Comic Books

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A place to discuss comic books of all types, from old to new, Big 2 to indie, and everything in between.

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Best Alien comic books of all time (www.space.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For decades, it was Dark Horse Comics who had the rights to both Alien and Predator in the realm of comic books, putting out several series and one-shots that were well worth our time. With Disney's takeover of Fox's empire and all its properties, the opportunity to move both franchises to Marvel (also owned by the House of Mouse) came, and things changed for the first time in forever. So far, Marvel Comics' take on both franchises has been interesting to say the least, and you definitely shouldn't overlook the comics they have put out so far.

They are:

Aliens: Nightmare Asylum
Aliens: Labyrinth
Aliens: Genocide
Aliens vs. Predator
Aliens: Salvation
Alien: Bloodlines, Revival & Icarus
Aliens: Music of the Spears
Aliens: Outbreak
Aliens: Dead Orbit
Aliens: Sacrifice

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Is this your suggested reading order?

It's not my article but, as it is just listing the best ones it isn't in any order.

However, there isn't likely much of a reading order as a lot of the stories are self-contained.

As the listicle says, there are two eras:

Dark Horse Comics - this was a long running number of essentially limited series (in parallel with Predator ones, often crossing over creating the AVP spin-off) that ran from the eighties. So you get things like a sequel to Aliens that came out before Aliens 3 and could have been a more interesting direction. While you could probably track down the individual trades or comic books and dip in where you like (which is kinda what I did in the eighties and early nineties), there are now fancy omnibus editions collecting all the Alien comics, in which case you would be reading everything in release order. I borrowed quite a lot of what I read back in the day and have recently been pondering going all in on these. So this article is very timely.
Marvel Comics - Disney wildly scooped up studios in an IP landgrab and this allowed them to bring the Alien (and Star Wars) comics in-house and give them a fresh start at Marvel. So that all starts with a clean slate. As there haven't been massive concerns about building a canon set of stories (as there was with Star Wars) so that isn't as big a deal with the Alien comics buy the main series does provide a handy jumping-on point. That said, there are standalone limited series and graphic novels too (Dead Orbit gets a mention and I will pick that up as I like Stokoe's work, I just got his Godzilla run. I did fancy checking out Liam Sharp's Aliens: Fast Track to Heaven but took my eye off the ball and prices have shot right up).
Crossovers - under Dark Horse they did a lot of crossovers with other franchises and don't sleep on some of these. The Alien/DC ones don't make a whole heap of sense (Superman just wouldn't care) but the Predator ones work better. Dredd vs Alien is great though and recommended (Dredd vs Predator isn't quite as good). The Stormwatch/Aliens one-shot was out-of-the-blue and marked a transition from Stormwatch to The Authority, which changed superhero comics for good. While it's fun watching Xenomorphs tear through superheroes, it should be read in context, so anyone who liked The Authority but haven't read the preceding Stormwatch run should check out the Stormwatch: Road to The Authority collection coming soon. Probably not worth it for the one Alien crossover but definitely worth it if you are generally interested.

So you can dip in if that takes your fancy and the Marvel series offers a handy place to begin. However, the Dark Horse releases have some of the best stories so far and, while you can pick and chose, there is the option to go big with with omnibus editions. I'll be going with that last option myself.

If you want more details on what has been released then check Wikipedia, I've spent a while putting together early versions of articles on the various comics runs so there should be useful information there.