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.
