Aliens vs Predator, Aliens/Predator: Deadliest of the Species, Aliens versus Predator versus the Terminator

The original Aliens vs. Predator miniseries came out in 1990. When I undertook my inventory in 2011 I was surprised to find that I did not own this series, as I have very clear memories of reading the issues at my parent’s house. The most likely explanation is that this was a comic my father bought. Pretty much any comic my father bought was read by me, which means I got to read Mike Grell’s run on Green Arrow, Epic Comic’s Alien Legion, all the DC Comic runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation and a host of other stuff slightly less memorable. I mentioned this before that while I collected comics, my father mostly just read them. Every year or two he’d purge his collection; either threw them out or gave them away at garage sales or something. This wasn’t something I cared much about when I was in my teens—after all, if my dad was reading something I cared about, I would’ve taken his comics and put it in my collection. It’s only with the hindsight of adulthood that I realize many of the titles he read would be enjoyed by me now (another piece of evidence to hurl onto the overflowing pile of evidence that, not only am I my father’s son but that I have, incontrovertibly, turned into my father). Thus I can add Aliens vs. Predator to the list of comics I deeply regret not saving from my father’s callous disregard for posterity.

My original intent was to just review Aliens / Predator: The Deadliest of the Species, and then I decided to tack on Aliens vs Predator vs the Terminator because, well, how could I not? But this past Saturday I found myself in a comicbook store (read: all these comicbook reading has made me nostalgic and now I find myself haunting comicbook stores in a futile attempt to reclaim the joys of my youth) and I stumbled upon a complete set of the original Aliens vs Predator mini-series, the comicbook I remember reading 22 years ago. So now I have read three separate mini-series, 21 comics in all, and I feel sufficiently immersed in “Aliens versus Predators” stories that I can write a comprehensive and insightful review of the oeuvre in total.

To start with, “Aliens versus Predators” sounds like the greatest concept since peanut butter versus jelly. You’ve got the semi-subliminally sexual, animalistic, demonic, eponymous Alien versus the primal, masculine, ruthless archetypical warrior Predator. One has acid for blood, the other has an invisibility device and collects skulls as a trophy. As a fight, it means pitting the embodiment of everything humans fear against the embodiment of everything men wish they could be, and enjoying the massively cathartic violence that occurs. But as a story, it’s fairly boring.  The Alien and the Predator were never designed to be more than archetypes; they’re reflections of the human psyche (or manifestation of the fears of the human psyche), they’re not personalities. There’s an old cliché that a writer could have two characters stuck in an elevator and end up with a great story. Stick an Alien and a Predator in an elevator and all you’ll have is a wrecked elevator.

So when someone wants to throw these two creatures into a story, in order to make it compelling, they need to add a third component: humans. Beings that can have personalities and motivations; a way for the reader to identity with and have a connection to beyond watching two creatures fight each other until one of them is dead and dismembered.  This means that every time you write an “Aliens vs. Predator” story, you need to create a group of brand new characters that are going to be compelling and entertaining in their own right. Essentially you’re tricking your audience: You entice them with the promise of alien blood-fest, but you end up giving them a story about how people react to/are affected by the blood-fest.

This does not lend to much thematic variety in your “Aliens vs. Predator” stories because, most of the time, people react to two frightening alien creatures killing each other in one of three ways: running away, ending up as collateral damage, or picking a side. Now, if you’re the kind of person who views two frightening alien creatures killing each other and your decision-making process leads to “stick around and join the mayhem” then you are a very specific type of person, and while that will make for an interesting story once or twice, the lack of variety in a character’s response to what happens when Aliens and Predators collide means each successive story in the franchise is a rehash of the same story told before.

In the inaugural Aliens vs. Predator comic, that person is Machiko Noguchi, administrator of the Chigusa Corporation’s outpost “Prosperity Wells”, the sole human outpost on the planet Ryushi. Noguchi is a very by-the-book corporate administrator. She’s not much of a people-person and has tended to alienate (ha ha) her co-workers and the independent ranchers who herd the alien bovine the Chugusa Corp buys to help feed the population of Earth. Nonetheless, just as Machiko resolves to be friendlier and—at the risk of belaboring Machiko’s very unsubtle character arc—act more human towards her co-workers, the Aliens and Predators show up. I mentioned before that these stories need to trick the reader, advertising alien violence but delivering a story about people. I distinctly remember, when I read this back in 1990, at being disappointed that the humans took up so much screen-time in this story.  Of course, 14 year-old boys are less interested in character development than 36 year-old men, so what was regrettable then is much appreciated now. Machiko may not be the greatest character in the world, but she and the other characters give you someone to sympathize and root for. 

That said, this is still primarily an action comic. The concept is that the Predators purposely seed a planet with Aliens as a sort of hunting exercise/rite of passage for younger Predators. The Predators come to Ryushi for that purpose, and Machiko and the others are caught in the middle. Characters are introduced and die, Machiko allies with one of the Predators (in these stories the humans invariably align with the Predator).  But story is mostly told through Machiko’s eyes, and we root for her more than the Predators (Predators are usually characterized as the “noble hunter” archetype so while ruthless they are inevitably cast the “good” alien compared to the Aliens invariable “evil” alien).  It’s perfectly serviceable for what it is, although sometimes artist Phill Norwood struggles to render the complexities of the Alien and Predator character designs. The fact that these creatures never really look horrific enough detracts a lot of the visual impact these creatures have. It’s somewhat telling that the best image that captures the drama and horror of these two species in battle is the cover image to Aliens vs Predator #0¹:

That image does a better job capturing the otherness, the sheer terror, these creatures are supposed to inspire more than any of the pages inside.  It’s a pity the artist, Mike Mignola, couldn’t illustrate the whole thing.

A few years after the initial mini-series, Aliens / Predator: The Deadliest of the Species appeared. It looked as if it was going to be as grandiose as its title implies:  a 12 issue “maxi-series”² drawn by superstar artist Jackson Guice and written by the one and only Chris Claremont. Claremont is a giant in the industry thanks to being the writer of The X-Men for seventeen years. During that time, he was responsible, in whole or in part, for the majority of all the classic X-Men stories, for either creating, or creating the accepted personalities of its most famous characters.  Claremont will get his due on this blog at the end when we reach the “X” section of my collection but suffice to say: When Aliens / Predator: The Deadliest of the Species first came out in 1993, Claremont had been fired/quit from X-Men and everyone expected anything he wrote to contain the same magic that made X-Men so phenomenally successful.

That didn’t quite happen.  You see, Claremont has a very specific style of writing. His stories tend to start off over here, wandered over yonder for a while before taking a left turn and zig-zagging this way for a bit, leaving that other plot dangling for a while, before finally circling back to the beginning for the grand finale. That meandering storytelling works great when you’re serializing a comic that’s intended to be a never-ending soap-opera-with-capes; it’s not so good when you’re writing a twelve-issue, finite story.

But the real problem with Deadliest of the Species is that it isn’t really an “Aliens vs Predator” story. The story is actually about the journey of self-discovery undertaken by Caryn Delacroix, the genetically modified trophy-wife who discovers she’s the reincarnation of space pilot/adventurer Ash Parnall³. Caryn’s story is facilitated by a Predator that Ash befriended before her death, but there’s nothing about that relationship that requires that the alien be a Predator.  Though Aliens factor into the plot, they have no real purpose in it. They’re actually being manipulated by the real villain of the piece, an insane computer program named Toy, a program that happens to be created by Ash Parnall.

This may seem confusing, so let me re-state the plot of Deadliest of the Species again so it’s clearer: Caryn Delacroix thinks she’s a genetically created/modified trophy-wife for Lucien Delecroix, the head of a massive corporation. Caryn was created by Toy, the sentient computer program that Lucien uses. She ends up being hunted by, and eventually partners with, a Predator because Caryn’s personality is actually a copy of the deceased Ash Parnall, who was the person who created Toy in the first place. While Caryn tries to figure all this out, Lucien’s son, Willem, plots with the criminal Bobby DeMatier to take over the company from Lucien, and Bobby seems most interested in the Predator alien, as well as the Aliens.  Through a plot convenience I still don’t quite understand, Caryn and her Predator ally (a female Predator Caryn/Ash call “Big Mama”) end up on a space station infested with Aliens. Caryn is impregnated with an Alien, and she, Big Mama, and the Alien Queen team up so they can . . . actually, this is pretty much where the story loses all coherency, and no summary can help you make sense of it. The Ash Parnall back-story is never fully explained, and though you can squint just enough to understand why the Alien Queen decides to team up with her and Big Mama, there is not one single shred of logic that can possibly explain why the Alien that bursts from Caryn ends up being this Alien/human hybrid that speaks English.

As you can see, the story goes from “intriguing sci-fi” to “bat-shit mind-boggling” in just twelve issues. It’s as if Claremont was asked to write an “Aliens vs Predator” story, agreed to it, decided he had a much better—and I use that adjective loosely—story to tell and shoe-horned in the Aliens and Predators because he had signed a contract saying he would.

There are only two redeeming factors in this comic. The first is that rather delicious irony in the meaning of the title. “Deadliest of the species” ostensibly refers to the titular aliens, but in fact refers to the fact that the deadliest of the respective species (Human, Alien, Predator) are all female. For all Claremont’s faults as a writer, the man writes compelling, empowered female characters. There is a disturbing misogyny at work on one level (genetically engineered/created trophy wives??) but Caryn, the character, transcends her objectifying beginnings and becomes a formidable, victorious character. Her accomplishments are her own—others help, but the emphasis is on the word help. What Caryn achieves, she achieves through her own will and abilities, which is a far cry from my complaints about seemingly-empowered women like Supergirl from those Superman stories I read.

The other redeeming factor is the art. The first three issues were drawn by Jackson Guice, followed by Eduardo Barreto who stayed for the remainder of the series. I can find no reason for Guice leaving the title after three issues (perhaps he read Claremont’s future scripts and realized he didn’t want to be a part of such ludicrous story-telling) but Barreto is a fine replacement. Admittedly, Barrteo’s art isn’t as fluid or as sensual as his predecessor—compare these splash-pages; the one on the left is by Jackson Guice, the one on the left is by Eduardo Baretto:

Guice’s style is certainly more eye-catching. But given how strong a character Cayrn becomes, perhaps it’s fitting that the artist for the series is one less predisposed to obvious cheesecake. That said, there’s a noir aspect to Guice’s artwork that is missed once he leaves; while Baretto does fine work, I can’t help but wonder how much more palatable the story would have been had Guice stuck  around. ⁴

This leaves us with Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator.  The good news is the story is much more coherent than Deadliest of the Species was. The bad news is it’s still not very good. This time we have your standard “Predators are hunting Aliens with humans stuck in the middle” plot with the added sweetener of Terminators showing up. The premise is that right before Skynet—the sentient computer that created the Terminators—was defeated, it created a kind of sleeper-agent Terminator, one that would stay hidden until it found the technological means to create and even more advanced race of Terminators that could wipe out humanity once and for all. Conveniently, this technology is found when scientists discover how to combine Alien DNA with other DNA (a la the Ripley clone from Alien: Resurrection). So the sleeper takes that technology to combine Alien DNA with Terminator cybernetics, creating a Terminator/Alien hybrid. Now, a Terminator is a machine inside an organic human body. This Alien-Terminator hybrid is still a machine inside a human-looking body; you’d think a sociopathic computer that wants to exterminate humanity wouldn’t have a sentimental attachment to the human form and would just build a Terminator inside that looked like an Alien on the outside. And that’s not even getting into the logistical gymnastics to determine how Alien DNA makes for a more invincible Terminator in the first place. 

AvPvT does earn points for the climax of the story when a bunch Alien-Terminators fight against both a cadre of Predators and a gaggle of actual Aliens in a three-way-orgy-of-death-and-destruction. As gonzo finales go, this was one that would have been worth giving more pages too, rather than the four pages of battle the comic depicts.  And I did appreciate that the comic gave some closure to the Ripley clone that appeared in the movie. Once again, the “Aliens versus Predator” comics give the reader a strong woman protagonist, one who is actively engaged and not playing the sexy second-banana to a male lead. (For everything all three of these comics get wrong, they deserve full credit for providing a too-rare exception to the gender-discriminating norm found in most superhero comics.) Sadly for AvPvT, it’s not enough to redeem a story that’s overrun with exposition and character narration standing in for organic plot developments. Though Ripley gets a semblance of a character arc, even she is just a means to facilitate the combining of three popular movie franchise characters together for some mayhem. To its credit the story doesn’t try to be more than that, but to its detriment it doesn’t bother putting much effort into achieving its sole purpose either.

Needless to say, the whole “Aliens versus Predator” franchise is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s essentially a big dumb summer action movie done in comics, but having read three versions of the same idea, it’s clear that this is a case where the concept is more powerful than the execution.

Next Issue: In 1994, DC Comics decided to get rid of their World War Two-era superheroes. But then Starman made Golden Age superheroes popular again, so in 1999 DC brought back the WWII-era Justice Society of America. Be here in a week (or two, or three; just being honest) for All-Star Comics and the (sales) power of nostalgia. 

 ¹Aliens vs. Predator #0 was a reprint of a story that was originally serialized in the comics anthology Dark Horse Presents (The “dark horse” in question being the publisher, Dark Horse Comics). The story acts as a prologue to the mini-series and is completely inessential to the main story, although you got to admit that Mike Mignola cover is absolutely gorgeous and pretty much worth the cover price alone. 

²What is a maxi-series you ask? Why, it’s the opposite of a “mini-series”, obviously.  It’s comicbook-industry jargon to make a finite series appear more important than a “regular” mini-series. 12 was, and still is, a bit of a magic number for comics. It’s a whole year’s worth of monthly issues. So the logic is that if a mini-series is so big that it will take a whole year to tell, it must be important. Thus, to describe something “important” as a mini-series would be a disservice to how “important” it is, some editor or marketing genius came up with the nomenclature “maxi-series” to reinforce the importance of the story.

³Ash Parnall was a character Claremont created, who first appeared in a serialized story in—surprise, surprise—Dark Horse Presents. That Ash Parnall story has nothing to do with Aliens or Predators, and yet the way the character is handled in Deadliest of the Species you get the feeling you’re missing something vitally important to the story by not knowing who Ash Parnall is. But you’re not, and she isn’t, and yet the whole story hinges on her. Welcome to How to Write Comics the Chris Claremont Way.

⁴I also want to point out that, if nothing else, Deadliest of the Species is worth checking out because of the exquisite covers painted by John Bolton. You can view the full cover gallery in this link. My personal favorites are the covers for issues 3, 8, and 11, but all 12 are worth spending time appreciating.