When it comes to Aliens, it’s not necessarily the threat of a xenomorph that’s scary, but the knowledge that you’ll have no chance when a facehugger has found its prey. That is the case with Alien vs. Captain America #2, because not only are the Aliens on Earth already, but they’re already being weaponized by Red Skull and his Nazi goons. Considering Captain America hasn’t faced anything worse than a WWII weapon, he’s got his work cut out for him in this second chapter.
Alien vs. Captain America #2 opens on a Hydra stronghold in occupied France. The silence is deafening. Cap, Bucky, the Howling Commandos, and Nick Fury are out to save their friend Dino and know full well that whatever took out an entire village is likely inside. It’s a foreboding start, with a darkness and coldness to the art that’ll send a shiver down your spine.
That coldness is well drawn out by color artist Neeraj Menon. Nothing in this book is very bright, from the blood to the foreboding skies. It helps add a tinge of realism, but also a hopelessness when xenomorphs are tearing through the Howling Commandos.
I’d just turn around and never come back.
Credit: Marvel
If anyone had any doubts about how hard the gore goes in this series, this issue assuages them. Not only does Cap and the team encounter a hallway of gore and ribcages, but once the xenomorphs pounce, the gross-out visuals don’t stop. We’re talking faces being eaten, people being sliced in half, and heads going this way and that. Stefano Raffaele’s art makes it abundantly clear that the weaponry our heroes have is no match for a xenomorph.
Outside of the all-action, which is lengthy and doesn’t hold back, there’s an unnerving scene where soldiers are stuck to walls by the xenomorphs. Fans of Aliens will get plenty of visuals to delight in, with maybe even a record number of xenomorphs in a single panel.
This isn’t just a Cap versus Aliens affair, however, as we saw with the inclusion of the Inhumans in the last issue. Here, Frank Tieri surprises with a surprise in the last third of the issue that’ll please Marvel cosmic fans. It also adds a glimmer of hope for our heroes, with a promise of more sci-fi weirdness beyond aliens.
Alien vs. Captain America #2 leans hard into what makes the Alien franchise terrifying: inevitability, helplessness, and overwhelming violence. Frank Tieri smartly frames the xenomorphs not just as monsters, but as an existential threat Cap is wildly unprepared for, while Raffaele and Menon create a grim, suffocating battlefield drenched in blood and shadow. The issue’s nonstop brutality is balanced by a clever cosmic wrinkle that widens the story’s possibilities and injects a rare spark of hope. It’s savage, smartly structured, and far more effective than this matchup has any right to be.
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