Comic Review // Aliens: Salvation by Dave Gibbons
My quest for cheap comics continued this week as browsed through my local library and came across another great comic. Once again we delve into the Dark Horse Publishings Alien Franchise and discover what crazy shit the Aliens are getting up to now!
Publisher: Dark Horse Publishing
Title: Alien: Salvation
Writer: Dave Gibbons
Artist: Mike Mignola
Pages: 56 (yes, this is short)
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Commercial Fluff: MIGNOLA! GIBBONS! NOWLAN! One of the most memorable Aliens tales ever told is now available as a premier-edition hardcover! When the most pious crewman aboard the Nova Maru is forced to abandon ship with his mad captain, the two are marooned on an inhospitable and remote world. They're not alone . . . *Back in print for the first time in over a decade!
Review
Written in a time before Predators and Engineers this classic tale of Xenomorphs, pits humans against humans, humans against the company and finally humans verus Xenomorphs. The tale begins on board the Nova Maru a cargo ship carrying an unknown package across the universe. In an unexplained accident, the cargo gets loose on board the ship. Captain Foss, suffering from a serious injury, is freaked out and immediately abandons the ship, forcing Selkirk- one of his crew members, at gunpoint to go along with him. Sealing the fate of the other crew members, who are sadly never seen again and easily written off.
The two men then crash the escape shuttle on the nearby planet, where everything seems to want to kill humans or at the very least make them sick. The rest of the tale is more about Foss who is injured and mentally unstable and Selkirk, a god-fearing man. With food scarce and Selkirk starving, the unthinkable happens, but I will leave you to discover that part. The story then follows Slekirk's need to survive and the 58 pages finishes pretty quickly. The biggest issue with this tale is the shortness of it at 58 pages. The initial spaceship scenes are rushed and unfocused. Much more time could have been spent on that and the disposable crew in general. I also felt the xenomorphs were underplayed; they just weren't scary, and there are scenes where they are slaughtered in droves. They became too much of a background character for this to be a true Alien comic.
Mignola's art is stunning, I understand why people love it, and it does help the storytelling. Regardless of the above negatives Aliens: Salvation brings me back to simpler days of Xenomorphs, when they could be anywhere ready to strike. A true representation of the darkness that humanity fears. Interesting use of religion through out and overall a good comic just needed more space to expand and explore and of course more scary aliens!
