Aliens: Fire and Stone 1

During a vicious xenomorph outbreak, terraforming engineer Derrick Russell leads a desperate group of survivors onto a rickety mining vessel. They hope to escape the creatures overrunning their colony—but they’ll face horrors both in space and on the strange planet they crash on. Ties in with the Prometheus and Aliens films!

The issue kicks off right in the middle of a xenomorph attack.  Where they came from is unknown, but the crew operating the whole terraforming project don’t really care as the aliens pick them off one-by-one.  Engineer Derrick Russell just wanted to help eek out a better way of life for others with this project, it was supposed to be a simple operation, but little did he know that the planet had been infested by these monsters.  Now he and the few that survived the initial attack head for an old cargo ship, it won’t get them too far, but it’ll at least put some distance between them and the aliens.  They make it to another close-by moon, originally thought desolate, but instead host to a dense jungle.  The plant-life is nothing like they’d ever seen before.  Now on an uncharted world, a whole new set of dangers lie in wait.

So, I pretty much got the same feeling for this one as I did for Prometheus: Fire and Stone.  It’s a decent enough sci-fi read, but it’ll only have a real impact if you've seen the movies.  I mean, I don’t know if any of these characters or locations have any real significance or not.  This is definitely for someone who follows the franchise, but if you've never seen the movies, you may want to skip this one.  As a stand-alone, I felt a little lost when this terraforming crew was being attacked by the aliens right from the get-go.  The exposition throughout did provide a little more insight as to what was going on, but other than that it was a short story about a crew escaping an alien attack.  The artwork, by Patric Reynolds did give the book a nice gritty, old-school feel to it and it helped to set the tone for the story.  Unfortunately, the artwork alone isn't enough to keep me interested.

So, for all of you Alien fans out there, Aliens: Fire and Stone 01 is a great addition to the ever expanding mythos.  However, for anyone, like myself, who hasn't been following the series, I don’t think I can recommend this to you.  If you’re interested though, this could very well be your first step into the series which could turn into a brand new obsession for you.  Where the artwork is the stronger point than the story, this is definitely more for the fandom.  For more info on where to find this issue, visit the Dark Horse website, or the Dark Horse Facebook page.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.