Dark Horse Comics Announces Aliens: Colonial Marines: Rising Threat!

Started by Corporal Hicks, Jun 13, 2019, 02:32:05 PM

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Dark Horse Comics Announces Aliens: Colonial Marines: Rising Threat! (Read 60,561 times)

The Old One

The Old One

#165
Cliché invasion storyline,
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)

Perfect-Organism

Perfect-Organism

#166
Quote from: SM on Jul 04, 2019, 03:35:22 AM
Quote from: Perfect-Organism on Jul 04, 2019, 02:41:22 AM
Man it would be great if DH gave another crack at a story with a similar premise to the original Aliens comics but it was about engineers and it didn't go down the ridiculous path it did.

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?

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.

Local Trouble

Quote from: The Old One on Jul 04, 2019, 04:32:18 AM
Cliché invasion storyline,
ontop of Aliens repeat, ontop of Aliens bu larger and a benign homeworld ontop.
Yeah, great, that's what I want.
(The last sentence is sarcasm fyi)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrlOPl4-HL4

So much wasted potential.

The Old One

The Old One

#168
If the pop culture whirlpool around Aliens to today proves anything to me, it's I really prefer the Alien³ we got over reinforcing the "X but larger" obsession this franchise has.

SM

Quote
Overall, the basic underpinnings of Verheiden's story arc are still the best sequel to Aliens I've had the chance to experience. 

Basic underpinnings = premise.

Kimarhi

Well, that is actually part of the problem I say.


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. 


Local Trouble

Indeed.  Alien 3 was a complete regression.

The Old One

The Old One

#172
Because if the invasion scenario is followed through, it's also over as a menace.

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.

Corporal Hicks

Corporal Hicks

#173
Quote from: Local Trouble on Jul 04, 2019, 02:12:03 AM
Was the novel more coherent than the comic?

Very much so. But it unfortunately dropped the Space Jockey storyline completely and that's just left hanging in the novel-verse.


Quote from: The Old One on Jul 04, 2019, 02:48:41 AM
Agreed, but it's gone ridiculous even recently, The Rage War and the Titan Alien Novel Trilogy for instance.

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.

HuDaFuK

I'm still not entirely convinced it would even be possible for the Aliens to overcome the entire planet. Even in Aliens the script had to majorly nerf all the Marines' equipment to make them a threat (no ammo, dropship and all heavy weapons gone etc.)

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.

Quote from: The Old One on Jul 04, 2019, 02:48:41 AMAgreed, but it's gone ridiculous even recently, The Rage War and the Titan Alien Novel Trilogy for instance.

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.

SM

SM

#175
The thing in the Book 1 comics is infrastructure and society breaks down (not that it had far to fall).  The Aliens just overtook them to quickly for the military to respond.  By the time they knew what they were dealing with it was too late.  If the military were able to prepare and didn't worry about civilian casualties or infrastructure - they'd be able defeat the Aliens more easily.

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.

SiL

The long gestation period of the Aliens, coupled with fast domestic transport, allowed the Aliens to spread before anyone even knew they were there. Then they ran and hid, spread out in sewer networks and abandoned places, making it harder to find all of the small pockets of hives popping up.

I thought the comic did it fine.

Still Collating...

What SiL said.

Quote from: Kimarhi on Jul 04, 2019, 05:02:49 AM
Well, that is actually part of the problem I say.


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.

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.

Kimarhi

I too thought that the invasion aspects of outbreak were fine.  For the most part they simply avoided the military until the very end of the story and instead chowed down on the civilian populace.



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. 



Perfect-Organism

Quote from: SM on Jul 04, 2019, 04:58:43 AM
Quote
Overall, the basic underpinnings of Verheiden's story arc are still the best sequel to Aliens I've had the chance to experience. 

Basic underpinnings = premise.

Yes

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