Aliens Omnibus, Vol. 1

When the relatively unknown Dark Horse comics picked up the torch for Aliens in 1989, fans of the classic sci-fi series were in for a real treat. What followed in years to come was a series of stories that were largely hit-and-miss...some of the stories were excellent, while others were mediocre at best. Others still were too bad to mention, playing on traditional comic book fatantasticism to create new spins on the Alien mythos that made purists like myself hang their heads in shame. What the Aliens Omnibus: Volume 1 collects is the greatest of all the Aliens comics...the first wave written as direct sequels to the 1986 cinema classic, "Aliens".

Long-time fans of the Dark Horse Aliens series will be happy to see these great collections in one volume. When I look back and realize that I've been following these comics for nearly 20 years, going to the comic book store with my dad when I was just a kid to pick them up, I still can't beleive that it's actually been so long. What I find more amazing is that even in my mid 20's, I can still remember half of these comics, panel-to-panel and word-to-word...which is where my utter confusion set-in.

Fans and collectors should know immediately...these comics are NOT the same comics that you read 15-20 years prior. Being that they were originally written as direct sequels to the events of Aliens, the star characters of these comics were Corporal Hicks and Newt. What we will find right away upon opening up the Omnibus is that we're not reading the tale of Hicks and Newt anymore, but of "Wilks" and "Billie" respectively.

Apparently, in 1996 Dark Horse re-released and re-mastered the original 3 stories, changing the names of certain characters, re-writing dialog and completely redrawing and re-inking many panels. The story, while realtively similar, has also been re-worked to incorporate these changes. To differentiate Newt from "Billie", Newt was redrawn with slightly more gaunt features and brunette hair. Wilks looks pretty much the same as Hicks, except for the name change. These changes precipitate quite a few inconsistencies in the rest of the stories contained in the Omnibus.

As I mentioned earlier, those of us who have already read these comics in their original form may remeber certain story elements and events that occur within the comic, and find that those events no longer happen in this Omnibus. I specifically remember Ripley being coerced into helping the Company with a plan to capture the Aliens, or they would wake either Hicks or Newt out of hypersleep to do it instead. I also recall an exchange between Newt and Ripley, in which Newt strikes Ripley across the face, demanding to know why she left her alone. So we are looking at more than cosmetic or character name changes here...we're now looking at an entirely different story altogether. Further adding to the confusion is the appearence of Billie in Female War (the third part), who now sports a blonde hair color and even goes by "Newt" in at least 1 or 2 panels.

Regardless of these heavy edits, this is a great collection of comics that Aliens fans will love. When you look at it as being an "alternate reality" to the existing Aliens mythos, it is very simple to look past all of the changes and inconsistencies with the established Alien/Aliens mvoies. Unfortunately, due to the events of Alien 3, Dark Horse felt the need to make these changes for the re-release, and this collection reflects those changes.

For those of you who have the original comics, hang on to them! Now that they've become so rare and hard to find, you're probably looking at some great collector's items in the future (even if comic books are not appreciating in value as much as they used to). For those younger fans who are not familiar with the originals, or those of you who are just discovering these classic tales, by all means pick this up! You're treated to 3 great stories, plus a very interesting follow-up tale. Sadly, this Omnibus does not collect the individual cover art for each part, which would have been a nice addition. I beleive there is an Aliens compendium of art from the comics that includes the cover art, where you may find it.

Great colors, great reading and a great price make this a must-have for Aliens fans...don't miss it!

This came out soon after the AvP Omnibus and includes the original trilogy of Aliens stories and two shorts. Originally, these were released before 1992, but then Hicks and Newt were killed off and for some reason Dark Horse thought they had to change their names to better fit continuity. It's kind of annoying, I just want to white out their names and change them back to Hicks and Newt because there are points where it's really hard to justify the name changes.

Outbreak
Outbreak (especially in the context of the first two movies) is a really interesting story. It's a 6 issue, so it's longer than normal. It picks up after Aliens now that Newt and Hicks, sorry Wilks and Billie have returned to Earth. Billie is in a psych ward and Wilks is in jail. What pisses me off is that Ripley's name stays the same. So Dark Horse changes the names to go with the continuity, but not Ripley's... The only way I can justify the name changes is to say that they've changed their names legally to escape from Weyland Yutani. Anyway, as the story starts there's no direct Xenomorph threat. That's what really made this story different from the first two movies. It would've made a good miniseries adaptation because it has an episodic feel. It's more of a sci-fi drama than a horror as well. There's a lot of good character development and when the Xenomorphs finally start taking over the planet, the story has a very epic feel. I mean epic. This is a very good graphic novel.
4/5

Nightmare Asylum
Alright, if there is one graphic novel that totally dominates the others, this is it. I read one of the original non-edited copies a long time ago and was totally blown away. The artwork is absolutely amazing and the story and atmosphere feel very much like the second movie. It picks up right where the first one left off and continues as Wilks and Billie, and their new android friend Bueller escape Earth's infestation and find themselves at a Colonial Marine research station headed by an insane General trying to train Aliens to take back the Earth. The writing of this installment is genius and that helpe to make it very captivating. I wish it was equal in length to Outbreak, than it would truly be perfect. This is a reason alone to buy this book.
5/5

Female War
This picks up a little after the second story now that Ripley has returned. There is some lazy editing throughout with several references to Newt and Hicks that pop up later. This story is ugly to look at after the fantastic art of the second story, and also has no real likeable characters. The story becomes confusing and...let me stop myself. Female War just sucks. It's widely known to be one of the worst entries in the series and it definitely is.
2/5

Theory of Alien Propagation
This is a short that's supposed to be an exerpt from the crazy doctor responsible for the outbreak in the first story. It deals with theories on alien propagation.
3/5

The Alien
This brings back the same Space Jockey that appeared in Outbreak and I believe who showed up in Female War. It's weird, interesting, I don't know what to say. There's sort of a diplomatic meeting between him and the President that doesn't necessarily go as planned.

Overall, this is a good book. Strangeness aside, it's good for Aliens fans. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to anyone, but it is worth buying for Aliens fans.

ALIENS, first released in the 80's as a military-horror that further advanced the story of ALIEN and also furthered the lore of ALIEN propagation.

This ALIENS Omnibus was Darkhorse's first run at a comic series designed to be a sequel to the ALIEN movies long before Alien 3 and throws us into the void that is known as the ALIEN universe. This massive book, totaled at 384 pages brings to life the characters developed in the movie ALIENS. It begins with a female named Billie (An older Newt) who was a victim of an overrun colony, RIM (LV-426), who is thought to be insane by the general public. As such, she is institutionalized and is tormented by vicious visions of the Alien. The story is also about a war hero named Wilks (Cpl.Hicks) who saved Billie on RIM and lost his entire squad because of the Alien threat. The military deems him insane as well, but is placed into a prison. Throught the book we learn through a series of events that the earth's military wants to breed the Aliens for biological weapons. All in all, things go very wrong and the biggest mistake in human history happens.

The names were changed after Alien 3, when the comics were no longer canon, that's okay however because the stories are all excellent even if the names are different. To this day I still feel that these stories hold up better than Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection. For fans of series, especially those who were rather disappointed with those movies, will be happy to know that the comic does a rather great job of story telling that makes you empathize with a lot, if not all of the characters. This book alone could become an Alien movie as it is that epic and well done.

The artwork for the first few stories aren't the greatest, but the Nightmare Asylum story however, looks amazing and is still my favorite ALIEN book. All of the stories in this omnibus are connected and do a good job of building upon each other. Darkhorse at this time created their own ALIENS connected universe of sorts which also share a timeline with their Predator and Aliens vs Predator omnibuses.

Darkhorse has recently reprinted these stories in other formats, probably called the original comics or the essential comics, so if this book is hard to find you can still find them today.

This is a must have for ALIENS fans, I don't care if the names were changed in this edition, I still like to think that Newt and Hicks lived on which is what makes this omnibus special to me.

It was a period of hell at Fox Studios between 1986 and 1992, James Cameron's squeal to the first "Alien" movie was a massive hit and it earn it's lead actress a Best Actress nomination from the Academy. Lighting had struck twice, a decade earlier Fox earn big bucks with the "Star Wars" trilogy, and it seemed like it was going to score another big time trilogy.

How seldom is it that dreams come true.

Fox Studios began fumbling over it's own feet. Close to a dozen scripts where written by ten different people over the next six years including scifi master William Gibson. They had to settle on a first time director and a mishmash of script, resulting in a lack-luster movie that left many fans with a bitter taste in their mouths.

During all these, a very good story was over looked.

In 1989 a new comic book company called Dark Horse, located in the sleepy suburb of Portland Oregon, scored a major licensing coup and got the rights to publish "Alien/Aliens" comic books. What they created in that year is what should have been the third and four and possible fifth alien films.

Between 89 and 90 Dark Horse published a trilogy that puts the characters of Hicks and Newt center stage, pen by veteran comic, film and television writer Mark Verheiden and illustrated by three different artist, this trilogy shifts the focus from Ripley to Hicks and Newt.

Starting ten years after the events of "Aliens" Hicks is a disillusions soldier, still stuck at the rank of corporal, and Newt is confined to mental hospital. Hick is given a chance to face his demons buy going to a newly discovered planet that had has the xenomorph monsters, the governments wants specimens but tells Hicks he can go on a rampage and kill everything on the planet after the mission is complete. Before going off on the mission Hicks gets wind of Newts confinement and up coming lobotomy. Not wanting the death of his fallow marines a decade earlier, Hicks breaks Newt out and smugglers her aboard, the mission to the alien planet takes an big turn as the Weyland-Yutani ship boarded with mercenary intercepts and captures the Marine ship, their reasoning, WY already has an Alien Queen on earth and want to keep their monopoly on a potential bio weapons market.

It all goes down hill from there.

This story arch is told across about fourteen issues divided into three parts with a lot of plot and themes mixed in these books, these aren't just straight up action or horror, it has deep themes about greed and survival and megalomania.

If Fox realized that these books excisted and adapted them, they would have a consumer gold mine on their hands.

Having not grown up in the time these were released I was finally happy to have been able to read these in one big collection. The story is connected throughout the entire Omnibus which is good for a continuous read. Personally I loved Nightmare Asylum's art style the best, none of them are that bed except maybe Female War for me personally, it's just preference so if you don't mind it good for you, and I'm glad you're fine with it. There are small details I noticed that are kind of strange all of which are name changes to fan favorite characters and even a location. Hick's who's full name is Dwayne Hicks is now Wilks, and Rebecca or Newt as she's known to by fans is now some other name I can't remember, and finally LV-426 which in lore I've known about goes by another name Acheron is now Rim in this Omnibus. Not having read the original comics I can't confirm if these name changes were there originally. I actually think they just randomly changed the names for no reason other than maybe trying to distance itself from actually being cut out of canon thanks to Alien 3 but even then the character Ripley calls the girl Newt, and Wilks has the Nametag on his shirt Hicks in one of the panels so the effort to change names is pointless. Other than these flaws besides some strange plot points that I'd rather not spoil for anyone who wants to read it, it's a very interesting read I absolutely love how grim it feels at times, hope to get another copy as I lost mine to a fire a year ago, and to get the other volumes as soon as possible to see what else they've done with the Alien franchise.

I am more than familiar with the stories, I had the first prints in high school. At somepoint I got rid of them. Just recently I wanted the first two stories again. So I figured this would be the way to go. However...

Problem 1) The original first two stories that are in this omnibus were made prior to Alien 3. They featured Newt and Hicks as the main characters. Now this omnibus has been edited since the events in A3 dont marry up with the stories. Newt and Hicks are now Billie and Wilks.

Problem 2) (Biggest problem) I dont know if it was a bad run of these prints or just mine. But, the is a section in the middle of the omnibus, right through book 2 where pages are loose, loose and miscut, attached and registration marks are visable up the edge of the page. It could be a fluke.

Classics for anyone who grew up on the Aliens mythos and fans of the 90s. I collected many of these comics when I was a youth of the 90s (what a wonderful time that was) so it was very nostalgic and deeply entertaining to read some of these old Alien comics, some all the way from 1988, that have stood the test of time, just like the wonderful films these comics are based on. A must have for any Aliens or Dark Horse fan.

I'm a huge Alien fan. It was with great reverence I opened this book, hearing that it was a continuation of the Aliens movie. Granted, the names are changed, I read the stories as though the characters were Hicks and Newt. And I was disappointed. Story after story seemed disjointed. These books came off as some kind of high concept, deep psyche melodrama that just annoyed me rather than drove me to turn pages. To me, Alien 3 was better entertainment. It at least had clarity and focus.

I've read the book adaptation of these graphic novels by Steve Perry (Book 1: Earth Hive, Book 2: Nightmare Asylum, and Book 3: The Female War), and the books were much, much better. I'd always been interested in reading the source material, and while somewhat interesting, they're not nearly as good as the books.

PROS:
* It's kind of cool to see what some of the scenes were intended to look like (although not always).
* Kind of entertaining.

CONS:
* Different teams wrote each graphic-novel book, resulting in a wildly inconsistent user experience.
* It's clear that the graphic novels were retrofitted after their initial publication to replace Hicks and Newt with Wilks and Billie, this due presumably to the release of the Alien3 movie, which killed off Hicks and Newt (a dumb move, but this is a rant for another time); the resemblance of Wilks to Hicks is obvious, and they even mention some of the Aliens marines, like Vasquez. And yet, the graphic novel tries to make you believe that Wilks and Billie aren't Hicks and Newt. For me, it doesn't work - it's glaringly obvious, and it ruins the story. Oh, and Ripley makes an appearance, although it's not clear how, and it's not clear where Hicks and Newt are (i.e., are they dead, and if so, why isn't Ripley dead.) The books, on the other hand, covered over this incongruity much more smoothly, resulting in consistent, seamless stories that made sense.
* Some of the storytelling is just really confusing and disjointed. There are some parts where I'm not really sure what's going on, or who's who. At times it seems the artists tried to be stylistically creative, leading to this confusion on the part of the reader, when instead relying on some basic narration and story / scene-setup would have better served the reader. Being artsy just because you can isn't always a good thing.

Okay, I can't argue with the other reviewers. Their reviews are spot on. I never saw the original comics so I can't say anything about them. I'll just give you my opinions of this omnibus.

This is a quality book. All of the pages are clay faced and are made of good quality paper. No complaints about the physical quality of the book. I was very impressed.

The stories are great. No complaints there either. I have the "Nightmare Asylum" book and read it many years ago. When I got this compilation I immediately read this story and it alone is worth the price of the compilation. I then went back and reread the book and found that the story is pretty close to the book. Great! Still no complaints. The rest of the stories are good also.

The artwork is out of this world. Again, the artwork alone is worth the price. I can't say enough about the artwork and the clay faced pages really added to the experience.

So what is my problem? Why did they have to change the names of Hicks and Newt? I was very confused at first and had to bang my head against the wall several times to get everything straight. (Don't worry the bruises have healed by now.) And why did Billie/Newt have to be portrayed to look so damn sexy. Her body was really trying hard to get out of her shirts. Okay, maybe they felt they had to do it to sell comics (?) or maybe it was expected but COME ON this was a little bit much. Don't get me wrong - I am a dirty old man and like looking at the ladies as much as the next guy but this really ruined my idea of Newt as an innocent little girl.

What else do I have to complain about? The stories are confusing at best. I like to think I am pretty intelligent but I had trouble keeping up with the events. This may be my own problem. I won't know until I read these stories a second or a third time.

Overall, I would recommend this omnibus highly. It was VERY entertaining. I am a huge fan of the "Alien" series and this omnibus gave me some more "story" to add to it. You can't go wrong if you decide to buy it.