Alien [2022] #4 - Marvel Comics

ALIEN No. 4, February 2023

Absolutely packed with cruel close combat, bullet-billowing gunplay and jaw-dropping betrayal, Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s storyline for Issue Four of “Alien” must surely have pleased any fan of Twentieth Century Studios’ “science-fiction horror and action media franchise.” But whilst the action is definitely well-penned, some within this twenty-page periodical’s audience might have a few quibbles as to just how Eli justifiably takes the moral high ground when it comes to the treachery of “Steel Team’s human allies [who] have led them into an ambush”.

In fact, the dislikeable android’s ‘holier than thou’ attitude towards Freyja debatably generates such a strong sense of loathing in the reader, that it disconcertingly overshadows any sensation of sadness felt for poor Nora’s suddenly savage demise, or even Seth’s superbly touching realisation that he’d now never finish building the boat they were making together back home. However, such piety by the sanctimonious synthetic only gets worse when his willingness to allow one of the planet’s survivors to become infected by a mutated insect “carrying some kind of Alien protein” results in the mercenaries' shuttlecraft being totally destroyed and a new, highly intelligent Xenomorph being born.

Happily however, this tremendous emotional response arguably only makes the Eisner-nominated writer’s plot even more enthralling, especially when it’s pointed out that Steel Team still need to save Mel’s encampment simply so they can salvage General March’s beacon and be evacuated off Tobler-9. Indeed, by the time “a new kind of monster” arrives at the colonist’s base and gains entry along with a horde of fast-moving alien warrior drones, this publication is almost impossible to put down; “Seal the door! Seal the door! Everybody grab a--Yyyeeaauuuggh!”

Similarly as successful in both capturing and keeping any perusing bibliophile’s attention is Julius Ohta’s proficient pencilling, which manages to make all the pulse-pounding action genuinely leap off the printed page. Furthermore Lee’s traumatically painful transformation into some truly horrific, long-tongued monstrosity is so gratuitously graphic, that the images indelibly stay in the memory long after the creature has lost any notion of being even remotely human and violently massacred its former comrades-in-arms without a hint of compassion.

The regular cover art to "ALIEN" #4 by Bjorn Barends