Aliens: Bishop Original Novel

 

 

ALIENS: BISHOP

(W) T.R. Napper

Publisher: Titan Books

SC, 416pp, $18.99, On Sale December 11, 2024

 

THE USCSS PATNA HAS BEEN FOUND.

 

Although the synthetic Bishop asked to be shut down forever, his creator has other plans. Michael Bishop seeks the Xenomorph knowledge stored in the android’s mind, and brings Bishop back to life—but for what reason? No longer an employee of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Michael tells his creation that he seeks to advance medical research for the benefit of humanity.

 

Yet where does he get the resources needed to advance his work, and with whom do his new allegiances lie?

Aliens: What If #4 Review

 

Concept: Paul & Leon Reiser; Adam F. Goldberg; Hans Rodionoff; Brian Volk-Weiss

Writer: Hans Rodionoff & Brian Volk-Weiss

Artist: Guiu Vilanova

Colorist: Yen Nitro

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

Cover Artists: Phil Noto; Salvador Larroca & Guru eFX

Publisher: Marvel

Price: $3.99

Release Date: June 5, 2024

 

Carter Burke is a driven man. He's got plans for everything. If only the universe would respect his plans! Instead, the Hadley's Hope situation spun out of control, and now Asteroid D350-L8 is following the same playbook. Another Queen has arrived to rock his little terraformed world. Can Carter escape another Xenomorph corporate takeover? Let’s grab our flamethrowers, leap into Aliens: What If #4, and find out!

 

Story

Carter is panicking. After the face-hugger impregnated Harold, Cygnus prepared to remove the Xenomorph from the miner and harvest the alien DNA. But the incubating alien got impatient. It burst through Harold's chest and tore the combat android apart. Carter had planned on getting a comparatively manageable Xenomorph drone. Instead, the universe gave him a Queen!

 

Carter does the first thing that comes to mind. He runs to his daughter’s quarters to whisk her away to safety. Instead, he finds Hiro Yu there. Carter bonded with Hiro over a mutual hatred for Hiro’s father, Shin Yutani. Hiro’s never won his father’s respect, but he’s promised to use his resources at Weyland-Yutani to help Carter cure his wife. But that doesn't mean Carter wants the scion of the man who exiled him to this rock as his son-in-law. Still, Brie’s only sleeping with Hiro to annoy him, isn't she?

 

In Aliens: What If #4, Cygnus, the illegal battle android Carter assembled in a scrapyard, is dead. Carter wants to protect his family. Hiro may be the son of Weyland-Yutani’s heartless CEO, but when the young man reminds Carter of all the other people who live on Asteroid D350-L8, Carter realizes he doesn’t want them to die.

 

Carter Burke never intends to hurt people. Yet he creates distance because he never has time for them. So he uses lies and manipulation to keep them close, but that doesn't win their respect or love. Carter mourns Cygnus even though Hiro points out that androids aren't alive. If Carter had spent less time making plans and profits for Weyland-Yutani, his daughter might have respected him. But he needs her and Hiro's help to protect everyone in his adoptive home. So, when his daughter and Hiro ask him to step up, Carter helps them confront the Xenomorph Queen in Aliens: What If #4.

 

Hope wasn’t enough last time. In Hans Rodionoff & Brian Volk-Weiss’ story, Carter wants to be a better man. He adopts a new plan. Along the way, Carter hopes to win his daughter’s respect. Who knows? Perhaps Carter Burke can find a way to reunite his family. If only the universe will respect his plans!

 

 

 

Art

Brie may enjoy mining Trimonite, but the dents and graffiti on her door suggest that Weyland-Yutani spends more on beautifying white-collar dormitories. His daughter's damp hair and the towel around her torso suggest she and Hiro showered together in Aliens: What If #4. While Carter struggles not to yank chunks from his full head of hair, Brie leans behind Hiro and clasps his shoulder. Her smile suggests that her father's belief about Brie’s motives may have some basis in truth. But Carter should take more note of Hiro’s stony expression. Hiro thought he’d found a partner who valued him. Instead, he found another father who disrespects him!

 

Guiu Vilanova energizes a page with small panels as Brie and Hiro suit up. Carter smiles as he straps into his chipped and sparking novice rig. He starts after the others in their Komatsu Kaiju mining rigs. But by the time they reach the lab, Carter pushes his Grokk-Primer NVC rig through the doorway before his daughter and Hiro. Any impishness fades from his face as Carter regards the torn body of his former android.

 

Carter invades the yellow miners’ dormitory in his brown suit. Carter eschews Brie and Hiro’s green coveralls and helmets for his management attire but accepts a pair of purple gloves. The lights on the yellow and gray mining suits produce glare on the visors. Installed lighting fills the mine with yellow, green, blue, and brown. Yen Nitro colors the Xenomorph webbing gray, while white dots evoke stickers proclaiming their freshness.

 

Clayton Cowles welcomes readers who saw Aliens during its original cinema run with large black uppercase lettering in white dialogue balloons. White letters in black narrative boxes with green borders locate readers in time and space. Colorful, energetic sound effects help readers hear mining rigs clank, flames erupt, and gases disperse. No one screams in Aliens: What If #4. Still, a hiss writhes through a dark cavern as Humans run through the Xenomorph Queen’s domain.

 

Thanks to Marvel for providing a copy for review.

 

Final Thoughts

When the universe overturns his plans, Carter struggles to keep up with the kids, his daughter Brie learns more about herself and her family, and his new partner Hiro contemplates his future in Aliens: What If #4.

 

Rating 9.4/10

 

To preview interior art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.

Aliens: What If #3 Review

 

Concept: Paul & Leon Reiser; Adam F. Goldberg; Hans Rodionoff; Brian Volk-Weiss

Writer: Hans Rodionoff

Artist: Guiu Vilanova

Colorist: Yen Nitro

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

Cover Artists: Phil Noto; Mahmud Asrar & Matthew Wilson; Stephen Mooney & Frank Martin

Publisher: Marvel

Price: $3.99

Release Date: May 15, 2024

 

Hiro Yu, the Senior Director of Human Capital for Weyland-Yutani, traveled to Asteroid D350-L8 to fire Carter Burke. Instead, Burke knocked him on the noggin with Ripley's rifle. Hiro wakes strapped to an operating table. Beside him, an Xenomorph egg is opening, and a Facehugger is climbing out. Can Hiro convince Carter to release him? What if Hiro gave him a promotion and threw in a vision plan? Let’s grab our flamethrowers, leap into Aliens: What If #3, and find out!

 

Story

The Aliens didn't kill Carter Burke on Hadley's Hope. He escaped from a cocoon and slipped aboard Ripley's shuttle. After Ripley shoots the Queen into space and goes into Hypersleep, Carter makes a deal with Shin Yutani. He got a job for life, and Weyland-Yutani didn’t get hit with 158 wrongful death lawsuits.

 

Sadly, employment for life didn't prevent Carter from becoming a scapegoat for the Hadley's Hope disaster. So, he conceived a backup plan. He rebuilt Cygnus, a banned combat synthetic, and sent him to find another Xenomorph egg. Now, Cygnus is back, and he's 98% certain he can accomplish Carter’s aims without causing more wrongful deaths. Okay, maybe he’s only 90% certain Hiro will survive. Still, 90 is a good percentage, right?

 

In Aliens: What If #3, Carter wants to cure cancer, starting with his wife’s. It’s a noble goal. Unfortunately, it involves impregnating some poor schmuck with an alien. But everyone who works for Weyland-Yutani gets paid sick leave, right?

 

Hans Rodionoff’s story tackles family dysfunction and why children often pull away from their parents. It also shows how two hurting people can bond. No matter how much Carter loves his daughter and tries to please her, Brie refuses to give him the time of day. Yet, Hiro sees Carter as a better father than his own. Why else would Hiro work with Carter once he convinces the visionary to save him from the Facehugger?

 

Rodionoff’s investment in the characters pays dividends in Aliens: What If #3. Drama arises as Carter saves Hiro, then gets irked when Brie shows interest in this visitor to their little world. Cygnus keeps recalculating the possibility of accomplishing Carter’s plan, and as people hunt for the Facehugger, history repeats itself and allows the creepy crawly to escape. If only everyone would stop distrusting Carter and help him achieve his mostly noble plan!

 

 

 

Art

Strapped to the lab table, Hiro’s muscles strain as he rants and raves. The slim young executive may look like a slick company man, but he’s nothing like the uncaring executives who claimed Ripley destroyed the Nostromo without sufficient reason. Carter Burke enters with his palms clasped before his transparent face shield. The overweight, gray-haired manager may look as if walking takes effort, but he rides his bike to work, swings a mean bat, and can run through the tunnels when given sufficient reason. That reason is his daughter, who operates a mechanized drilling machine. Brie’s Komatsu Kaiju rig resembles that of an armored deep-sea diver (or a Mondoshawan from The Fifth Element). If she survives her father’s grand experiment, perhaps she can find an undersea mining gig on a nearby asteroid once her team taps out the Trimonite deposits on D350-L8.

 

Guiu Vilanova introduces readers to another synthetic model in Aliens: What If #3. Scientists made Cygnus a soldier, but he’s not a stone-cold killer like Maximilian in The Black Hole. (Nor, for that matter, does he resemble VINCENT or old BOB). With his beard, detached demeanor, and ear stretchers, the android better resembles Dr Reinhardt than the scientist’s robotic servants or the remaining personnel aboard the USS Cygnus. The Replicant (Or Replican) is a straight man to Carter's overweening reasonableness.

 

Yen Nitro shows light play over people and surfaces, whether it's the harsh overhead lighting in Carter's lab or the spotlights embedded in Brie's mechanized exoskeleton. Light gleams against face shields and gives metal and fabrics depth and texture. Carter glows as if charged by the enormity of his humanitarian dream in Aliens: What If #3. It's good that Nitro is a master of light, or we'd never see the Facehugger when it lingers in shadow.

 

Clayton Cowles attacks white dialogue balloons with black uppercase lettering that should please readers who saw Aliens during its original cinema run. The Facehugger screams white letters into black dialogue balloons. Sounds burst into panels to enhance movement, gunfire, and attacks. But just as letters explode across the opening scene, they accompany a cliffhanger ending.

 

Thanks to Marvel for providing a copy for review. 

 

 

 

Final Thoughts

While Carter Burke makes friends with yet another test subject, and the key to his humanitarian plan escapes his control, Aliens: What If #3 builds off the set pieces of the popular franchise movie to create an exciting, humorous, and touching story.

 

Rating 8.8/10

 

To preview interior art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.

Talia Winters’ Plight

Often, we wish that we possessed superior abilities, without realizing that every gift comes with a price.  Take, for example, the fictional ability of telepathy.  Sure, it could sometimes work to your advantage to know what others are thinking.  But imagine never being able to turn this ability off.  How many people could you draw close to, if you were constantly assaulted by their every dark thought or negative reaction?  Imagine hearing all the things they would never say about you, but cannot help thinking?  Imagine also how they would feel about you, if they knew they could hide nothing from you, if their every thought, reaction, and plan was laid bare in your presence.  Suddenly, it sounds as though the costs of possessing telepathy might outweigh the benefits, doesn’t it?

In the TV series Babylon 5, anyone with telepathic ability is given a choice: they must either take drugs to suppress this ability, or join Psi Corps.  Any drug can induce side effects, sometimes drastic ones, and such was the case with Commander Susan Ivanova’s mother, which is why a relationship between Ivanova and Harriman Gray would prove difficult, if not impossible.  But joining Psi Corps is no treat either, because then you become part of their system, and lose the independence and freedom of choice that most of us value.  Yet Talia Winters seems to have made this system work for her.  In the first two seasons, she’s Babylon 5’s resident commercial telepath, and even though her Psi rating is average, she’s gained unique experience by constantly peering into alien minds on behalf of her clients.  But all her hard work, and her special place on the space station, are ripped away from her in the novel Voices, by John Vornholt.  When a bomb explodes during the Psi Corps conference on Babylon 5, the evidence paints her as the chief suspect.  Suddenly, most normal people demand her arrest, and her fellow telepaths, outraged by her seeming betrayal, want her condemned to death without a trial.  So she finds herself a fugitive, fleeing the space station on her own, and hoping to find evidence to clear her name before the authorities or the Psi Cops can catch her.

Unlike his predecessor Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, in the pilot movie “The Gathering,” Captain John Sheridan doesn’t lock down the space station after the explosion that kills several members of Psi Corps. So Security Chief Michael Garibaldi must return to Earth, alongside Harriman Gray, as the two men try to discover the person responsible for the bombing.  In Garibaldi’s case, he’s got something of a crush on Talia, so he’s got added incentive to clear her name.  But Gray also has something to prove.  He wants to impress Susan Ivanova, to make her look past his Psi Corps badge, and see that he might be someone worthy of her affections.

"The Gathering," can be found on
the five disc Babylon 5 Movie Collection

Talia’s flight will take her across the American Southwest, where she’ll meet a group of outsiders called the Bilagaani, who have forsaken the modern world to celebrate a culture that died out hundreds of years previously. Garibaldi and Gray’s investigations will take them to twenty-third century Boston and Washington D.C.  Eventually, all three, along with the top Psi Cop Mr. Bester, will make their way to Mars, for a showdown with the party responsible for the bombings on Babylon 5 and at the Royal Tharsis Lodge on Mars.  (Remember, I said it was a Mars novel).

By the end of the story, Talia realizes that she had taken her place on Babylon 5 for granted.  Now she longs to return there, “to see the aliens, who were less judgmental and prejudiced than her own species.  Among aliens you could be whoever you were, she realized, but among humans you had to be whoever they wanted you to be.  And no one was what they seemed.”

In many ways, it can be a good thing to break down the walls that separate us. But perhaps it's an equally good thing to preserve our uniqueness, and not to know too much about each other.  For, as John Vornholt writes, we are all aliens to each other.  Maybe that’s a good thing. 

Note: While I've given you a rough outline of the story, I've tried to avoid sharing any real spoilers.  If you're a fan of Babylon 5, I think you'll enjoy returning to that milieu in Vornholt's novel, even if most of the action takes place not on the space station, but on Earth and Mars.

Dragon Dave  

The Religious Message in “Cowboys & Aliens”

Last night, we watched a movie we missed last year in the theaters: Cowboys & Aliens.  For a secular, genre film, it had a surprisingly religious message.  Daniel Craig plays an outlaw named Jake, who at the start of the movie has lost his memory.  He arrives at a town called Absolution, shortly before the aliens attack.  A preacher named Meacham tends his wounds, and accompanies Jake and the others intent on rescuing the townspeople abducted by the aliens.  While Meacham generally has something moral to say any time he’s onscreen, his final words to Jake seem at the heart of the movie: “God don’t care who you were, son.  Only who you are.”

Jake doesn’t spend much time being penitent, at least not in the manner of a devout Catholic seeking the divine rite of Absolution, but the story seems in tune with the era of American expansion, when those who never achieved their potential in the more established towns and cities headed west to begin new lives.  Some, like Jake or Edgar Rice Burroughs’ character John Carter, might have been running away from something, or had pasts they would just as soon forget.  So rather than accept the limited opportunities life seemed to have handed them, they tried something new, something bold and extreme, and hoped that their efforts would be rewarded. 

As we’re approaching the New Year, this seems a good message for all of us to contemplate.  If we have yet to achieve what we wish to in life, then should we alter our approach?  I don’t buy the adage that success never comes to people who keep doing the same thing: one must first develop one’s skills and abilities, and gain mastery over them, before long term success can come.  But then, a slight correction, or even a radical one, is mandated if one has drifted off-course.  While I feel like I’m making good progress toward developing my skills and abilities as a writer, I also feel I need to refocus my energies somewhat in the forthcoming year.  Specifically, I need to kick my submission efforts up a notch.  How exactly I can accomplish that, I don’t know, as the Divine never gives us more hours in each day.  

I know I’m a hard worker.  (At least, I can be when I really want to be).  The key is not just to work hard (which, if ill-directed, may only lead to exhaustion), but to also work smart, focusing on those tasks most necessary to achieving the desired goal.  I feel that 2013 could be my year for something to break loose and finally get a publishing deal.  But for that to happen, I have to make it happen.  So, I’ve got some thinking to do. 

What, if anything, will you do differently next year?  Is a course correction called for, or do you merely need to continue along the path you are currently following?  I wish you all wisdom as you contemplate what, if anything, you will do differently in 2013.

Dragon Dave

A Truly Alien Mind?

Science Fiction often tantalizes us with aliens.  This can prove a difficult balance, as readers need to understand these entities in order to respond intellectually and emotionally to them.  If we are to see them as more than animals, they must demonstrate enough aspects of civilized behavior that we identify them as sentient beings.  Yet, to be interesting, they cannot be too human or understandable either.  Otherwise, why read stories about aliens in the first place?

In the Sutton Bank Visitor Center of the North York Moors National Park, a member of the staff saw me photographing this statue.  She told me that bronze sculptures had adorned the metal rung that surrounds the wood.  Due to the theft of some of these, the rest had been taken down, and the wooden statue moved inside to prevent further vandalism.  The artist, Chris Kelly, had worked with local school children to produce these pieces.  His intentions are to recast all of them in resin, those stolen as well as those remaining.  Unfortunately, the preparatory drawings for some of those stolen appear to be lost, so not all the artwork is replaceable.

Official supposition is that the sculptures were scavenged for their scrap value, not because the thieves intended to sell them to beautify some wealthy collector’s home.  Such stories are all too common, and to me, incomprehensible.  Thieves who rip newly laid wiring from civic improvement projects, or who take basic copper architectural details from recently built homes: while no such acts are justifiable, I suppose I can just get my head around that.  But for someone to steal irreplaceable artwork, creations crafted with love and care, that excite the senses, that invigorate the mind, that delight those who behold such creations…and then to sell them to be crushed or melted down…. 

Doesn’t that sound to you like a truly alien mind?

Pondering the incomprehensible,

Dragon Dave

Internet Links

Story on stolen artwork