Marvel's First Alien Series Announced!

Started by Kailem, Dec 07, 2020, 07:22:32 PM

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Marvel's First Alien Series Announced! (Read 273,341 times)

Local Trouble

Correct.

Nukiemorph

I don't like the idea that queens are immune to the DNA reflex for a nice, clean reset every time. I'd like to see different types of queens from different hosts and different mishmashes of species to create new & weird shit. (And the only places we've seen queen resets are in EU content, the canon status of which is always precarious anyway.)

I'd also argue that the "perfection" of the alien is its adaptability to its environment, acid-blood defense, a drive for survival "unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality", and the fact that it inherits useful traits from its host - all things that could be passed down through multiple generations and varying host species. Why should going through more species dilute the alien? Couldn't each generation be better and more perfect by inheriting useful traits from each species it passes through?

And what about the molting concept? (Honestly, I'm not sure if fans ever reached a consensus on that idea.) But would a horned drone born from a space goat that molts into a queen shed all of the goat aspects of itself and become a totally normal queen?

Having said all of this,
Spoiler
did all of the specimens onboard the Epsilon Station come from the alpha through normal breeding processes? Cruz says it's the specimen that "all our work was based on". If that's the case, shouldn't every alien on the station have horns too? The station is crawling with human & dog-born aliens that we're familiar with, which means either:
A. They got other specimens from somewhere else, which seems to negate the significance of the alpha.
B. They were able to clone pure aliens from the hybrid alpha specimen, stripping the goat DNA variables from it so they could have pure specimens. This seems far-fetched and feels like a forced reason to show us the classic aliens we know & love.
or C. Queens do reset the DNA... which conflicts with the design of the alpha altogether.
[close]
So don't get me wrong. This comic isn't worth dying on any hills, I'm just debating lore conflicts.

judge death

so by going by your logic: if the queen facehugger get onto a bad host and the resulting queen looks hugely different, has no acid and breeds slower and they need air to live and are compared to what they were before, weak. The xenomorphs species will then die out due to bad choice, nor can you ever get back the old design, and will have to live with the new queen/xeno species that looks more ugly and isnt even dangerous anymore? Its a dead end.

Nukiemorph

Why would an alien ever inherit a lack of traits that we've seen every alien have? Being so susceptible to inheriting shitty traits from a host seems counter to the whole concept of the alien.

I always figured it retained its strengths and inherited other strengths. Not inheriting the weaknesses is part of the perfection.

City Hunter Yautja

Quote from: Nukiemorph on Jul 22, 2021, 12:32:35 AM
Why would an alien ever inherit a lack of traits that we've seen every alien have? Being so susceptible to inheriting shitty traits from a host seems counter to the whole concept of the alien.

I always figured it retained its strengths and inherited other strengths. Not inheriting the weaknesses is part of the perfection.

Hence Ash's "The perfect organism" comment.

Protomorph

During the first few pages Cruz says the following quote:

"while unconscious, I could still see the aliens, and not just the ones that killed my team. I saw the ones that made them, too, god knows how far from here......and others that didn't exist yet"

Do you think he's alluding to the engineers?

RidgeTop

Just read issue 5...

Really good idea letting Iris have that gun, Gabe.

Xiggz456

Xiggz456

#1627
Quote from: RidgeTop on Jul 24, 2021, 12:06:40 AM
Just read issue 5...

Really good idea letting Iris have that gun, Gabe.

Spoiler
Well it wasn't Gabe's idea to let her have a gun. She stole the gun and ran off with it in issue 3 so not sure what Gabe could've done there and later she saved Gabe in the hive by blasting an alien with said gun in issue 4. So by that point their shared objective is to save Danny and run. There wasn't exactly a chance for Gabe to stop running from aliens and demand Iris give up the gun after the hive scene either.
[close]

Also issue 4 was the 36th best seller for June. For context Issue 4 of the Original Screenplay ranked in at 140th and issue 4 of Rescue was 278th.

Corporal Hicks

Corporal Hicks

#1628
Quote from: Xiggz456 on Jul 21, 2021, 09:11:03 PM
Some wild alien variants shown here which in context were very interesting
Spoiler
that once impregnated there's a psychic connection to the alien hive mind?! I actually like this idea which surprised me since I've never liked the telepathic queens from the older Dark Horse stories and it's also one of the very few things I don't really care for in the new RPG expansion.
[close]
Yeah, I actually really like that concept too. It's got roots in older lore that make it work for me, and it opens up some story avenues including the further teasing and exploration of Sil. I dig that.


Quote from: Protomorph on Jul 23, 2021, 11:11:06 PM
During the first few pages Cruz says the following quote:

"while unconscious, I could still see the aliens, and not just the ones that killed my team. I saw the ones that made them, too, god knows how far from here......and others that didn't exist yet"

Do you think he's alluding to the engineers?

Interesting catch. I hadn't thought about that one. Sounds reason that he is. Or to the true Space Jockeys.  ;)


I enjoyed this one. I still think the story is interesting, and I dig the whole "working for the bad guy, not thinking you're a bad guy" angle that Cruz is dealing with now. Some of the artwork was nice - some shots of the Alpha - but f**k me, the referenced figure still look shit. Especially that panel with the Alpha and all the others around him, and then the Aliens

Spoiler
floating in space.
[close]

Awful.

bobby brown

I really liked that small panel of the Alien woman's face in striped shadows.

Xiggz456

Yeah that last part in space looked cheesy af. But boy the end of August is going to be full of releases with Fireteam Elite dropping Tuesday the 24th, the concluding issue 6 of the comic dropping Wednesday the 25th and then the Gibson A3 novel coming out the following Tuesday the 31st!

judge death

Quote from: Nukiemorph on Jul 22, 2021, 12:32:35 AM
Why would an alien ever inherit a lack of traits that we've seen every alien have? Being so susceptible to inheriting shitty traits from a host seems counter to the whole concept of the alien.

I always figured it retained its strengths and inherited other strengths. Not inheriting the weaknesses is part of the perfection.

Strenghts is a double edged sword and from certain perspectives: one strenght can easily become ones weakness.
Let me explain my point of view of this:

Marvel set up following rules, they told this when they explained why the xenos now have snake like inner jaw that can move freely unlike before:
1: Xenomorphs takes traits from the host and keeps it and get more and more dna of the host for each generation, changing them each time.


As you mention predalien and you make it sound like canon, lets have a look.(Myself disagree on it being a queen, but rather a normal xeno that has predator dna and got one of their advantages):
If the predalien is a queen and if they take dna and never reset it: It should have human queen design elements to it due to its previous queen was a human empress. Plus now having predator dna so should be a mix of it and xeno dna but we only have it having predator designs, lack the two secondary arms that a human queen should have and has since chestburster stage so where is the human dna? It also lack much of the old xeno dna as it has no exoskeleton but softer predator skinn that even a 5,56mm assault rifle can pierce and injure, which it cant to human queens, so already here we have it taking dna that didnt make it better: weaker armour compared to normal queens. Also the predator dreadloks, is that an advantage?
And if it is a queen and can eggbarf: why even bother with eggsack when it can reproduce quicker by eggbarfing all hosts it can find, mobile and quicker, already here we have reason to think the queens spawned from this one will completely leave the eggsack stage.

And for the dna: its offspring dont share any predator look or dna but is completely normal human xenos, should also have predator dna if we go after marvels rules of them always keeping the old dna.

From real world genetics, we can look at breeding dogs as example: mixing different breeds of dogs to improve them is at best 50/50% chance, as its as likely the dog offsprings will have bad and good dna, some dog species completely gets ruined by it and its near impossible to revert it, dna isnt going to magically disappear hence the strict laws of mix breeding dogs.
Same is for xenos if there is no reset in the chain: yes it will adapt well and make new and exciting new xeno types but go wrong and you cant revert back.
Now to my example, can look at previous well known examples:
If we have a facehugger impregnate a space jockey, the new queen space jockey hybrid will be 10 times bigger than a normal queen and have a tronk from its mouth to its chest, as we saw in comics and games(infestation). So a queen that is 10 times bigger than normal with space jockey design, great and strong. But if we place said queen on their home planet, it is too big to hide in one of the caves and the smaller xeno predators on its homeplanet will easily take it down as they are too small for it to engage. Or if we place it ona  human spaceship: its too big to fit in corridors or move and its much larger eggs and facehuggers I doubt will be able to fit a human skull.
Just for fun: if we let it somehow be successfull and it impregnates a elephant, and then hmm.....rhino:
We will end up with a queen that is 15 times larger than a normal queen, have the space jockey trunk and elephant horns and a rhino horn on its head and walking on all four with hoves, a much smaller crown due to rhino dna.
Its offsprings will also be a mix of these hybrids so then we humans could just simply get ona  boat and stay out in the sea as they will drown as they cant swim due to not having arms and fingers etc anymore but hoves. on the ground they are mighty although easy to see due to their large size.
As they have hoves we could just simply use the hoves traps farmers use for cows: long bars with space between them, if a cow try to walk over, their hoves will get between and snap their bones, same would happen to a running xeno of this type.
As there is no way to go back to their previous design they will have to live with these strenghts and weaknesses, where as a big chap would been able to be better at all of these situations due to the original xeno design that works well in most situations.

Plus its design would be so damn ugly and long gone is the xeno design, like predalien it would have thick elephant/rhino skinn and hoves and tusks etc, so seeing a original queen design is something that cant ever happen again.

With marvels: they keep their dna and changes more and more into the host it came from, we will have xenomorphs be more like the thing creature than remaining pure xenomorph.

We saw in alienr esurrection how too much human dna changed them, gave them some advantages but also big weaknesses from the human dna. As marvel said: they take more and more dna from their host for each generation. IF I remember it right anchorpointessays.com said they take around 10-15% dna. So if we allow enough time to pass they will change from the xeno design toa  more humanoid design as they gain more and more human dna, hence marvels explanation whyw e see new kind of xenos in their comics, due to them having more dna than normal as they have breed for generations.

Its here I prefer they have a reset, either in the queen or her eggs have a reset: then they can easily adapt to any new world or situation, have predaliens or space jockey xenos etc and if a host gave bad hybrids its easily fixed and we wont risk the xenos changing forever to something else like the thing would do.And we get to keep our classic designs that no artist so far has managed to beat, wake me up when someone has designed a better monster design of the xeno drone or queen, it will be many years I reckon.

I dont see xenos magically can control what dna they take, as we saw in avpR and in resurrection and comics and games: they do take some strenghts from their host but they also get weaknesses from it. One cant eat the cake and have it as they say ;)

Thats my issues with them taking on dna and keeping it and never reset it somewhere, sooner or later we will end up with xenos looking like something else and they can lose the acid for blood or egglaying advantages, David showed in covenant how previous versions didnt have acid and if one play around with dna enough it can be changed, hell we saw in aliens aftermath it didnt have acid anymore. ;)


To be fair: I can see your point too: having the xenos being even better at adaptation and even the queens take dna and make its offspring have it too and keep the dna would make for new and exciting xeno types and deadlier ones, especielly if the xenos somehow can pick and chose from the dna they take(in real world you cant) but looking away from more serious down to earth genetics and follow what marvel comics do, then anything is possible.
And afterall this is a comic and its up to each fan to decide if they see these marvel comics as true alien lore or not.


About the hive mind thing: I dont see why a host get access to the hive mind, its not like the chestburster transform the host and make it to a xeno too, so to me that is just strange and no reason why the xenos would even want the hosts to get access to? Reminds me: a lot of people from colonial marine era said that hosts will get cancer/get sick of the process and die if you remove the chestburster so we have a conflict there.
In alien resurrection its explained why with the cloning process but the star of the marvel comics wasnt cloned, just had his chestburster removed prior to it killing him and the chestburster dont change the hosts dna at all, it takes from the host however, so to me this is just weird, but then again marvels take on xenos is something I disagree on most of the things they do.
Cant recall any host before that had the chestburster removed having access to a alien hive mind or feel its xeno, unless the host itself had xeno dna.
Else it was due to the queens or queen mother affected the hosts/humans to have dreams or visions and make them wanna join the xenos etc.

Engineer

So volume 2 of this series as a TPB is up on Amazon for preorder. Link and product description is below:

Alien Vol. 2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1302926152/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_XM25D207GTPSY7WN740P

" Fresh horror from a galaxy full of nightmares! An off-world terraforming station manned by an Appalachian religious sect has mysteriously sabotaged with an outbreak of Xenomorphs! Now, an aging woman dying from a rare disease must defend her flock against the Aliens — the galaxy's most perfect killing organisms! This gentle soul, facing her last lonely days trapped inside a failing body, must take on a creature that she both hates and envies: the perfectly evolved survivor and "mother." But what at first seemed like a curse may prove to be a blessing in disguise. And Callan will soon find that she still has something worth living for...and worth fighting for!

COLLECTING: Alien (2021) 7-12"

Corporal Hicks

No mention of Gabe in there. Thought he was crashing on their planet?

RidgeTop

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jul 30, 2021, 07:33:38 AM
No mention of Gabe in there. Thought he was crashing on their planet?

We assumed that but it was never confirmed. For all we know his story ends with Vol 1.

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