Aliens What if….? #2-4 gives us even more of what makes the first issue so great. The rat-a-tat wit of Paul and Leon Reiser, Hans Rodionoff and Brian Volk-Weiss keeps you hopping as they bring a Weyland Yutani corporate stooge to life and examines what might have happened had Carter Burke survived the massacre at Hadley’s Hope.
Aliens What If…#2-4
Mahmud Asrar & Matthew Wilson (Cover); VC’s Clayton Cowles (Letters); Adam F. Goldberg (Concept); Salvador Lacrocca and Edgar Delgado (Cover); Salvador Larocca and GURU eFX (Cover), David Lopez (Cover); Steven Mooney & Frank Martin (Cover); Yen Nitro (Colors); Phil Noto (Cover); Lucio Parillo (Cover); Paul and Leon Reiser (Concept and writing); Hans Rodionoff (Concept and Writing); Guiu Vilanova (Art); Brian Volk-Weiss (Concept and Writing)
Marvel Comics
April 10, May 15, June 5, 2024
Aliens: What If… does a great job of keeping its main character a gray-hatted demi-hero – improving the audiences’ understanding of the hows and whys of toadies like Carter Burke without excusing all of the bad things he’s done in his life. Solid art and pure wit keep the audience’s expectations alive. If you’re willing to entertain Buke’s point of view at all, then you’ll get some joy out of this one.
Carter Burke has hatched a scheme. A ridiculous, dangerous scheme. One that might get his daughter, Brie, to actually speak to him. One that could even save his wife, Zoe, who’s stuck in cryogenic suspended animation, riddled with cancer. He plans on retrieving a Xenomorph egg and implanting it in the body of his least-liked colleague to test some medical theories. He thinks that if he can successfully extract a Xenomorph from a human’s chest alive and then extracts its DNA, it will create a medical panacea which can cure anything. To do so, he retrieves and repairs a ready-to-be-scrapped android named Cygnus, who eventually finds the egg on a distant planet.
Carter plans on using Cygnus — whom he calls Cy — and his advanced surgical skills to implant and then retrieve a Xenomorph from a human with both parties surviving. Unfortunately, Carter manages to pick Hiro Yutani – the son of Mr. Yutani himself – as his lab experiment. Hiro escapes his predicament without being facehugged, but the Keystone Cop-level competency Carter and Cy display between them results in the Xenomorph hatchling escaping into the air ducts of the mining colony where Carter has been working for years. It implants itself in Brie’s boss and hatch out as a queen. Even worse, as Carter tries to dodge death, he’s confronted by a romance between Hiro and Brie. But there are plenty of twists and turns ahead for father and daughter alike – one that might force them to team up and heal those old wounds for good.
This is still quite a smooth ride. Dryly witty and filled with gore, touched with interpersonal drama but always able to keep things on a properly high-stakes level, What If… is a fantastic peek into Carter’s self-justifying but honestly self-sacrificing (well, most of the time) mindset. Hiro, Brie, and Cy all pop out as interesting characters in their own right. They’re all incredibly flawed and while only Brie manages any level of real competence, they’re all a lot of fun to track through the bowels of this long-forgotten rock in space.
The art is still fantastic; incredibly lifelike and filled with animation, it creates a sense of gory foreboding while occasionally accenting the storyline’s lighter moments. Color work throws light on some horrifyingly bad bouts of violence as well as moments of wonderfully ludicrous humor.
Overall, Aliens: What If… continues along a well-trod pathway that keeps the reader happily invested.
