Review: Aliens: Fast Track to Heaven

Without a doubt, the “Aliens” storyline has set itself apart from any otherworldly creature franchise.  For years, fans have been raving over the genius of H.R. Geiger’s original concept of an ultra-violent, black exo-skeletoned, killing machine with glass knives for teeth and a tongue with a mini chomping head attached to it.  Over the years, Aliens have been depicted in many different forms and settings but the recent “Aliens: Fast Track to Heaven” (AFTTH) hardcover from Dark Horse Comics captures it just the way we all used to remember it from the movies.  And that’s a good thing.

Written and drawn by phenom artist Liam Sharp of Gears of War fame, AFTTH brings us back to when we were kids watching Aliens for the first time.  The moods are melancholy, cryptic and dark.  Immediately, you are injected into a role call / prep speech of a team captain advising his cohorts.  You have no idea who anyone is but it seems like everyone is of various backgrounds and none of them know what they may or may not be getting themselves into.  The reader is thrown right into chaos.  What’s this all about?  What’s going on?  Who are these people?  What’s happening?  All those questions are racing through your mind as bits and pieces of people’s faces are revealed to you.  There’s a definite ‘Whoa’ when you hit the team leader with left side of his face looking like it’s been literally melted off of him somehow.  No explanations given.  Just grit. 

Any comic art fan will be awestruck by the quality of the imagery in this hardcover.  The book deftly sequences the story through rectilinear overlays on top of highly detailed environmental backgrounds but where it really shines is in its masterful creation of atmosphere.  Anyone who even flips through the pages will be taken aback by the richness of the deep colors and its contrast against black settings.  Aquatic greens, blues, reds, yellows and purples splash across the pages in cascading fades and blends.  The choices in color almost seem like an aurora borealis is taking place out in deep space, gushing furiously through the windows of the ship.  And all of this used in conjunction with dark patterns.  The use of shadows and silhouettes create an intensity to the depictions and accentuate the gravity of story at different points.  However cliche it may sound, people reading this book will feel like they are being taken on a visual journey and surprisingly, you feel the changes in atmosphere.  The violence in this book is uniquely minimalistic.  There’s actually only one explicit kill scene where an Alien rips through a human but the rest is left up to the imagination.  Again, atmosphere.

True Aliens fans will delight in the depictions of the Alien itself.  There are a few full page portraits with the Alien in various action poses hanging from the ceiling, running through bullets and clinging in all its majesty to the top of the ship looking for a way to get in.  And, of course, no Alien story could ever be complete without a birthing scene.  A full page portrait colored in nothing but deep red and black offers the reader an excruciating portrayal of an alien bursting through the stomach of an unaware human host.  It’s vintage Aliens.

While the art and color and atmosphere work together to create a visual drug for the eyes, unfortunately, the story falls short of doing the same for the brain.  As far as plot goes, don’t expect to get any original stimulation from AFTTH.  From the beginning, the reader is confused as to what is actually going on and what is taking place.  As mentioned earlier, this seems to be part of the intent, however, as the story moves along, more pertinent context isn’t properly given to pull the reader into what’s going on.  We learn that there is some company Weyland-Yutani, who sponsored the current team to investigate what happened to another team that was lost.  Of course, the company cares little about the crew and is more interested in their assets, a vessel carrying the previous crew which descended to Europa.  As the current crew gets to where the previous vessel was, they quickly learn what happened and get attacked by an Alien.  They are left with few options as they have no idea how to capture the alien and they are ill-equipped to kill it.  The team leader has no other choice but to drop deeper into Europa, into its icy cold waters in hopes of killing the Alien which has now attached itself to their vessel.  Alas, they underestimate its resilience and all meet with their demise.

That’s pretty much the extent of the complexity of the story.  More than anything, it feels as though the story is serving the art rather than the art serving the story.  And that may be ok if fans are only looking for an ocular feast because this book more than delivers on that front.  I personally prefer a balance between the two.  Nonetheless, I don’t think fans and readers will be disappointed with this hardcover as long as they know what they’re getting into.  And, I think it works well as a gift, especially for the holidays, for people who have not yet been introduced to Aliens.  If anything, “Aliens: Fast Track to Heaven” can be a great prologue to watching the “Aliens” movies for fans and newcomers alike!