Marvel could be adapting Alien’s most controversial film in the franchise with the release of their all-new comic. Since the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Disney, Marvel Comics has also acquired the rights to Alien comic books from Dark Horse Comics. With the recent release of the first issue of the all-new Alien series, Marvel is kicking off this revamped saga with all the action, horror, and corporate intrigue that fans have come to expect. While the story is new, some of the elements going into it may be reworkings from one of the Alien films, specifically the one that is arguably the most disliked by fans.
In Alien #1 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Salvador Larroca, and Guru eFX, fans are immediately thrown into the world of cosmic horror as the first few s in the book are a point of view looking through what appears to be a cryogenic pod covered in blood. Written in blood on the outside of the pod is a fear-inducing phrase, “Alien Inside”. Fans soon learn the previous scene was a memory described by a survivor of a Xenomorph attack, Gabriel Cruz, before he goes into retirement as a result of the horror he encountered. Back on Earth, Cruz tries to reconnect with his estranged son who he rarely saw when he was working for the infamously vile Weyland-Yutani space company. Little does Cruz know, his son, Danny, is a freedom fighter of sorts who works with a group that is trying to do everything in its power to take down Weyland-Yutani for good.
Danny and his fellow freedom-fighting soldiers break into a lab that is seemingly a Xenomorph research lab. Malformed aliens are depicted sitting in large testing vats seemingly being grown and experimented on. Some look similar to the classic Xenomorph, with even a few old-school Facehuggers making a terrifying appearance, but others are a bit more bizarre and strangely more humanoid. One looks as though it has the face of an ape, with the jaws and eyes to match, with others looking like newly developed human fetuses. The cross-species splicing of humans and Xenomorph is indeed horrific but the process may not be that original, as a similar idea was used before in an Alien movie, one of fans least favorite in the franchise: Alien Resurrection.
Alien Resurrection takes place 200 years after the events of Aliens and films in the Alien franchise. Though it is controversial, that may not stop Marvel from using some of the scientific techniques presented in the film in their new comic storyline.
From what was depicted in Marvel’s Alien #1 comic, Weyland-Yutani may be speeding up some form of cloning process fans have seen before by roughly 200 years. All fans were shown of the Xenomorphs were in gory flashback, perhaps the aliens responsible for the attack were killed but The Company didn’t want to lose their perfect organism, so they decided to make their own just like the antagonists of Alien Resurrection. Whatever the motivations behind these mad experiments on the cosmic horrors, it is certainly safe to say that Marvel’s Alien could be adapting the most controversial film in the franchise.
