I LOVE the endless promise of possibility in comics. I love the idea that anything is possible in this medium, an endless melting pot of infinite ideas that can produce the fantastic, the amazing, or the uncanny. Avengers and Conan, here we go! Ultraman and Avengers, X-Men and Star Trek? I’m fucking in! Now, while I fully understand that the idea of one or two major companies owning all the best creative intellectual property is in fact NOT a good thing, guess what? Every now and then there’s a perfect storm of circumstances. In this case, it’s the fact that Marvel currently owns the rights to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, which isn’t exactly new, but they also own the rights to former 20th Century Fox franchises from Planet of the Apes to Predator AND everyone’s favorite organism for perfect killing, the alien Xenomorphs, all of which have great comics you should check out on each of them. Every now and then, this often forced synergy between comics and movies produces something amazing. This comic is one of those things.
Enter Jonathan Hickman. Last week I wasn’t happy with him (I’ll leave it at that), this week he’s the creative master and lord of everything he oversees! Forget the perfect organism, he, artist Esad Ribic and the rest of the creative team on this book have created the perfect opening comic based on an idea that seems ridiculous at first glance. But that’s Hickman’s gift: he can sell you the idea of the ridiculous as if it were the biggest sip of water and you were a human dying of thirst. And so it goes…
I’m going to try very hard to avoid specifics because I REALLY REALLY want you all to go out and buy physical copies of this comic because it’s just that good, but let’s describe the scene. What makes this work is that Hickman attacks the subject by asking the question… what if we lost? The creative team’s opening scene is a brilliant cinematic opening that brings together the Galactic Empire of Wakanda, the Shi’ar Empire, and even the Prometheus Android heritage at that, with an ominous word from old T’Challa ringing in your ear… SURVIVE! The idea that a world stocked with 4 queen eggs and 10 fertilized hosts is doomed, with superheroes or without, mutants or without, technology or without, and you can only watch in horror as Esad Ribic shows you the world decaying in his gloriously shadowy and gloomy colors, there’s even a nod to Krakoa, by the sheer mass of Xenomorphs alone and not without a certain arrogance on the part of some of its inhabitants, the Earth is doomed… but, well, it would be a really short comic if that were entirely true, wouldn’t it?
Next, another wonderful conceit: somehow the old man at Weyland Yutani in Chicago knew what was coming, and so Chicago is the last city on Earth, and that’s where most of our story takes place. From the creepy old man Yutani who (obviously) knows more than everyone else, to a very tired and aged Bruce Banner and Carol Danvers talking about dying and lost promises to dead friends, the situation facing Earth’s last living heroes is one of a strong, almost overwhelming sense of tragedy, doom, and high drama. There’s a plan involving Valeria Richards and a last ditch effort to stop the aliens with a plan involving a virus and for a second there’s a glimmer of light in the darkness but this is Hickman and he says not so fast, it’s time to zig zag when you’re expecting him to zig zag and tragedy strikes, people die, there’s violence and that magic key ingredient is a surprise!! I won’t give anything away but suffice it to say: it involves Miles Morales and finally an interesting use for (redacted) and boom, there’s suddenly a possibility and a glimmer of hope. I’m going to be cryptic and also say that this is the cleverest way to bring back an homage to your spider suit in your favorite color, Jonathan you clever dog, well done!
I’m really at a loss for words for what to say about Esad Ribic’s art. This is an absolutely flawless inaugural issue from the artist, page for page. I mean, why he wasn’t commissioned to do a standalone Alien comic years ago is beyond me. Ribic’s style is moody, dark, apocalyptic, and a perfect marriage to the nature of the subject matter with colorist Ive Scorcina’s brilliant colors, from the second page’s stark cold blues of space and horror, to the Earth’s explosive fall in the colors of dusk, to the final city of Chicago standing in the last dying orange embers of dusk, feeling like they reflect the colors of the Alien films themselves. Ribic brings drama to nearly every page. His facial expressions are often dramatically lit, highlighting the character’s expression in the moment, deeply expressive eyes run throughout the issue, adding more gravitas to the spoken word on the page. His Xenomorphs are inky, blue, black, and unstoppable killers thanks to Scorcina, who actually take up a lot less time per page than you’d think, since most of the issue is focused on the book’s human stars. The sense of their unstoppable nature remains, though. A highlight of the book is Ribic’s aged Hulk, and there’s a confrontation between Hulk and Xenomorph that’s so gorgeously drawn and colored by Scorcina that it feels like it came straight out of the overactive imagination of a 12-year-old comic book reader and brought to life by Michelangelo! It’s a thing of such perfectly wild comic book beauty, you can’t help but look at it, grin, and say, (POMPY) YEAH!! COMICS. Cory Petit, as always, is an absolute pro at the lettering, with perfect speech and narrative placement.
