Aliens: Resistance honors three decades of horror.
Consistently mentioned as one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time, Alien has spawned multiple films, video games, toys and, of course, comics. Dark Horse has been putting those comics out since 1988, and their newest tale, Aliens: Resistance, might be one of the best stories in the canonical universe.
Written by Brian Wood, drawn by Robert Carey, colored by Dan Jackson, and lettered by the inimitable Nate Piekos, this latest incarnation of outer-space doom follows Amanda Ripley, introduced in the game Alien: Isolation, and Zula Hendricks, the heroine from Aliens: Defiance, as they attempt to reveal and destroy the Weyland-Yutani corporation’s twisted plans to turn the xenomorph into a viable weapon.
Dark Horse Comics
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Aliens: Resistance features two strong female lead characters
Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley, is mentioned in the extended version of Aliens; ten years old at the time of the events of Alien, she is now twenty-five and floating outside of a space station after the events of Alien: Isolation. She is found and brought back to Earth, and several years later she comes home to find her friend Zula Hendricks, on the run from the Colonial Marines and the Weyland-Yutani corporation after going renegade and trying to destroy xenomorph samples in Aliens: Defiance, waiting for her. Zula tells Ripley that Weyland-Yutani still has a sample of the xenomorph, that she rescued the AI chip of Davis, the synthetic that helped her in Defiance, and that they need to go put a stop to any future experiments, setting the tone (revenge) for Aliens: Resistance.
Dark Horse Comics
Dangerous new developments await in Aliens: Resistance
Sneaking into a Weyland-Yutani headquarters to let the Davis AI hack testing coordinates, Ripley is almost captured by a new, advanced kind of synthetic, only to be saved by some missiles and smooth piloting from Zula. One of the synthetics shoots Ripley during her escape with a bullet tipped with xenomorph blood, which as we all know is acidic as hell, which does her some serious damage, which also shows what kind of sneaky things Weyland-Yutani is up to. The two humans enter cryo-sleep as their ship heads to its new location, hiding in cover behind the colony ship Gaspar.
When they wake, they’re at the research station housing the xenomorph experiments, along with the Gaspar, which shouldn’t be there, and also happens to be missing more than a thousand colonists. On that creepy note, the issue ends.
Anything attached to the Alien franchise has always been amazing, even if that fourth movie wasn’t quite up to snuff. Even the Predator tie-in stuff has been decent. This comic looks to be better than most of that, giving us detail into the time between Ripley fighting the creatures in Alien and her dying in the third movie. Planned as a four-part series, there’s sure to be a whole lot of action and acid blood in the next three issues. Let us know what you thought in the comments section below.