‘Aliens Defiance #1’ is Nostalgic and A lot of Fun

Aliens Defiance #1

Writer:  Brian Wood

Art:  Tristan “T-Rex” Jones

Release Date:  April 27

ALIENS DEFIANCE charts the dangerous journey of Colonial Marine Private First Class Zula Hendricks, who goes AWOL to protect Earth from an unknown alien species that’s been discovered on a derelict hauler. Accompanied by Weyland-Yutani synthetics, HENDRICKS must battle demons from her past while fighting for her life.

Aliens Defiance #1 is the newest Aliens comic book series presented by Dark Horse Comics and 20th Century Fox.  Aliens is a franchise that I have grown up with.  It has expanded from movies to Action figures, video games, and of course – Comic Books.  Even in adulthood, i can remember college courses focusing on the Aliens Franchise and thinking “Wow!  I get to talk about Aliens and its part of class!”  The script for Alien was used as in Script Analysis class since it was a well written script and easy to break down.  In Feature Film Writing class, “A haunted house in outer space,” is what we ended up describing the movie Alien as.    Alien was a horror movie, whereas Aliens was an action movie.  Aliens Defiance is a good mix of both.

In any comic book series based off of a movie franchise.  I seem to ask myself the question. “Where does this take place with the movies”    Knowing the Aliens franchise, they  generally take place in the future.  At the beginning of Aliens, Ellen Ripley has been sleeping in stasis.  She is  rescued after being in space for 57 years.  During the course of the Aliens Defiance, one of the dates is logged as December 2137.   In the story we are introduced to Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley.  In the scenes of the Special Edition of Aliens, we find out that she died during the years that Ripley was in Hyper Sleep.   So obviously, Aliens Defiance  takes places between the Alien and Aliens movies.

The First issue of Aliens Defiance starts off a little rocky, like a lot of horror movies do.   After I read a few pages in, I re-read the pages and moved back and forth until we got to the opening credits.  I felt like 20th Century Fox Fanfare inside of my head as I read this and a sense of ominous music setting the tone that this was not going to be pretty as the extraction team boards a spaceship not knowing what they will find.  Brian Wood was a great pick for this book and handling a female protagonist throughout the entire issue.  He is no stranger to this, I recognize his name from when the adjective-less X-men title a few years ago had an all female team.  So Wood is able to fill the issue with girl power with the lead Zula Hendricks and keep it balanced.

Something I find pretty neat about this issue is that knowing there will be more issues in a series, its almost like a short film contained in one issue.   The book has its beginning, middle and end.  It has its inciting incident, plot twist, conclusion, and more all inside of a regular sized comic book.  When I saw that Tristian T-Rex Jones was the artist for the book.  I felt a little excitement and kept thinking Ghostbusters.  I collected the Real Ghostbusters covers that he illustrated for the Ghostbusters series and wanted to find more of his work.  Jones is a very versatile artist.  I’ve seen him go from bright and happy to scary and menacing aliens.   I love the attention to detail that Jones has put into this book.  The landscapes in space, space station, the designs of our favorite Xenomorph Aliens, and the fun facial expressions that he gives to our protagonist Private First Class Zula Hendricks.   Dan Jackson’s colors compliment Jones very well.  Being in outer-space, I like enjoy the tones and the palette chosen for the different locations in space.

Be sure to order your copy by April 4th on DarkHorse.com using PREVIEWS ORDER #: FEB160010