Alien #1 The Original Screenplay

9/8/2020

Alien #1 The Original Screenplay (see below for preview images)

Credits

Story: Dan O’Bannon
Adaptation Script: Cristiano Seixas
Art: Guilherme Balbi
Colors: Candice Han
Letters: Michael Heisler
Standard Cover: Guilherme Balbi with Candice Han
Digital Art Technicians: Adam Pruett, Ann Gray, Josie Christensen

Who remembers the beloved original Alien film from 1979?  Not Aliens.  That’s the sequel.  No, no, no.  I’m talking about the first one.  Alien.  Singular.  Not as good as Aliens but still, had some killer scenes, yeah?  Well…

The writer of that movie has turned over the story to Dark Horse comics for an adaptation of the original screenplay.  Now, no, it’s not EXACTLY the same, so don’t go thinking that it’s going to be the exact same characters and names and everything.  But it IS a similar story thus far, being that it’s only the first issue.

In this issue, the crew wakes up from their sleeping pods on their return trip to Earth earlier than planned.  They find that their course has been re-routed by the ship’s computer system due to specific programming if certain conditions arise.

In this case, the particular circumstance is a signal intercepted by the communication system.  The transmission is of unknown origin.  It is a voice transmission yet; it cannot be translated.  Even though their computer on this ship has 638 different dialects spoken by the human tongue stored in its programming code.

The computer system points out two main causes of concern and interest.  First, the transmission is highly systematized, proving that the source of generation is intelligent based.  Second, certain sounds in the transmission are definitely inconsistent with the human palate.

This news excites some of the team members as they start to think this could be evidence of the first contact by intelligent life outside of Earth.

Unfortunately, they have no REAL idea where they are.  They decide to follow the signal so they can investigate.  When they are finally directly over the transmission signal itself, they choose to land on some unknown planet to go searching for the source of this special untranslatable signal.  On this planet they find the gravity is similar to Earth so they can walk around without issue but the air is not breathable.  It’s not toxic, but still not breathable.

Once on the planet and moving about, that is when they start to observe some very strange and interesting things.

So, so far, this is going well.  I think this is going to be as good, if not better, than the movie itself.  The story is by the same guy.  The script adaptation is by someone else but the story is the same which doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for change.  The character names are different but that doesn’t make a difference to me.

I actually like the artwork.  I am excited to see what they do with the aliens when we really get to the nitty gritty details of that part of the story.  I think these artists are really going to shine in that department.  The artwork as far as the people goes, I’m not thrilled, but it’s not horrible by any means.

At any rate, the story is moving quickly and there was already some action by the end of this first issue.  Can’t complain on that one.  The next issue comes out the first week of September.  I’ll keep y’all updated!  Stay tuned!

RATINGS
Overall 4/5
Artwork 3.5/5
Story 4.5/5