With Aliens: Rescue due to kick off at the end of July, Dark Horse Comics have announced the next series – Aliens: Colonial Marines: Rising Threat! Rising Threat is set to tie into the events of the upcoming game from Cold Iron Studios and will also continue the story of Olivia Shipp, the character recently introduced in Alien: Echo!
“Aliens Colonial Marines: Rising Threat delves into the formative years of the Colonial Marines. Tying into the events of the upcoming Cold Iron Studios videogame, this new series introduces Olivia Shipp, leader of a squad of battle-weary Marines who have defied orders to rescue the survivors of a refinery under siege.”
Once again Brian Wood is returning to write Rising Threat, making this his fourth Alien series for Dark Horse. Interior artwork with be handled by Werther Dell’Edera, with Michael Atiyeh responsible for colours. Though the press release (via Comicbook.com) doesn’t mention, it would appear that the fan favourite Tristan Jones is returning to provide cover art!
Aliens: Colonial Marines: Rising Threat will be an 8 issue long run, with the first issue currently scheduled for release on the 18th of September.
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I can't find it. Got a link?
So far, its Isolation, Rescue and Rising threat, any other books I need to remind myself to get?
I haven't seen all the videos yet, truth be told. Anyway, it's definitely not cool to not give these creators their due credit. Their original work was absolutely amazing, mostly. Mostly.
Didn't expect Local to post one of their videos, i'll have to be more vigilant in the future
That being said, I found it dismaying that Mark Verheiden was not credited in the Titan reprint of the original Dark Horse novel trilogy. That was his work, transcribed into novel format. Odd.
Videos where he's big on reading other peoples work and small on attribution.
That was an enjoyable video, thanks for posting.
I think the comics needed more than one draft. There's the whole concept of both Ripley and Hicks abandoning Newt to an asylum, that's not satisfactorily resolved. Hicks didn't even visit her once in 10 years. That said, the first two series are among the best of any comic series, and the story of Earth War is adequate enough.
All told I do prefer the Alien 3 we got, but it's far from what everyone wanted.
Indeed...
Come to think of it, isn't that a giant retcon?
Yeah I think they ended just being really big explosions minus the radioactive fall out.
Unless they repeal the second amendment - maybe not completely soft.
Yes
The Alien doesn't have morals or politics guiding it. It simply chooses the best target of opportunity which at an invasion scale would be civilians. And in the future, if current trends hold, the civilian population will greatly outnumber the military one. The USA has one of the biggest standing armed forces in the world.
And they just comprise less than 1 percent of the US population. That is a whole lot of soft targets to go after.
This. I think they should start with a detailed and long survivor story about a very large colony/space station/city that got infested. I believe the aliens can be shown as a mass that overwhelms but just as often show few aliens being horrifically creepy, lethal and cunning. It's not impossible to marry the two approaches, they are perfectly compatible IMO just depending on context.
I enjoy Book 1's Earth invasion segments above all else in the book. Especially how it was expanded upon with just a few pages in the novel. I do want to see more of that. Invasion on a mass scale. That to me shows the threat and full potential of these creatures. That's also scary if done right, not just a haunted house in space.
(I will not comment how ridiculous it was that in Book 3 all of the aliens gathered at the same place and got nuked, the comic version was better with at least the method of alien annihilation, but no method guaranties every alien will be wiped out once they take over Earth.)
And yeah, I also really liked both Titan trilogies. Full of problems, but I especially enjoyed the Rage War. Again, the Rage were a mix of meh and ridiculous, and the aliens weren't treated as a real threat always, especially hated that they needed to be augmented with breathing gear and suicide exploding nano things, like they don't explode from gunfire already, but the world building was so nice to see!
IMO, Titan has been killing it with these novels so far.
I thought the comic did it fine.
The marines had smart guns and a shot gun in Aliens. They still would've gotten pwned in the hive - maybe not quite as badly, but Dietrich and Apone were armed and it didn't make any difference.
Crowe and Wierzbowski might've had a better chance since there would've been no ammo bag to explode.
Always thought the comic storyline would've played out a lot more believably if our own desperation to end the infestation had triggered a war that wiped out most of the population for them. Say someone tries bomb the infestation in another country in a panic, and it just snowballs.
As it was in the comics it always struck me as silly and over-the-top, to be honest. Certainly not the sequel I have any interest in seeing on screen.
Valid point about the Rage War, but it was so far in the future after everything else I can give it a pass. That and the fact I thoroughly enjoyed those novels. I definitely prefer their brand of over-the-top to the original comic trilogy's.
Very much so. But it unfortunately dropped the Space Jockey storyline completely and that's just left hanging in the novel-verse.
Personally, I disagree here. That original trilogy had those Fox mandated things that they suffered from, but otherwise, I found them to be pretty solid and engaging with a lot going for them.
Because it doesn't get any larger and you undermine Alien's effectiveness by expanding it to a spectrum most can't empathize with.
Alien is intimate and only works as a threat of personal invasion, not as world invasion. From my perspective anyway.
The bigger/better thing has only ever happened in the comics, the Aliens only actual win has been Hadley's Hope on screen, and even that was short lived.
If you never actually make the Aliens threatening on a grand scale then they become just giant space bugs because.............that is all they have been shown to be.
You need the Aliens to take over the earth or AT LEAST a large colony world just to remind/show people they are capable of doing so. The Alien itself has essentially become Jason/Freddy in space. They show up, kill some randos, and get stopped again until they are reactivated for the sequel. There is no actual progression with them as a menace.
Basic underpinnings = premise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrlOPl4-HL4
So much wasted potential.
The idea of an Alien queen mother calling all her children and then getting blown up. To what end would she call all her children? Ridiculous.
I could also do without the idea of Aliens giving people nightmares via telepathy. Then again it could be interesting if done well.
Overall, the basic underpinnings of Verheiden's story arc are still the best sequel to Aliens I've had the chance to experience. I've grown to really like Alien 3, and I'm really enjoying the new Gibson audio drama, but Verheiden's series still takes the cake in terms of a natural, compelling progression.
ontop of the hive but larger repeat and a benign homeworld ontop.
Yeah, great, that's what I want.
(The last sentence is sarcasm fyi)
As a premise it is a lot better than the story Alien 3 gave us.
The premise being they go the Alien home world, meanwhile they already invade Earth and the planet is evacuated. They then find a way to wipe them out.
Which bit was ridiculous?