New Beginnings - Alien Versus Predator: Fire and Stone #1

by Matt Puddy

And so another piece of the Fire and Stone puzzle to slot into the bigger picture. Born originally from a crossover of two strong franchises, Alien vs Predator was a geeky marriage in heaven which went on to spawn films, books, comics and video games.

Dark Horse has once again included it in the various threads of a bigger Alien story arc. But - and here is a slightly tricky aspect - its inclusion in the Fire and Stone continuity is not from the start of all hell breaking loose. Much like the weird aunt and uncle at a family wedding, it arrives late to the main event but well before the evening reception. Placed after issue #4 of Prometheus: Fire and Stone (and subsequently Aliens: Fire and Stone as a result) but completely before Predator: Fire and Stone  #1, this issue suffers quite a bit from leaving the reader in an occasional state of “what exactly has happened here?”

Now I do understand and appreciate that this style of storytelling can pique interest in readers, as it promotes so many questions about what has gone on in the parallel stories, but for me, on this occasion the leap made is too big. 

Loosely speaking the situation in the story is such that we can identify with the characters physically but their personalities in some cases are compromised to such a degree that they are different entirely. Francis is now a captive with an almost subservient manner to him, and Eldon is a completely different entity to how we first met him. Don’t get me wrong, I want to know how he got to be what he is now - with the new growths, protrusions and aliens in tow - but I can’t see him as the artificial human that started the trip in the first place. I also have no clue as to why he is so desperate to retrieve and reunite with Francis as well. (Some of that journey begins in this week's Prometheus #2 which Matt has yet to read due to a business trip, BF.)

The plot is primarily an aftermath explanation that goes out of control. While trying to escape with both Francis and an alien weapon in their custody, the inhabitants of the ship find themselves at the mercy of Eldon. He controls the Helios which in turn has power over their ship. However, as we are dealing with mercenaries here the options are simple. Stay alive by handing over Francis.

This would have all gone smoothly (and made for an awfully short comic!), had this simply happened but unbeknownst to everyone, sci-fi’s favourite hunters had also set their eyes on the ship as a hunt. The Predator's breach of the hull didn’t go unnoticed and the subsequent alarm sets everyone on edge, spinning matters out of control. A deranged android leading a group of xenomorphs on a hide and seek raid of the ship quickly ensues.

With the xenomorphs running amok on the ship, it’s easy for the stealth suited hunting party to make their advances as well. Everything culminates in a variety of face offs and preambles to fighting with poor Francis just hiding for his life. The apparent prize of it all.

Ariel Olivetti has done a cracking job of bringing Christopher Sebela’s writing to life. I really like the artwork. It has energy conveyed through the clean lines and sharp shapes, with the colouring adding more depth. There is even the odd frame that, conversely, does a lot with zero background or using a silhouette, instead of flooding the frame with details letting the readers mind fill in the rest.

Putting aside the continuity I really liked this comic and can envisage that I will like it more when I’ve collected them all and re-read them in a more structured fashion. Fire and Stone is shaping up to be a superb event series.

Matt Puddy had a tough decision between the first episode of Gotham and the start of the new series of The Walking Dead earlier this week.

New Beginnings - Aliens: Fire and Stone #1

by Matt Puddy

When Prometheus: Fire And Stone came out we looked at how the universe around humanity was changed after learning that the creators weren’t so benevolent.  We saw the good Doctor Shaw and her alien head inadvertently lead a new team of scientists in their quest for knowledge. This week we see the same foreboding planet but from a very different perspective. Although it's part of the same arc as Prometheus, the one thing to remember is that this takes place before last week's comic in the grand scheme of things. With that it also answers a few questions too.

Chris Roberson – an author who was essentially a late bloomer in the comic world – takes a trip from the ill fated LV-426 in the wake of the alien ship being discovered and the xenomorphs awoken and onto a strange new planet.

Opening in the midst of a crisis, you - as the reader - are given very little aside from a brutal death and a lot of panic. With barely a narrator to bring you rapidly up to speed ,you find yourself in a pivotal point in the struggle for life and hopefully an escape from arguably the most deadly species in the known galaxy.

Characters are fleetingly introduced and a plan is quickly formulated. It’s clear that staying in Hadley’s Hope is a death sentence and the local area is just as bad so the only option is space. Jumping onto a ship that will only just get them in and out of orbit, a hasty escape is made at the considerable cost of human life.

The nice thing I liked about this is that with a small bit of magic Roberson fits this story into current cannon. As fans of the film will know in Aliens all of the colonists were either killed or captured by the Xenomorphs before the USCM arrive. However, fans will then think back to the film and realise that this was only alluded to and never confirmed leaving this convenient gap to be exploited.

After a bumpy exit and an even harder arrival on the local moon provides more surprises instead of solace. A previously thought uninhabitable moon with no atmosphere now has a wild and thriving jungle. Unfortunately instead of having time to inspect the new and unexpected surroundings, all hell breaks loose as their makeshift escape craft not only saved them but it also brought stowaways.

On an alien moon, with a biosphere that shouldn’t be there, with limited supplies and a predatory race of creatures hunting them what is there to do? Well now we know how the xenomorphs got to that moon, this series sets to find out what happened next.

The writing moves fast, but it has to so that it provides a feeling of panic which is what the story requires, at least in the first act that is. The lull in the story when the metaphorical breath is taken is only the calm before the storm, as then the pace picks up once again. There isn’t really time for character development as a result though, except for the bare minimum in occasional cases. This in itself provides a good vehicle for highlighting the main protagonists in the story, developing their personalities for the readers in a high pressured situation shows them in the true light.

Artistically the style is what I would describe as typical Dark Horse Aliens comics. Reynolds is a Dark Horse veteran with his accolades covering some of their big titles like Hellboy, showing that he has a diverse range as well. The images are clear, although not clean, and full of detail especially with the mechanical aspects (I liked the ship even though it is very boxy) and the xenomorphs are very Gigeresque and true to their type, so my fanboy side was happy.

All together this is kind of what I expected from Dark Horse as a new title and I was happily impressed as a result. Fans of the series will follow suit I would hope. I liked how it’s already tying in with the other story and we still have AVP and Predator to go too. All of these titles already on my pulllist!

Matt Puddy is keen to find out what happens next and with Alien Isolation out next week, it's a great time to be a fan!

New Beginnings - Prometheus: Fire and Stone #1

by Matt Puddy

Back in the days of VHS videos and slightly less than strictly adhered to film certificate laws, I came across a film that changed my appreciation of science fiction forever – Aliens. I quickly followed it up by finding and watching the original and then over the coming (I’m sad to say this) decades I have followed the Alien and Predator franchises in almost all forms of media including the games.

So now this week we have Prometheus: Fire and Stone. Following on from the renowned head-scratcher of a film (for both its setup and amazement at why one person couldn’t run sideways in the face of a crashing spaceship), the comic takes up almost where it left off and stays in canon.

Paul Tobin’s story opens prior to the Prometheus film, with a probe scouring an apparently dead planet only to see it smashed under foot of one of the Engineers. Skipping forward 129 years to a point not long after Aliens, scientific curiosity has once again got the better of mankind. Following up on the probe’s findings - and also the reports of a crashed and more importantly salvageable craft - a team are led to LV-233 with everything being chronicled by filmmaker Clara Atkinson.

After a brief introduction to all of the crew, and some of their peculiarities, the party heads down to the surface. Things are not right almost from the very beginning. What was considered a barren desert planet has a thriving jungle ecosystem, contrary to what should be there. Strange creatures and insects aside they continue their foraging in search of the ship. Stranger sights are still afoot, but eventually they find their prize - a completely intact ship, apparently from the ill-fated LV-426 (Hadley’s Hope). But they have no idea what is waiting inside for them. As the reader though, you can see exactly what lies behind door number one. A dormant but deadly batch of xenomorphs.

The story has a very familiar feel to it, and is written in a similar style to Alien and Aliens. There are a few scenes which could have been transplanted from either film; for example the meet and greet, which has overtones of both the dinner scene from Alien and the military briefing in Aliens.

From a scripting point of view the story is easy to read and flows throughout through the narrative lens of the filmmaker. What I did notice though is that this is almost an optical illusion, seeing as it doesn’t actually cover that much, although what it does it does well.

Artistically, Juan Ferreyra’s work is quite good. There is a gritty differential to the camera feed and equally a huge diverse appearance in the jungle. He also has a clear skill for new phylum in the xenobiology depictions. I liked his work overall but did feel that occasionally there could have been some more definition and detail as some of the frames were a little soft for my liking.

Overall this is exactly what I would have expected from a Dark Horse title continuing their good run with the Aliens and Predator franchises. I will caveat that by repeating I am a big fan of the films, books, comics and games (yes, even Colonial Marines) and so this was an easy choice for me.

For any other fans this is also a sure win, with three linked miniseries ready to bloom across all of the other brands.

Matt Puddy is looking forward to the new BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Good Omens.

Proud Lion's Christmas Gift Guide, part one - The Walking Dead & other scares

So here it is, Merry Christmas, everybody's having fun… until they go into the town centre to do some shopping, then it becomes a bit of a nightmare. Some of us now do it all online, which is great until some lamentable error with the courier sees your carefully chosen items failing to arrive, or turning up damaged.

Have no fear though, your friendly neighbourhood comic shop is here with a more personal touch to shopping. Pop in and we'll do whatever we can to find the perfect gift for your comic-book-reading, action-figure-covetting, fantasy-daydreaming, sci-fi swashbuckling loved ones!

Over the next few weeks, I'll be serving up a few great gift ideas from the carefully selected items we have in stock. To start off with - and to celebrate the mid-season finale airing this week - we have various Walking Dead merchandise, along with other horror genre gift ideas.

THE WALKING DEAD MONOPOLY BOARD GAME - £35

It's the classic family board game, themed to fit Robert Kirkman's zombie apocalypse with some amazing playing pieces including Michonne's katana, Rick's hat and Dale's RV. Currency has been replaced with supplies. Houses are walls and hotels are guard towers. Chance cards become Scavenge cards, and the Community Chest cards are Supply Chest cards. Income Tax has been replaced with Herd, the Luxury Tax has been replaced with Protection. A fun spin on an old favourite!

THE WALKING DEAD THE BEST DEFENSE BOARD GAME- £33

(with free limited edition promo cards while stocks last!)

In this survival board game, players must cooperate in order to defend their locations from Walkers and other, more-human horrors. Playing as key characters from The Walking Dead, one acts as the leader, making decisions in order to maintain supplies and protect resources - but those decisions can be ignored, at a price, particularly if they prove to be detrimental to your character's ulterior motive. The ultimate goal is to survive; how you manage that is up to you. Featuring superior production values to Cryptozoic's previous Walking Dead games, this looks like the zombie apocalypse's answer to the fabulous Battlestar Galactica co-op board game.

THE WALKING DEAD TV SERIES

MERLE & DARYL DIXON ACTION FIGURES 2 PACK - £35

Everyone's favourite zombie-killing rednecks are back, in tiny posable plastic form! Featuring Daryl's trademark crossbow and capturing his older brother's inimitable bad attitude, McFarlane Toys bring you the ultimate family reunion for Christmas Day! Daryl sold out in record time when he was released on his own a while back and now goes for silly money on eBay, so this a great and affordable way to own your very own Norman Reedus.  

THE LAST OF US AMERICAN DREAMS TP - £13

Any fans of the hit Playstation 3 game should definitely get their hands on this. American Dreams, co-written by the game's creative director Neil Druckmann, is a charming, if bleak, insight into Ellie's past, introducing new characters as well as drawing in a few familiar faces. The story gives a taste of her military school days and her initial encounter with the Fireflies and their leader Marlene. Of particular interest to players will be Ellie's first meeting with her friend Riley and their first adventure sneaking out of the school looking for freedom, beginning a pattern of thrill-seeking that presumably leads to the horrific encounter Ellie describes in a couple of memorable scenes in the game. All of this graphic novel takes place before the forthcoming DLC (with the players assuming the role of Ellie and accompanied by Riley) currently expected to be released during the holiday season. This is the perfect accompaniment to the Naughty Dog triumph.

MARVEL ZOMBIES ULTIMATE COLLECTION VOL 01 TP - £26

Ah, Marvel Zombies! A few years ago, this was one of those eureka comics book moments, where an idea emerges that is so captivating it makes you wonder why it hadn't been done before. First introduced in Mark Millar's run on Ultimate Fantastic Four, the initial reveal of the undead versions of classic Marvel characters was a jaw-dropping piece of misdirection. The subsequent Marvel Zombies miniseries capitalised on the concept, with The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman at the helm, ensuring a certain shambling authenticity to the whole undertaking. Sadly, later volumes went off the rails a bit, but this newly released Ultimate Collection contains the initial offerings and none of the later nonsense making this a must-have volume for anyone who has yet to experience the magnificent Marvel Zombies. Highly recommended!

ALIENS GENOCIDE 7" ACTION FIGURES 2 PACK - £37

In the years between the excellent Aliens film and the appalling Prometheus train wreck, Dark Horse Comics published a series of wonderful Aliens comics including the wonderful Genocide miniseries. This four issue comic story, featured a human expedition funded by a billionaire with dubious motives travelling to a xenomorph world to capture a live Queen, only come face-to-face with a planet torn apart by two warring tribes of berserk xenomorphs - one breed of black aliens and the others a vibrant red. A truly memorable Aliens story that is now celebrated in these two excellent NECA action figures.

Watch this space with more wonderful Christmas gift ideas!

The Watcher - Prometheus

I was so excited for Prometheus. Late April, on my Twitter page, I proclaimed that I was besotted with it in fact - a dirty little secret I felt I'd been keeping from the Avengers movie.

So perhaps it's my fault. Maybe I overhyped the return of Ridley Scott to the Weyland-Yutani universe and the sci-fi horror genre. I've done it before - I was stupidly excited about Avatar, then I saw it and hated it. I've still not forgiven James Cameron if I'm honest. stupid blue Smurfs in space, clumsily reinterpreting The Last Of The Mohicans. And don't get me started on the clumsy foreshadowing dialogue and the bestiality. That's right, if Avatar is your favourite movie - take another look. They have sex with animals. Kinda.

Now, I'm not quite so furious about Prometheus. I'm just disappointed.

The film opens with beautiful shots of stunning vistas, and it continues to look incredible throughout. The 3D is the best I've ever seen - better even than Avatar (it does, I can begrudgingly admit, have that one redeeming feature). The holographic recordings of the Engineers - as the humanoids like the Space Jockey from Alien are revealed to be called - really stand out on the frame, in a way that truly enhances these effects. The set design is superb too - with a great contrast between the interior of the Prometheus and the alien structure on the planet they reach. And the music is great - riffing off science fiction exploration scores similar to Star Trek before transforming into something altogether more intense and evocative in the third act.

Sadly these aesthetics cannot hide the film's massive flaw. Unlike the story of Alien - and it's successor Aliens - which seamlessly integrates the set pieces into a constantly advancing narrative with unfolding revelations, Prometheus feels like a patchwork quilt with set pieces surviving from previous drafts, despite the fact that the surrounding exposition has been lost.

The plot holes are bigger than the chestburster hole in that original Space Jockey back in 1979. The story in a nutshell is that the Engineers created life on Earth (and I felt the implication was other worlds as well) and were then looking for the perfect way to destroy these original experiments with new biological warfare. Unfortunately they lost control of these new weapons - which essentially boil down to a mutagenic black goo - and almost all of the Engineers at this research facility were killed. Fine in theory and almost intriguing. Their motivations are never clearly explained in this film - lazily setting up a sequel, which I wouldn't have a huge problem with if this had been billed as two films from the start like the upcoming Hobbit films.

The parallels between the Engineers creating life on Earth and the humans creating synthetics is briefly explored and is the one real triumph of Prometheus. Michael Fassbender shines as David, delivering a wonderful performance. "Why do you think your people made me?" he asks. "We made you because we could," he is told. Looking away, David offers this simple observation - "Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you, to hear the same thing from your creator?" For me, it's this fascinating heart of the film that kept it from being a rage-inducing disaster like Avatar.

Unfortunately, there's so much nonsense surrounding it. Aside from David, almost every other character spends the first act speaking utter bollocks. They all sound like they are characters in a cheesy movie - a far cry from the effortlessly believable dialogue in Alien that established a credible class system on the Nostromo. I admit in Alien that crew had been together for sometime - mining in deep space - and that the crew of the Prometheus were essentially just meeting each other for the first time, straight out of stasis. And it is a nice touch that this earlier version of stasis can cause vomiting and muscle wastage.

There's also a very clumsy seduction scene that - whilst it does serve to underline how vehemently one character hates being compared to another, which is of some importance later - is really just there to take two characters off the bridge before a critical moment of horror afflicts the two most annoying members of the crew.

This brings me to the monsters. There are at least five different deadly alien mutations in the film and none of them have the same iconic impact of Giger's original xenomorph creatures. The creature that Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw cuts out of herself (in a ridiculously contrived torture porn sequence that felt like an older director trying to prove he could keep up with the nonsense peddled by modern horror filmmakers) is essentially a cephalopod that grows to an enormous size. If the original facehugger creature was an attempt to elicit a fear of mouth rape with a phallus, I can only conclude that when the giant cephalopod is later unleashed on another antagonist, this was an attempt to invoke images of a human vulva. Very strange and extremely clumsy when once again compared to Giger's uniquely disturbing sexual imagery.

Guy Pearce's role is ruined by the most unconvincing old man special effects makeup I've seen in a long time - it's saying something when the BBC can do better on a TV budget in Doctor Who. The resulting appearance popped me out of the reality of any scene he was in, destroying my suspension of disbelief almost entirely.

The finale is a welcome crescendo of set pieces that feels like the most tightly scripted act of the whole film. The remaining crew of the Prometheus sacrifice themselves and their ship to stop the one surviving Engineer from flying to Earth (in one of the horseshoe shaped ships previously glimpsed as a derelict in Alien) to wipe out humanity. Two and a half crew members survive (it was inevitable that would David would be reduced to just a head, but it is lovely that the resulting cranium is so reminiscent of Ash) long enough to see the alien spaceship crash back to the planet in a stunning sequence.

As much as I'm clearly judging Prometheus against it's forebear, I could have done without the somewhat out of place callbacks to Alien, as Shaw becomes the lone female survivor stalked around an escape pod before recording an audio message as the "last survivor". It does little to mask the fact that the audience aren't getting any further explanations until Ridley Scott deigns to shoot a sequel - and with him currently touting a new Blade Runner project it could be a long wait before we get to see more of the Engineers and learn more about their real motivations.

Which is why Prometheus is so disappointing. The idea of pulling the Space Jockey into the spotlight and exploring just exactly what its role was in Alien was tantalisingly appealing. Taking it further and transcending the events of Alien and Aliens - elevating these giant humanoids to the role of Creators - was the promise of true science fiction that gave me chills and had me so damn excited. Exploring the contrast between ethical science for the pursuit of knowledge versus the ethos of "because we can, therefore we must, no matter the cost" was a fascinating basis for a thought provoking film.

Instead sadly, Prometheus is a beautiful mess. An unfinished symphony that can possibly be redeemed or further damned by the potential sequel. I guess time will tell.

Ben Fardon hopes Damon Lindelof is not involved in any follow up... 

The Watcher Retrospective - Alien Director's Cut

It's fair to say that I'm very excited right now. Excitement that even the Avengers movie couldn't dampen, despite seeing it three times at the cinema (which those who know me will agree is unheard of)!

In just over two weeks, acclaimed director Ridley Scott returns to the science fiction genre with Prometheus, his first such movie in almost two decades. Well, slightly less than that if you count 2003, when he returned to the 1979 film for the DVD Director's Cut. For many, Ridley Scott pioneered the home release Director's Cut approach, beginning with the Blade Runner Director's Cut in 1992. The same year saw James Cameron return to Aliens and give it similar treatment, but Alien languished in its original cut for another nine years.

Languished? Yes indeed. I watched Alien and Aliens at some happy moment in my teenage years, I forget exactly when. I was left with both true fear and fascination for the xenomorph creatures, but I have to say that my preference was for Aliens. I tried to like Alien more, especially as I grew older and became a Film Studies student. Film scholars and critics will tell you that Alien is a loftier film, with better direction and true suspense, but with each repeat viewing I became more and more convinced that the science fiction action of Aliens was more to my taste. After all, Cameron's Director's Cut is incredible, balancing brutal action and nerve-wracking terror with smart characterisation and nuanced performances.

Then came the ridiculously named Alien Quadrilogy boxset and news that Ridley Scott had contributed a Director's Cut of the movie that gestated the franchise. The film was restored and remastered and an infamous deleted scene was restored, as Ripley encounters two members of the crew seemingly transforming into eggs.

And yet the finished movie was shorter than the original theatrical version. Ridley Scott took out more than he restored, shortening scenes for a very specific reason.

When Alien came out it was filled with tension and had audiences on the edge of their seats. Unlike subsequent entries into the franchise, Alien was a pure horror movie set in space. From the initial sexual mouth rape horror of the facehugger to the stalker horror of a powerful, lone monster picking off the crew - the film was designed to frighten people. Even the movie poster tag line is the famous, "In space, no one can hear you scream."

Sadly, over time our collective attention span has diminished slightly and so what was once a masterpiece in the late Seventies-early Eighties had become somewhat overblown. Hitchcockian stretches of tension building direction now seemed to overcrank the pressure to the point where the metaphorical elastic band had snapped and the reaction was less shocking. With the Director's Cut, I feel this was perfectly addressed - the resulting film is once again a tense, powerful affair.

From the initial eerie wandering around an empty ship then on to the friction between the awaking crew and the class divide between the engineers and the NCOs, the film's trademark slow opening still builds as the mysterious signal and the hitherto unknown Company standing orders leave the characters as clueless and off balance as the audience. We remain awestruck by the derelict and the Space Jockey and alarmed by the egg chamber and the facehugger attack. Really the most obvious tightening of the editing and pacing comes later as John Hurt's chestburster reaches full maturity and begins slaughtering the crew. Long, drawn out sequences become tighter and sharper and I commend Ridley Scott for that.

Hopefully, this more visceral horror vibe informs Prometheus too. Certainly the various trailers seem to show body horror and nasty surprises stalking the crew, so I have a feeling we will once again have a true science fiction horror film from one of the modern auteurs.

Ben Fardon is ready for 12:01am on Friday 1st June!