Creative Staff:
Story: Phillip K. Johnson
Art: Julius Ohta
Colors: Yen Nitro
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
The ship the humans stole from the Steel Team has crashed, and from the fiery wreckage emerged a swarm of Xenos led by the monstrous Hybrid! The few remaining humans fled back to their base in a futile attempt to escape slaughter. Meanwhile, with their numbers quickly dwindling, the Steel Team must make difficult decisions that could result in the possible success, or utter failure, of this disaster mission.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I continue to piece together some of the other events that have happened in the Marvel-connect realm of stories for this property, I continue to be glad that it’s not required reading. I had read a bit of the series from about a year ago with Phillip K. Johnson’s writing but I never kept up on it, so I figured I’d try again with this one. The series so far has done some decent setup and I liked the focus on the synthetics even if it does basically place them into a quasi-superhero mold to play with. Julius Ohta has long been a favorite of mine for some interesting properties and there’s definitely an interesting approach here since the story doesn’t, so far, lean into the dank and grim interiors but rather exterior and modern world sequences.
Events in this installment, as we get close to the end, basically means more bodies have to drop. We’ve got a good section going here with the synthetics doing their best to survive and save who they can while facing off against not just the regular Xenomorphs but the hybrids as well that are certainly cunning. It’s a chaotic situation – that will read better in trade form – as we see a couple of them fall to the way things go bad – including a minor high-radiation explosion. That ends up weakening the numbers in the group as they deal with, including a bit of self-sacrifice along the way because of how torn up they get. But the reality is that we get down to just a few left, with Frejya, Astrid, and Eli, along with one human child. It’s not the best situation and there’s a lot of tension about everything that has come about because of it, but there’s a glimmer of hope as well.
That comes in realizing that the kid, and the other humans that they’ve met, likely took what they came for because the kid is showing no signs of radiation sickness. So just getting him off-world will complete the mission so that the military can reverse engineer quickly what they need to save the other world. It’s amusing how they set up camp after hitting the beacon and basically just hunker down while waiting. The dialogue about what to do once back on their own world again is definitely interesting to see and that there’s going to be a different kind of tension when that happens after the losses that they’ve suffered. But it’s also something where even as prepared as they are, they can’t be ready for the aliens that are coming for them and the sudden burst of chaos – and more loss. While it does set things up for the finale, it’s one where a lot of what’s here is just pretty intense.
In Summary:
This issue is basically all action and some quiet moments toward the end before the moment where you know it’s all going to fall apart for these survivors. The action is solid here and the flow is really good so it all moves well and is thoroughly engaging with great artwork. But because of the kind of installment it is in the storyline, it’ll work better when read in succession at once as all the energy has built into it and it’s hurtling toward its conclusion. There’s plenty to like here and it delivers well on the past installments, though I wish we had more of Astrid in it just based on this issue alone.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: January 18th, 2023
MSRP: $3.99