Alien [2022] #5 - Marvel Comics

ALIEN No. 5, March 2023

Enjoyably filled with various characters playing ‘the blame game’ with one another, Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s narrative for Issue Five of “Alien” is surely a great example of how to pen some truly catastrophic consequences to a person’s previous ill-advised decision-making. In fact, almost all of this particular comic’s death and destruction, from Steel Team’s shuttlecraft crash landing through to a swarm of deadly Xenos penetrating the survivors’ settlement, can solely be placed upon the human-hating Eli’s prejudicial decision not to warn Lee that she was about to stung by an alien-infected insect.

Intriguingly however, none of this responsibility seemingly occurs to the increasingly deranged robot, who ultimately decides that all his mission’s calamities are as a direct result of his team-leader’s poor decision-making, rather than anything to do with his hatred of Mankind. Such a descent into self-righteous insanity proves incredibly enthralling, and debatably leads to a genuinely shocking cliff-hanger of a conclusion, when the now partially damaged android decides to cold-bloodedly murder the colony’s last-remaining radiation-proof child; “I won’t let you. I won’t let you save a single one. They did this to us, Freyja. They killed our family. And you let them.”

Just as beguiling as the Milkman’s fall from grace, is the way the “Eisner-nominated writer” deals with the eventual demise of Steel Team’s other members. Slowly whittled down one by one through repeated injuries or deadly ambushes, the veteran soldiers’ gruesome deactivations are rather ‘realistically’ depicted, and all intrinsically linked to the actions of “the monstrous Hybrid” created by Eli’s apathy - which once again reminds the reader that the mealy-mouthed killing machine is actually accountable for much of the carnage he’s desperately trying to deflect upon Freyja.    

Ably aiding Johnson in the storytelling is Julius Ohta and colorist Yen Nitro, who together produce some truly pulse-pounding panels throughout this tragic tale. Indeed, one of this twenty-page periodical’s many highlights is the way the creative pair lay out poor Astrid’s traumatic passing, as the artificial life form momentarily lets her guard down whilst ruminating about her home world’s natural beauty, and inadvertently stumbles into a deadly xenomorph trap.

The regular cover art to "ALIEN" #5 by Bjorn Barends