Aliens: Dust To Dust #4 - Dark Horse Comics

ALIENS: DUST TO DUST No. 4, January 2019

Wholly successful in his mission “to tell the story from the point of view of a twelve-year-old boy… because that’s the age I was when first exposed to Aliens”, Gabriel Hardman’s conclusion to this four-issue “Dark Horse Comics” mini-series must have satisfied the vast majority of its eagerly awaiting audience when the book’s closing instalment was finally released in January 2019. Indeed, the Hugo Award-nominee’s decision not “to write about marines or anyone who seems like they could stand up to the Xenomorphs” genuinely seems to imbue his narrative with all the “extraordinarily scary and difficult circumstances” fans of the franchise would expect, yet make the publication even more pulse-pounding as a result of these blood-curdling challenges being faced by a “kid”.

Of course, that isn’t to say that the young orphan doesn’t need the help of others in order to successfully survive his ordeal on the planet LV-871, as one of the biggest shocks contained within Issue Four of “Aliens: Dust To Dust” is the revelation that Assistant Administrator Waugh is actually a Synthetic, whose limited functioning resultantly requires Maxon to “retrieve the sharpest piece of metal debris you can find in the shipwreck… [And] cut off my head.” But the boy still needs to climb “the whole way up” the nearby facility’s tower so as to reach the Evac Shuttle at the top and subsequently throw back the spacecraft’s throttle “twenty-seven percent” so as to “stay on the outlined orbital trajectory.”

Likewise, Hardman manages to produce another surprise in depicting Anne’s alien sacrificing itself in order to thwart the Queen Xenomorph from literally devouring this comic’s remaining protagonists towards the end of the twenty-page periodical. This demonstration of maternal instinct is all the more unanticipated due to the author’s one-armed creation previously seeming to attack the fair-haired lad when his party is lead into the colony’s storage chamber, and is only stopped by a hydraulically-powered mechanical arm slamming it aside just before it can impale the terrified boy; “You guys go! Get to the shuttle! It won’t hurt me!.. Ahhh!”

Also adding to this book’s claustrophobically-chilling atmosphere are Gabriel’s somewhat scratchily-drawn panels, with the penciller’s preference “to draw comic stories with… a lot of darkness” providing its action-sequences with plenty of terrifying appeal. Indeed, if the illustrator were telling “a bright, happy story” then he most certainly would “not be the guy for the job.” However, as “this is Aliens” the motion picture story-board artist is undeniably “a pretty good fit.”

Script and Art: Gabriel Hardman, Lettering: Michael Heisler, and Coloring: Rain Beredo

Aliens: Dust To Dust #3 - Dark Horse Comics

ALIENS: DUST TO DUST No. 3, October 2018

Only pausing mid-way through its narrative whilst the rapidly dwindling survivors of the Trono colony somewhat hard-heartedly decide whether to leave their youngest member behind before attempting to “follow the bank of the spillway right to the facility”, Gabriel Hardman’s sense-shattering screenplay for Issue Three of “Aliens: Dust To Dust” must have had the majority of the mini-series’ audience panting for breath when the long-delayed publication finally hit the spinner-racks in October 2018. For although the twenty-page periodical momentarily becomes a little weighed down with the morality of “pushing forward without” the twelve year-old orphan, it quickly picks up its pulse-pounding pace once Maxon makes to ‘go it alone’ and inadvertently encounters an entire nest of xenomorphs hiding underneath the floor of the very system engineering facility he’s fleeing from.

Indeed, whether it be Roman and his aged wife’s horribly bloody deaths during this comic’s gore-fest of an opening, or the callous co-pilot’s ‘all-too just mutilation’ at the hands of a howling mob of aliens, having literally just refused to let the terrified boy and Waugh back into the building because “I’m not dying for them”, the persistent deadly threat of Ridley Scott’s legacy is palpably all-pervading, and rarely lets up even when the captain believes there’s “no evidence of xenomorph activity” and begins making sensible-sounding plans to reach a terraforming station the following morning. Certainly, it soon becomes hard to keep track of just who is still alive within the group as the “mysterious and deadly creatures” stalking them continuously claw, bite and tear their number asunder…

Arguably this comic’s greatest highlight however, has to be young Cregar’s headlong dash through the magazine’s final third, which starts with the adolescent being roughly rushed around the alien-infested sanctuary’s exterior by the unfriendly Assistant Administrator, and ends with him haplessly plunging into a fast-flowing river of “overflow from the facility’s cooling tower” along with the tale’s last remaining few fighters and a plethora of hostile life-forms. In fact, Hardman’s scratchy-styled line work for this sequence is so well-suited to the scene’s sense of panicked desperation, that it is a pity the frenzied flight across the broken bridge’s depilated suspension cable doesn’t last that bit longer and perhaps replaced the Hugo Award-nominee’s patronising panels within which Anne’s son is told to rest because “you’re just a kid.”

The regular cover art of "ALIENS: DUST TO DUST" No. 3 by Gabriel Hardman

Aliens: Dust To Dust #2 - Dark Horse Comics

ALIENS: DUST TO DUST No. 2, July 2018

Firmly focusing upon Maxon’s perilous plight aboard a spaceship that fast becomes “a death trap from which escape seems impossible”, Gabriel Hardman’s treatment for Issue Two of “Aliens: Dust To Dust” certainly provides its readers with plenty of pulse-pounding action. Indeed, despite this particular instalment of the “Dark Horse Comics” mini-series only featuring a single xenomorph XX121, and an infant-sized “vaguely worm-like organism” at that, the diminutive endoparasitoid extra-terrestrial arguably proves just as lethal as it’s human phenotype by tearing out the throat of one hapless passenger and resultantly causing the vessel’s captain to remotely blow the ship up in the hope that "there aren’t any more this far out.. [as] we’re miles from Trono.” 

Intriguingly however, the “co-writer/artist of Invisible Republic” doesn’t arguably make the highly aggressive creature the ‘villain of this particular piece’ and instead seems to favour simple ill-fortune in the role of antagonist, as the twelve-year-old's transporter desperately battles to climb through planet LV-871’s horribly polluted atmosphere in a frantic bid to reach the safety of the U.S.S. Carver; “Once we make contact, they’ll send another shuttle and we can attempt a transfer.” This seemingly endless battle against the elements really provides an enthralling roller-coaster of a ride with the vessel’s lack of knots to gain a safe altitude not being helped by either the fact that due to a hole in their port shielding it can’t actually reach orbit, or that its aft stabiliser snaps just as pilot De Vore is fast-approaching a towering mountain range.

Similarly, the previously gallant Assistant Administrator Waugh, whose heroic efforts ensured that young Maxon and his ill-fated mother successfully got aboard the spaceship in the first place, swiftly deteriorates into a rather brusque unlikeable fellow, once it becomes clear that any authority he apparently believes he has as a governmental official can be easily overruled by the shuttle’s no-nonsense captain. Such a change in personality proves fascinating, especially as the man appears to take his frustrations out on the twenty-page periodical’s central lead by scolding and roughly handling him, as if it’s the boy’s fault that the entire alien infestation has destroyed the bureaucrat’s settlement.

Slightly less successful than his writing though, is Hardman’s scratchy-style of pencilling, which occasionally makes it quite hard to discern what is actually taking place within a panel. True, the “Planet Of The Apes” artist for “Boom! Studios” sketches a genuinely heart-melting, utterly-silent sequence early on within this publication, when the craft’s passengers realise that Maxon’s mother is dead. Yet his story-boarding of the spaceship’s crash bags deployment as it nears an outcrop of deadly-looking stalagmites may debatably take several re-reads before it becomes entirely evident as to just how the bone-shuddering landing actually occurs…

The regular cover art of "ALIENS: DUST TO DUST" No. 2 by Gabriel Hardman

Aliens: Dust To Dust #1 - Dark Horse Comics

ALIENS: DUST TO DUST No. 1, April 2018

If Gabriel Hardman’s intention was for Issue One of “Aliens: Dust To Dust” to try and recapture some of “the intensity and terror” of “James Cameron's 1986 blockbuster [movie] Aliens”, then he undoubtedly succeeds, as a “12-year-old Maxon and his mom” fiercely fight off an infestation of xenomorphs which seems just as insanely terrifying as that faced by Newt and Ripley. In fact, the storyboard artist for “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises” somehow even arguably manages to replicate “the [self-same] emotional rollercoaster of motherly feelings” the Nostromo’s warrant officer “develops for the terrified little girl” with his narrative’s “edge of your seat” depiction of the “mother and son” fighting “for their lives against the deadliest monsters in the galaxy.” 

Admittedly, this twenty-page periodical’s persistent pace could have proved to be a somewhat tiring experience for any bibliophiles within the title's 12,611 strong audience who were ill-prepared for such a frantically fast read, as it simply does not stop from the moment the anxious adolescent wakes up to the sound of automatic gunfire and discovers his unresponsive parent in bed with a face-hugger firmly latched onto her face. But in penning such a pulse-pounding narrative the “co-writer/artist of Invisible Republic from Image Comics” indisputably “weaves an Aliens story harkening back to the classic film.”

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any passing bibliophile returning this publication to its spinner rack once they have started following the pairs headlong drive through the partially-destroyed streets of the Trono colony, or their subsequent foot race alongside Assistant Administrator Waugh as they’re pursued to the very doors of the last departing evacuation spacecraft by a veritable horde of angrily hissing extra-terrestrials; “Hold the shuttle! We’re here!” Such sequences really prove enthrallingly gripping story-telling, and one can almost hear the desperation in the cast’s breathless dialogue as their party perpetually encounters more and more of the vicious creatures, whether they be hidden beneath stairwells, seizing upon hapless pedestrians desperately trying to flee for their lives, or assaulting moving motor vehicles with their deadly sharp-pointed tails.

Sadly however, Hardman’s ability to pencil all these sense-shattering shenanigans is not quite as strong as his wordsmith skills. For whilst the artist’s scratchy style does a first-rate job of illustrating the devastation and ruin which the aliens have caused on planet LV-871, as well as imbue every figure with a captivating quota of dynamism, it does occasionally cause his darkly lit panels to mask much of the actual detail to events, such as Maxon’s discovery of his ‘bedridden’ mother and the parasitoid paralysing her…

Script and Art: Gabriel Hardman, Lettering: Michael Heisler, and Coloring: Rain Beredo