Alien [2023] #2 - Marvel Comics

ALIEN No. 2, February 2024

Easily living up to its New York City-based publisher’s promise of “bodies, bodies, bodies”, Declan Shalvey’s script for Issue Two of “Alien” contains more than its fair share of deaths as multiple humans across a couple of different time periods succumb to the horrible demise which awaits any creature who falls foul of a deadly face-hugger. In fact, much of this twenty-page-periodical’s early plot appears to have been penned simply to show how excruciatingly painful it is for a person to be impregnated by one of the Xenomorphs, and subsequently have a merciless chest-burster admirably live up to its name; “Okay, let’s open him up. Fast. See if we can cut this thing out. Oh my god!”

Once this disconcerting death-count ceases however, the Irish author predominantly focuses upon young Zasha Zahn’s desperate search for her synthetic ‘father’, as well as adds some extra mystery behind an adolescent Jun Yutani’s true motivation for visiting the “deserted ice moon LV-695” in person. Coupled with some downright suspicious behaviour by android 122-M some forty years in the past, and this canny concoction proves utterly mesmerising - especially once “Cole” makes her way back to her old, dilapidated home and starts gunning-down the murderous extra-terrestrials in a genuinely scary, running battle.

Indeed, quite possibly the highlight of this comic is Batya’s daughter recklessly entering the old Talbot Engineering Incorporated facility, as the Dublin-born writer avoids penning the protagonist as a highly unlikely, unstoppable killing machine, and instead depicts the woman as being determined but still entirely vulnerable to a whole posse of drones resolved to hunt her down. This characterisation makes the entire action sequence highly entertaining, and adds that extra element of concern for Zahn when she appears to be about to be overwhelmed by numbers.

Ably aiding Shalvey with some dramatically dark drawings and shadowy hues, are artists Andrea Broccardo and Ruth Redmond. Together this pair really help establish a hauntingly bleak tone to the considerable cast’s sombre surroundings, with the likes of the rust-covered hull of the U.S.C.S.S. Boreas clearly showing the time its spent lost beneath the icy waves, as well as its interior being under the ‘rule’ of the Xenomorphs and their resin-like hive webbing.

The regular cover art to "ALIEN" #2 by Javi Fernandez & Matthew Wilson