Alien #6 - Marvel Comics

ALIEN No. 6, October 2021

Bringing this ongoing series’ opening chapter to a somewhat satisfying close, Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s narrative for Issue Six of “Alien” certainly contains its fair share of sense-shattering shocks and successful subversions of its readers’ expectations. Indeed, considering that this comic depicts an arguably unexpected death, Bishop lethally battering the terrorist Verdi-2 with a rifle butt, and the implication one of the survivors, other than Danny, is also carrying a Xenomorph embryo, it is arguably difficult to imagine just how the Eisner Award-nominee could have possibly crowbarred any more twists and turns into this particular twenty-page periodical.

Foremost of these surprises however, has to the revelation that the space station’s counsellor isn’t the only android on board Epsilon Station. Iris has arguably always come across as something of a cold-hearted killer, even if she is the supposedly loving girlfriend of Gabriel Cruz’s unconscious son. But having been prodigiously pencilled by artist Salvador Larroca being terminally bludgeoned in the head by the base’s gun-toting synthetic, the blonde-haired traitor is finally exposed to be little more than a homicidal artificial person who disconcertingly wants to “make Earth a post-organic utopia.”

Similarly as staggering, albeit much more traumatising considering he was this title’s central antagonist, is the sad demise of Weyland-Yutani’s recently retired chief of security at the hands of the lethal Alpha Xenomorph. Gabe’s survivability within the American author’s storyline has repeatedly been tested, and previously the ex-marine has always miraculously managed to come out on top despite receiving several near-fatal injuries. But having been betrayed by Director Ted Reynolds, and remotely-locked into a death spiral towards the planet’s atmosphere, Johnson sadly presents Cruz with a problem with which only the supreme sacrifice can solve; “I’d thought I’d see her again at the end. The one in the dark. But I don’t. I see an old family photo that I haven’t seen in years. It makes it all worth it, seeing them one last time…”

Enjoyably though, it is actually left to this book’s Spanish artist to provide this publication with a final sting in its tail, courtesy of the illustrator sketching a quartet of panels focusing upon the face of the space station’s cat with ever increasing scrutiny. This black-furred pet is absent throughout the rest of the comic, having only momentarily appeared in the previous edition, yet leaves the reader with a major, disheartening impression with its face-hugger scarred head…

The regular cover art of "ALIEN" #6 by InHyuk Lee