Finally got around to reading this, and it's... fine?
Like based on the comments I was reading in this thread I was expecting it to be dogshit, and it really isn't.
What I'm going back and forth on is if it's half-baked. At first I thought it was too short, and that 2+ issues would have given things more time to breathe, both in terms of showing the action and allowing for more character interaction and development. And maybe that's still true. I like stories of doomed characters, whether by being a prequel (such as The Thing prequel) or a mid-point story (such as Last Voyage of the Demeter) you know nobody is going to make it out alive right from the start, but what's interesting and important is how they get to that end point, how the chess pieces move around to reach in the interim to get to their final known positions.
In that regard, I think the Romulus prequel comic works. Things seemed like they moved a little too fast at first based on the timeline presented in the movie (such as the mouse being injected with black goo literally moments after Big Chap escapes), but when you think about it that's kind of how it would have had to play out - the mouse mutating into a tentacle monster had to have happened after everyone was either out of the room or dead, and Rook couldn't have known about it or he'd know his research was flawed and problematic, which means it must have happened when shit was going down and Rook didn't have access to the lab. That means that everything must have gone down very quickly, both from the moment Big Chap wakes up to the moment he's killed (he couldn't have lingered very long killing people one by one, that takes too long, but we also know the gestation timeline of the Romulus facehuggers so we know how quickly things would have to happen once facehuggers get loose and start impregnating other people) as well as from the moment the mouse is injected until it turns into a tentacle monster, because we've got a pretty good idea of how long it takes for black goo to f**k creatures up based on Romulus and the other movies.
So I'm not sure how much more they could have allowed things to breathe given how quickly everything had to go down without it seeming like boring filler, although to be fair the first 2/5 of 'Alien' is essentially "boring filler" by modern filmmaking standards but it's also essential to building the setting and characters and it's why the movie works so well.
The artwork was fine. It was easy enough to follow what was going on, although Rook not actually looking like Ian Holm was a little wack but ultimately I got over it pretty quick.
The comic does seem to highlight an important distinction between Ash and Rook that the movie touches on, though. Rook seems to care about humans (and in the bigger picture, humanity) even if he ultimately likely has overriding Company mandates independent of his opinions. Ash on the other hand was almost entirely dictated by his Company mandates to the point of murdering the crew, even if he did show flourishes of genuine curiosity about the Alien creature. I just thought that was interesting.
I do wish the comic had shown the how and when of when Renaissance Station relocated to above the planet in Romulus. It seemed to totally skip that but at the same time it must have been shortly before the events of the movie. The comic just seems to skip that detail entirely.
Overall the comic is fine. The art works, it hits (almost) all of the memorable "setup" bits to tie into the movie, it doesn't overstay its welcome even if it probably could have been 1 issue longer. It doesn't feel superfluous nor does it feel like essential reading to comprehend the movie. It gets the job done. I don't mind buying or reading it.
