Androids, Aliens, and Engineers, oh my! The company’s best interest has become the Avengers’ greatest tragedy, and I’m not referring to Weyland-Yutani. That’s right, for the first time following the Disney acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Marvel Comics has taken the opportunity to cross the streams of the Marvel Multiverse with those of the Alien franchise. Aliens vs. Avengers was developed by Jonathan Hickman, Esad Ribić, Ive Svorcina, VC’s Cory Petit, and Sarah Brunstad, Lindsey Cohick, and Martin Biro. Jennifer Grünwald serves as the Collection Editor, assembling the four issue limited series into a single volume. Thanks to everyone involved, we now have access to an epic drama of universal proportions all in one edition.
In contrast to the Percy-verse’s approach for bringing Yautja Predators up against Marvel superheroes, these intruders are not drip-fed into the world across titles, building from individual encounters to massive-scale battles. This may be partially due to The Brood, a Marvel-owned analog to the Xenomorph that have stalked the spaceways of Earth-616 from 1981 to as recently as last year. Therefore, the book wants to see more than how the Avengers would fare against any random Xenomorph hive. Plus, when members on your roster have survived the Infinity Saga, Annihilation waves, and the death of the entire Omniverse, the threat must be existential for us to really fear if Earth’s Mightiest Heroes will prevail.
Looking for these higher heights, the story then casts David (the villainous Prometheus and Alien: Covenant synthetic) and the Engineers into the roles typically played by the Beyonders and Celestials. Celestials and Beyonders act as massive checks and balances on the universe, where one group experiments with reality and the other ensures this curiosity doesn’t lead the entire universe to oblivion. Inverting this, the Davids and the Engineers are warring factions, fighting to destroy one another while also studying how to systematically eliminate life one universe at a time. And so, before we even encounter our first Avenger, the opening pages find us amidst a cosmos in chaos.
It’s no secret that Hickman excels at developing sci-fi elements into truly apocalyptic threats, but that makes it no less devastating to see how effective David and the Engineers’ respective campaigns are. The people of Earth, the mutants of Arakko, and the Wakandans of the IEW are all brought to ruin by David’s deployment of Xenomorphs and the Engineers’ black hole technology. And that isn’t even accounting for all the non-human societies decimated off-page. Hickman’s story makes it painstakingly clear that this is not a story of victory, or even one necessarily of survival. It is an origin, a universe whittled down to a fine point, where any left breathing are now Avengers. You might think this journey would leave you feeling hopeless, but I wasn’t.
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I will even couch my opinion in the acknowledgment that I’m not a huge fan of dystopian stories at the moment. Still, Hickman and Ribić find ways to surprise us as readers throughout the book to the very end. Even in the face of the final horror that is the young EsseXenomorph Queen, we are also given moments of absurd comedy or hope. As the story concludes with the defeat of both David and the Engineers, the remnants of life in this universe do not acknowledge extinction or give over to despair. Instead they have forged themselves into an armada of Avengers, dedicated to preventing the progeny and the progenitors of Weyland-Yutani from ever threatening another reality.
Aliens vs. Avengers would not be its best self without Ribić and Svorcina on the art. The texture of Ribić’s illustrations evoke the film grain of the original Alien. Meanwhile, his senses for anatomy and scope combined with Svorcina’s colors mix in the energy from Prometheus and Covenant that Hickman is already pulling on. On top of this, the artists produced several great redesigns for this series. Miles Morales’ Kylntar-Xenomorph Spidey suit absolutely should buy him an appearance in the next Spider-verse storyline. Remembering Emma Frost’s fencing skills and gifting her a diamond sword is so good it should be part of her 616 armory. And of course, the blood red chrome finish on the EsseXenomorph and her perfect Sinister diamond is reason enough for you to check out this book.
For all the praise I’ve given Alien vs. Avengers, it is not a flawless series. Due to the scale of the saga, we are unable to play with the haunted house-style of setting that make Alien and Alien: Romulus so arresting. On the other hand, the limits of page space does mean we have to elide the fates of certain cosmic level heroes like Scarlet Witch, Phoenix, or Franklin Richards (though he does get a name drop). In reality, the series’ largest hindrance were the huge gaps in release that stretched a four issue series out over the better part of a year. Thankfully, this trade rectifies that snafu as a complete collected edition.
Aliens vs. Avengers is a feast for the eyes as well as the perfect read for fans of Hickman’s Imperial or Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth. It’s the first crossover between Marvel and Alien, but we can only hope it’s not the last. This book brings all the prime movers of the Alien universe to bear against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and it makes for some damn good comics. Now that the complete limited series is collected in one volume, it’s a no-brainer for fans: go get this book.
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