How much worse can things get? A whole lot worse.
Creative Staff:
Story: Paul Tobin
Art: Juan Ferreyra
What They Say:
After landing on LV-223, a recovery crew uncovers the fate of the Prometheus’s doomed mission—and a horror unlike anything known to man!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of this series is one that left me a little uncertain with the timeline in some ways, but it also worked through familiar territory of introducing us to those who are about to die. The use of Prometheus and events there in the later timeline that puts is in full contact with aliens and predators is one that I certainly like, and we had the look at how things have progressed on LV-223 in the century and a quarter since that fateful mission. The changes were interesting and I liked that we touched upon what happened in the Aliens film with the crew of this mission discovering the mining craft that escaped from LV-426 and crashed here, going through their own personal hell.
Naturally, what was left behind is just past the door that the Geryon’s crew is about to open, which you can pretty much imagine how it’s going to go down. With a touch of curiosity as to what’s lining the walls, it doesn’t take long for the aliens inside there to go crazy and start chomping down on anything that moves in order to breed, feed and procreate. It’s given some good, tense panel layout and progression of action that keeps it moving as this team simply does things right. They get the hell out of there, call for backup and look for an escape route as quickly as possible. The problem, of course, is that the aliens are following them through the jungle and along the terrain, which makes for a difficult escape with wounded, some of which also have face huggers on them as well. And honestly, the last place you want to be is on an old land bridge that looks shaky as hell from the get go. But it introduces us to some of the more intriguing creatures that exist here with the alien/shark-like hybrids that exists. Which also helps to cut down the crew a bit more as well.
There’s some real fun with the escape side of things as Foster does her best to protect everyone, but she also has to admit the truth of the mission here and what it is she’s really after. Which confuses and angers a lot of the crew since emotions are running high after what they faced. What the book does in addition to this is to give us a few more clues as to what’s going on as the sick Francis and android Elden end up getting separated during the escape and hole up in a cave where they discover a ton of research materials from the previous people that were here from Hadley’s Hope. It’s a ton of information and Francis sees it as the key to his survival. Sadly, he goes into mad scientist mode a bit too quickly as he opts to use a diluted version of the black goo on Elden in order to find a way to cure his own cancer, which is going to lead to its own special kind of chaos as it goes on.
In Summary:
The first installment didn’t wow me, but this one comes close. Avoiding more of the character introduction material, we mostly get right to the action and exposition here which pushes events forward. Foster’s revelation after dealing with the aliens keeps everyone touchy to be sure, but the exploration of what they find out there with the alien ship, the aliens themselves and some of the back story of the Prometheus film helps to cement things more. I do like the story with Francis and Elden as well, to a certain degree, but Francis just comes across as the wrong kind of person to be doing what he’s doing. It goes too easily to that scared, mad, panicked scientist type that will do everything to ensure his own survival rather than really work at it to ensure true survival with safety. That said, the rest of the book is strong and gave me what I was hoping for. I just didn’t know I wanted alien-shark hybrids.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: October 15th, 2014
MSRP: $3.50
