So it begins! Dark Horse is officially passing the baton over to Disney/Marvel,they will publishing Alien stories no more. Truly the end of an era. But at least we’ll be able to read their adaptation of the original Alien screenplay.

I was especially looking forward to this since flipping through the excellent Making of Alien by J.W. Rinzler. This screenplay by Dan OBannon is before Giger, Ron Cobb or Möebius were involved, and when it was titled Star Beast. It’s quite interesting see it all get the visual treatment.

Right off the bat the art is fantastic. I really dig the stylings by Guilherme Balbi (Candice Han on the colors) as it fits in the Alien universe with it’s worn feel. Christianity Seixas tackles the script adaptation.

The premise is the same, the crew of the Snark this time wake up to find themselves not in Earth’s orbit due to a distress call. The opening dialogue had it’s familiar banter, some of it even felt Aliens-esque. The ship itself has a fairly generic look compared to the Nostromo. Characters aren’t that memorable, but not that’s unexpected for an early draft.

The Derelict reminds a bit of a living plant. Kind of like a cactus. Whereas as the inside has echoes of the Prometheus pyramid. Interesting stuff. No large egg chamber, they stumble one empty vessel which looked like a Prometheus ampule but more organic. The Space Jockey’s look is completely different as well, looking like a large demon version of Groot. And that’s where issue #1 ends.

Overall, it was an excellent first issue! It’s quite interesting seeing this script come to life. Pick it up and support Alien comics while they are still under the Dark Horse banner!