Alien #7 - Marvel Comics

ALIEN No. 7, November 2021

Set some “two years since the last reported Xenomorph incident”, Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s script for Issue Seven of “Alien” certainly gets the ongoing series’ second storyline off to a corking start, with Captain Li being woken early from hypersleep due to one of her spacecraft’s passenger chambers being mysteriously damaged mid-flight. Indeed, this comic's opening is absolutely packed with just the sort of gripping, claustrophobic tension a fan of the science fiction/horror franchise would expect, as an increasingly nervous ship’s skipper suddenly realises that she is not actually alone despite the rest of the crew still being in their tubes; “Incident Code 039.019.0078A indicates an unknown contaminate on board.”

Disconcertingly however, the Eisner-nominated writer’s subsequent introduction of the colonists living on the United Americas-annexed Moon of Euridice is arguably less successful, predominantly due to the personality of the community’s leader, Jane. Battling both a deadly, degenerative disease, alongside all the fears harboured by her people that the authorities may not live up to their end of a long-running bargain to give their terraforming settlement independence, there is clearly much to like about the loyal trailblazer. Yet witnessing the woman hunt down a stag she has wounded with an arrow until the poor animal bleeds itself into semi-consciousness doesn’t debatably leave the best of impressions as to Jane’s sense of compassion; especially when artist Salvador Larroca pens a close-up of her slitting the dying beast’s throat with a large hunting knife.

Fortunately, once the Heraclides spectacularly crash-lands near the colony’s garden, the American author focuses far more upon the chief’s more heroic attributes, as she bravely battles the surrounding fires to gain access to the wrecked space vessel. Delightfully, Johnson is once again on top form for this action sequence, depicting Jane nervously walking through an interior packed full of alien eggs, and being brilliantly ‘jump-scared’ by a sole-surviving crewmember who just has time enough to scream a warning before an immature Xenomorph brutally emerges from inside her tattered torso. These infamous chest-bursting scenes have debatably been ‘done to death’ nowadays, both in other publications and media. But such is the Spanish illustrator’s ability to depict the traumatising terror upon the would-be rescuer’s face as she witnesses the event that it’s hard to imagine few bibliophiles weren’t silently holding their own mouths in alarm whilst perusing it.

The regular cover art to "ALIEN" #7 by Marc Aspinall