ALIEN #1 - Blurring the Lines of Good and Bad.
This story was written by Philip K. Johnson, with visuals by Salvador Larroca.
Despite the risk of completely distancing myself from fans of the franchise, I would just like to begin by saying that I never thought that I would even want to purchase anything to do with Alien in my wildest nightmares. Only watching the very first instalment in the franchise was enough for me to know that I wasn’t at all a fan of this style of suspenseful horror, finding it to simply just be an excuse to make an utterly boring film with some jump scares scattered throughout, which do not exactly accomplish their task, coming across as incredibly predictable.
With that being said however, I actually rather enjoyed this first instalment of the new comic book run. Following on from his so-so showing on Superman from a couple of weeks ago, I understandably had my concerns about this book being written by Philip Kennedy Johnson, expecting just another concise, yet underwhelming, outing that resulted in negative reaction from various fans. As usual, my first impression of a writer has been completely swept under the rug, as Johnson and Larroca gave us a decent enough starting point, when you consider that this is a relatively newly-acquired property for Marvel Comics. For me at least, having key events in the history of the franchise mapped out within the book was a brilliant idea, as it means that one such as myself, who did not enjoy the films, does not have to torture themselves by going through that entire branch of the franchise, and instead being able to focus on the here and now, with a sufficient amount of context driving us forward. I especially have to commend the job that they have done because there is not really any prior history within Marvel for them to pull from to develop this story, which was the case when Marvel reacquired the rights to publish stories featuring Conan the Barbarian a couple of years ago. While those Conan stories were not really to my liking, and I feel that Conan has become cemented in Marvel lore at this point, it would be nice to see this side of publishing kept as a more separate entity, only really crossing over with titles more closely related to it, such as Predator, which I believe begins around June or July of this year.
With most Marvel stories these days, you are given a pretty clear picture as to who the good guys are, with the bad guys obviously being those that are being fought against. With this story however, I feel that it is a lot more real, in that the lines between good and evil are much more blurred, making it unclear who we should be rallying behind, and who we should want to see the downfall of. Danny Cruz and his crew are quite obviously some kind of radical, anti-establishment protest group, who’s methods are quite unsavoury, going as far as to steal intel from Danny’s own father, under the pretence that the visit was to reconnect with him. On the other side of this, we have Weyland-Utani, who play at being the good guys who protect the Earth, and all of the other usual things you would associate with such a force, all while keeping Xenomorphs in stasis in one of their space-stations, seemingly without the knowledge of governments or other such authorities. The only thing that is really clear at this point is that Gabe Cruz, Danny’s father, seems to be the protagonist of this initial story, as he gets the most development out of all of the characters, and we are given many reasons to root for him to come out victorious. For the most part, every single character in this story is written perfectly, although at times most of them just come across as total dicks to one another, not even making an attempt at civility. In the case of Danny and Gabe, this is understandable, as their history seems to be rather tumultuous, with a secret about the death of Danny’s brother, Lucas, being chief among the issues that prevent the two from getting along.
I will likely only say this for this one issue, and then never mention it again because it will soon come off like a broken record, but Salvador Larroca is a tremendous artist. His character designs are simply breath-taking, and he seems to have taken to the world of Alien like a duck to water. The highlight of his work, other than the characters, has to be the way that he draws gore, as I do not think that I’ve ever seen a head exploding in a comic book just look so damn good before. Sure, in the context of the story, it was unnecessary to have someone’s head get blown off by a shotgun, but considering that it is an Alien story, it fits perfectly, as for me the one film that I watched was filled with things that were unnecessary. For some reason, I could not recall where I had seen Larroca’s work prior to this, before then trawling through his bibliography and remembering that it was in Matthew Rosenberg’s excellent run of Uncanny X-Men prior to the relaunch in 2019, which was certainly an excellent time. Hopefully, this title can achieve the consistent levels of quality that that one did almost two years ago, although that is all dependant of Johnson’s writing staying at this standard as well of course.
To conclude, this was an excellent way to begin a brand-new property. The writing and character development from Philip K. Johnson was stellar, while Salvador Larroca’s visuals are always second to none. Simply just off of the adrenaline of this first issue, I will continue to purchase this title for the foreseeable future, although I do fear that I will not be able to sustain this level of enthusiasm for more than the first five issues if it indeed becomes just another Alien story.
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