Greatest Killing Machine Meets Earth’s Mightiest– Reviewing ‘Aliens vs Avengers’ #1

One of the deadliest alien species out there has come for Earth, leaving nothing but complete destruction in its wake. With the clock ticking toward extinction, the remainder of humanity and Earth’s mightiest heroes must rally one more time.

Worlds collide in Aliens vs Avengers #1 an epic tale from Jonathan Hickman, Esad Ribić, Ive Svorcina, and Cory Petit.

Books of this nature are an iffy prospect at times. No matter the creative team and their previous works, mashing up any franchises, concepts, or corporate IPs can be a dangerous recipe. Plenty of room for it to go horribly wrong.

Thankfully, I thoroughly enjoyed this start to finish.

Naturally so since this is the reuniting of Hickman, Ribić, and Svorcina after their stellar work on Secret Wars back in 2015.

There is just something truly inherently epic about Ribić’s artwork, making everything seem grander, deeper, and vaster in scale than it might otherwise. There’s enough baked in roughness that gives the world a bit of grit on top of the smoother aspects. A chunk of the issue features a bunch of panels showcasing the fall of humanity bit by bit. Basically, a montage sequence of sorts.

Therefore, each panel needs to tell us quite a bit. No worries there as those pages, and all the rest, really soak up the energy as no space goes unused or underutilized.

Similarly, the heroes feel like true larger-than-life presences. Hulk feels so monstrous and large, as he should be. Watching him take on and dispatch a Xenomorph felt weightless and weighted at the same time, and oh so right.

It helps that Svorcina’s color palette choices are so right for the artwork. It makes sense since the duo has worked together numerous times. Everything always has this really natural toned-down, almost water color like, appearance. This allows the more fantastical elements with more vibrancy to pop even more because of the surrounding colors. With the choices for shadows and darker tones, things have a really appropriate ominous overwhelming atmosphere all the way through.

Just like the artwork, the captions and other lettering have a lot to convey rather quickly here. Petit always is a master at making this stuff flow and glide on the page, while adding the right levels of emotional and character resonating energy. Between the Xenomorphs, recordings and radios, and some other circumstances, there is room to play with lettering and delivery systems in unique ways.

One element that really worked well for me was the way it all went down. Based on the cover and the premise, most would assume we would see a Xenomorph or two and the Avengers struggles. Just like how most of the movies start out or remain.

Nope, Hickman said forget that. Turns out those behind this thought ahead and used the eggs and infected hosts as weapons against planets. By the time we see the heroes of Earth, almost halfway through the issue, those who are left are far older and the world is a broken mess. Numerous heroes we know are long dead or just gone, and we lose one here after thinking they were safe.

Right away, Xenomorphs are not only on Earth, but having taken over the planet is a big step up from the Alien related things we’ve gotten before. Really it’s the natural place to start and Hickman takes that and runs with it.

Also, I have to say, with a bit of applause, I love that even in this broken version of the MU. Hickman got his final word on Krakoa/The X-Men. He might not have gotten to finish their story in the regular timeline, but here they bounce off to Mars (Arakko?) with a “Screw this!” mentality once the Xenomorphs are loose.

All except Apocalypse. Who stays behind to fight, live or die, against the Xenomorphs. As it should be.

Aliens Vs Avengers #1 is now available from Marvel Comics.