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.

Adam Strange: The Man of Two Worlds

I used to love this comic. In fact, I would probably say that Adam Strange was one of the unsung favorites of my collection; a handful of comics that were never particularly popular with the comicbook community but that I felt were immeasurably well-done and immensely satisfying stories. When Adam Strange first came out in 1990 I was floored by it. Here was an imperfect man whose world was falling apart around him. Partly duped by people he (perhaps foolishly) trusted, partly done-in by his own weaknesses, this mini-series saw Adam Strange reduced to almost nothing, losing everything he held dear. Yet the series ended on a hopeful note that implied what made Adam a hero before would help him become one again. My one complaint at the time was that the ending was far too abrupt, the story seeming to end in the middle. I wanted to see what happened next to Adam, Eve, Sardath and the rest, and it seemed unfairly cruel that after that third issue, DC never bothered to continue the story. But in reading Adam Strange twenty-two years later, though I found the story to have its moments, it was also very, very flawed, and those flaws make it all to clear why the story told in these three issues never went any further.