Writers: Colin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing, Stephanie Phillips, Ryan Cady, Paul Jenkins, Stephanie Williams, Cody Ziglar, Steve Foxe, Bryan Hill, Pornsak Pichetshote / Artists: Michael Dowling, Marcelo Ferreira, Devmalya Pramanik, Luigi Teruel, Jethro Morales, Claire Roe, Tommaso Bianchi, Chriscross, Partha Pratim / Colour Artists: Chris Sotomayor, Pete Pantazis, Andres Mossa, Jordie Bellaire, Mattia Iacono / Letterer: VC's Clayton Cowles / Editors: Lindsay Cohick, Sarah Brunstad / Collects: Alien Black, White & Blood #1-#4 / Treasury Edition (TP) / Marvel Comics
Review by Paul Dunne
11th March 2025 (Released: 22nd January 2025)
The Pitch: The ALIENS universe as only Marvel could imagine it - in thrilling black, white, red...and green! Marvel Comics and 20th Century Studios present a kill-fest of an anthology in chest-rending artistic detail! Superstar writers and fan-favourite artists combine to spin fresh tales of Alien terror - including a generations-spanning epic from Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing and Michael Dowling! The hunt begins in a story of guts, glory and the most exhilarating of games...and much more horror! Plus: Legendary writer Paul Jenkins (WOLVERINE: ORIGIN, INHUMANS) explores the chemistry of fear in a story that will leave you with a whole new and terrifying understanding of the Xenomorph species!
Alien has proved to be nothing if not a durable and ever-evolving creation. Even if my personal preference is for the powers that be to leave the series alone and stop making the movies as I've reached a point of contentment with what we've had, there seems to be an ever-renewed and energised fanbase for the Xenomorph, which may reach a crescendo with the Alien: Earth series on Disney Plus later this year. But for my money, the best work on the Alien series is being done in comics. Dark Horse always released interesting and artistically exciting Alien comics. And hats off to Marvel for commissioning this particular series, with its collection of stories any one of which would make an enticing opening act in any Alien film - even the ones I don't want them to make! The writers and artists on this have been given license to reach back across the Alien's history and design elements to present unseen moments from the story of the Xenomorph.
Phillips, Ferreira, and Pantazis' The Hunt adds a splash of acid green to the titular three colours of the volume. Here, it's the colour of money, of greed, signifying the destructive vapour of Weyland Yutani's commercial interests as, convinced they have a tame beast on their hands, they invite the generational wealth and billionaire set to hunt the Xenomorph. Guess who you're going to be rooting for by the end of this one? The acid green stays with us for Cady and Pramanik's 'Maternal Instinct', in which the ship's operating system dubbed 'Mother' has to, for a brief period, actually become a parent of sorts to help save the last survivor of an Alien outbreak left in her care. The only child she has left since her other charges succumbed to the creatures. At least the prime directives built into the machine hold the moral weight better than the greed of humans! Greed - or at least how we view our food - is touched on in Jenkins, Teruel and Mossa's 'Morsel' which takes us right up the food chain we thought we were on top of and speaks somewhat to how food production has moved from hunting on the plains to the mechanised mass-industry we have now, and how that may evolve laterally in the future. The Alien of course has but one singular requirement and that is us. Singular objectives become the subject of Stephanie Williams and Jethro Morales' First Day as a young marine clings to her humanity in the face of mounting orders to discard it and move on with 'the mission'. This theme gets carried through in Ziglar, Roe and Bellaire's Gear In The Machine, where a Weyland Yutani science crew specialising in the retrieval of the Alien larvae discovers just how expendable they are when faced with the corporate balance sheet. And a dose of humanity is welcome in Steve Foxe, Tommaso Bianchi Mattia Iancono's Lucky. How 'The Company' preys on that humanity is explored to its logical and bleakest conclusion in Bryan Edward Hill, Chriscross and Andre Mossa's 'Hide and Seek'. And in Pornsak Pichetshote and Partha Pratim's 'Mother', humanity becomes a victim of the Alien's infection, eroding the morals of a survivor. Most excitingly, William Gibson's Union Of Progressive Peoples from his early Alien 3 script makes a comeback in 'Utopia' by Kelly, Lanzing, and Dowling.
It's Utopia that most feels like the anthologies of my British - albeit American-influenced- youth. The sheer quality of its black and white pencilling elevates it to the level of some of the best 2000 AD stories. For me, Dowling is one of the unsung greats. His fast-detailed, yet rich pencilling seems to make him a perpetual undiscovered genius and I think in years to come, we're all going to be raiding back issue bins looking for his work, the way we might do now for Samnee or Cooke. There's an interior, ambitious air to the writing that also flirts with the Vertigo books of the early nineties, largely because it views the Alien as a political symptom. Capitalism has come to murder Socialism, even across the stars.
Editors Lindsay Cohick and Sarah Brunstad make a small leap forward with this volume, having Kelly, Lanzing, and Dowling create a serialised arc across the four issues - a first for the Black White & Blood series, I believe. A shame, then that immediately takes a step backwards by not re-sequencing the stories so that all four chapters run concurrently, rather than being in the original issue order as presented here. Still, it's a minor whinge when the rest of the book is so good. The 'strong female character' element that one can arguably say was really cemented with Ridley Scott's Alien, is given a petulant twist of entitlement and over-confidence in Valentina Petrovich, who could her just desserts by becoming dessert for the Alien. The theme of the socialist working classes against the ruling billionaire classes runs through the book, as it did with the films. Never forget that if you're not in control of your destiny, you are just a tool of the machine the book seems to tell us. Still, the Alien is a classless killer, whose murderous intent doesn't check your bank details first. The moral of the story is that everyone must die. Speaking of dying, I almost had a heart murmur when I first flicked through the book and saw Claire Roe's art because I thought I was looking at Mike Mignola's work from 20 years before. Her rigid lines and use of black are excellent. Bianchi's soft pencil style makes a tense juxtaposition with the impending doom present in 'Lucky', but perfectly illustrates the range of styles present in the book and that the Xenomorph can tolerate - and still remain resolutely 'Alien'.
Although it may seem like I'm shining a spotlight on just those particular stories, it really is just a matter of space, time and a desire not to spoil every bit of the book that prevents me from going deeper in to this volume for you. I want there to be some uncharted space left out there, after all. Alien: BWAB is something of a treat even amongst the high-quality output of Marvel's treasury anthologies. The stories are short, sharp, and shocking. The writers and artists here make you feel as if there were all in a room together, plotting these ideas out, synching up. Again, Cohick and Brunstad's editing is probably largely to thank for that. Just in case you missed the wider point to these stories - and to quote Skunk Anansie, Yes, it's fucking political. The writers, without exception, all have something to say. As I mentioned, there's a strong anti-capitalist sentiment that runs through the book and feels right for the times. This makes the trade as a whole so much richer and more meaningful and in keeping with what we've seen from the film series. The Alien always stay relevant, in as much as it is a creature onto which ideas and metaphors can be imprinted. We watch the Alien, engrossed, terrified... But it watches us right back.
Alien: Black, White & Blood Treasury Edition is available at your local comic shop now, or you can purchase the original series here.
