When her daughter Zasha discovers a familiar spiderlike parasite in the ice, Zahn’s seemingly simple mission of exploring and exporting usable water from off-world environments turns sinister. But is there more to Zahn’s mission than even she’s letting on. When word of the find makes it back to Talbot HQ, there’s begins a hostile corporate takeover of Talbot by none other than the ruthless Weyland-Yutani.
In short order, a Conestoga class starships (akin to the Sulaco from Aliens) touches down on LV-695. The ship, manned by a team of Weyland-Yutani Commandos and led by the charismatic yet creepy company stooge, Wendel Theen, seeks to takeover Zahn’s operation, as well as her prized research. While Zasha makes a break for the lab in order to secure her find and her mother’s research, Zahn alongside her one-armed partner (who has assumed the name Dayton) fend off the company men as best they can. Little do they all realize that a far darker threat has begun to thaw from their icy surroundings.
Thaw is by no means innocent of indulging in many of the tropes us fans have seen time and time again (a sleazy company villain, a synthetic secretly posing as human, yet another needless alien variant; this time of the arctic variety). That having been said, Thaw remains a thoroughly entertaining read. Shalvey worked hard to write three uniquely original protagonists who weren’t mere militant stereotypes, all while Broccardo’s manga-inspired artistic flair offers up some fresh new visual (reminiscent of, albeit different from, James Stokoe’s Aliens: Dead Orbit). In opposition of other Alien extended universe content (which seems content with pulling iconography merely from the first two films), Thaw lovingly showcases the Weyland Commandos, first featured in David Fincher’s criminally underrated Alien 3.
While there are some loose references to the groundwork laid by former writer Johnson (ala project Alpha) and while some of Johnson’s ideas were interesting (his “Goddess/woman in the dark”), publishers would be wise to push Alien: Thaw as a fresh slate with regard to their take on the Alien IP.
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