Comic Review: Aliens – Resistance by Brian Wood

Xenomorph fans, rejoice! There’s more Aliens content coming your way on Adventures with Peps. This time, we're heading back into space with Aliens: Resistance by Brian Wood.

I stumbled across this one at my local library. And, as always, a quick reminder to support your local library and check out your local shelves! You never know what you might find hiding between the covers.

Now, I already knew this comic existed because I'd worked my way through Aliens: Defiance a while back, need to reread and review soon. Those didn't exactly blow me away with their characters or writing, so I wasn't heading into this one with unbridled enthusiasm.

Could Resistance turn things around for me? Or was I about to discover that some xenomorphs are better left in the hive?

Let's get into it!

Comic Details

• Title: Aliens: Resistance

• Writer: Brian Wood

• Illustrations: Robert Carey

• Publisher: Dark Horse Books

• Page count: 96 pages

• Collects: Aliens: Resistance issues #1–4

The Blurb

An evil corporation's secret bioweapons programme threatens humanity, and Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda, finds herself caught up in the nightmare.

Following the events of Alien: Isolation, Amanda is being kept quiet by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation about the xenomorph threat. Enter Zula Hendricks, an ex-Colonial Marine who needs Amanda's help to expose a sinister bioweapons programme.

The pair team up to take on the corporation's latest arsenal, travelling from a research laboratory to a secret test facility where some very unpleasant experiments are taking place.

We've got corporate conspiracies, deadly aliens, androids and a whole lot of people who really should have read the health and safety manual before accepting a job.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Review

The story picks up after Alien: Isolation and brings Amanda Ripley back into the action alongside Zula Hendricks, the ex-Colonial Marine. Their mission is to expose Weyland-Yutani's secret bioweapons programme and put a stop to the corporation's latest attempt to turn something horrifying into a profitable product. And let's be honest, that's a pretty good starting point.

We've got a ragtag team taking on an evil corporation, xenomorphs, androids, nuclear weapons, colony ships full of potential victims and, pulling the strings behind it all, the ever-reliable Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

It's practically a checklist of things I enjoy about the Aliens universe. There are plenty of opportunities for tension, action and the sort of corporate shenanigans that make you wonder how this company manages to stay in business.

So, with all those ingredients on the table, you'd think we'd be in for a cracking little sci-fi horror adventure.

Sadly, this one turns out to be a bit of a dud. The biggest problem for me is the writing. It feels dull, and despite having a couple of established characters at the centre of the story, I struggled to get invested in what was happening. Amanda and Zula never really clicked for me as a team. Their relationship didn't have the spark I was hoping for, and I wasn't convinced by the way they interacted. Instead of feeling like two people thrown together by an awful situation, they often felt like characters going through the motions because the plot required them to.

And when your main characters aren't holding my attention, you've got a problem. Then there's the xenomorphs themselves. These creatures should be terrifying. They should make every dark corridor, every ventilation shaft and every suspicious noise a potential death sentence. Half the fun of an Aliens story is watching people realise that they're horribly outmatched by something they barely understand.

Here, though, they never quite feel like the threat they should be. The tension just isn't there, and without that sense of danger, the whole thing starts to feel rather flat. I found myself zoning out as I read, which is never a good sign. Especially when the comic is only 96 pages long!

What about the artwork?

When a story isn't doing much for you, there's always the hope that the artwork will come along and save the day. Unfortunately, Robert Carey's illustrations didn't quite manage that for me either.

There are moments when the setting really works. The alien world has some impressive visuals, and a few of the environments made me stop and take a proper look. There's a sense of scale in places, and the locations occasionally hint at the sort of atmospheric horror this story could have delivered.

But the characters themselves? Oh dear. I found them rather plain and doll-like. Their faces often lacked emotion, and for much of the comic, they looked completely dead behind the eyes. That's a real problem when you're trying to sell readers on fear, desperation and the emotional toll of fighting for survival.

I want to see the terror on someone's face when a xenomorph comes charging out of the darkness. I want to believe these characters are frightened, angry or struggling to keep it together. Instead, I often found myself looking at figures that seemed to be waiting for someone to tell them where to stand next.

The artwork wasn't completely without merit, but it never reached the heights needed to carry a story that was already struggling. By the time I reached the end, I couldn't shake the feeling that Aliens: Resistance had been rushed through production. Perhaps that isn't fair, and I can't claim to know what was happening behind the scenes. But the finished comic felt to me like something assembled to fill a gap in the publishing schedule and capitalise on the success of Alien: Isolation.

The ingredients were all there. Amanda Ripley, Zula Hendricks, a sinister corporate conspiracy and a deadly alien threat should have made for a thoroughly entertaining ride. Instead, I came away feeling that the story lacked direction, the characters lacked personality, and the artwork lacked the emotional punch needed to make the horror work. It's a shame, because I really wanted to enjoy this one. I love the Aliens universe, and I was happy to give this comic a chance after finding it at the library.

But sometimes, even when all the right pieces are on the table, they just don't fit together.

Sector 102: Stealing some ideas

Now, just because a comic doesn't work for me doesn't mean there's nothing worth salvaging from it. One of the joys of reading all this science-fiction and horror is stealing the ideas, not the stories, and seeing what they might inspire in my own little corner of the future, and Aliens: Resistance has handed me a rather tasty idea for Sector 102.

A secret laboratory beneath Sector 102. It’s an idea I keep playing with within the Spillways and this comic helps firm up the idea I am on the right path. Imagine Kelp Pharmacy operating just outside Sector 102's official boundaries. Publicly, it's a medical and environmental research contractor, working on treatments for radiation sickness, mutant infections and the various unpleasant conditions that life in the Cursed Earth throws at people. Very noble. Very civic-minded. Probably has a lovely corporate recruitment video.

Except the company has a second facility buried beneath in the abandoned Spillways industrial complex. Down there, they are conducting illegal experiments on mutated creatures, attempting to develop living weapons that can survive the Cursed Earth, and perhaps even be deployed against Mega-City One.

The research is expensive, the funding is questionable, and the creatures are becoming increasingly difficult to control. Naturally, the corporation insists everything is perfectly safe. Then a transport vehicle goes missing. Workers start disappearing. A few unfortunate scavengers stumble across something that definitely isn't a new medical treatment, and rumours begin circulating among the mutants outside the city walls.

Now you've got a Sector 102 adventure!

The miniature possibilities are fantastic: a research laboratory made from industrial terrain, corporate security guards, scientists, maintenance androids, containment cells and a selection of suitably unpleasant creatures. You could run it as a stealth mission, a rescue operation or a full-blown survival horror game in which the players' best-laid plans rapidly fall apart.

And the best part? You don't even need xenomorphs. Sector 102 already has the Cursed Earth, mutants, rogue science and enough questionable corporate behaviour to make the whole thing feel right at home. Perhaps the real monsters aren't the creatures in the containment cells. Perhaps they're the people who decided those creatures would make excellent weapons.

Now that's an idea worth exploring.

Final Thoughts

Aliens: Resistance had all the ingredients I wanted from an Aliens comic, but it never managed to bring them together into something memorable.

The story failed to grab me, the characters didn't feel convincing as a team, the xenomorphs lacked the menace they needed, and the artwork didn't deliver enough emotional impact to compensate. There were moments when the environments caught my eye, but not enough to rescue the overall experience.

For me, this one's a miss. Normally, this is where I'd pop in a link to Amazon and encourage you to pick up a copy. Not today. I don't think this one deserves that recommendation, and I'd rather point you towards something I genuinely enjoyed.

Cheers for reading, and I'll see you on the next adventure!