Something Truly Sinister This Way Lurks — Reviewing ‘Aliens Vs Avengers’ #3

Earth is a lost cause. Unfortunately for the only survivors, their hoped momentary salvation upon Mars appears doomed as well. As the Xenomorph threat grows deadlier, humanity’s clock is ticking ever closer to finished.

After some time away, Jonathan Hickman, Esad Ribíc, Ive Svorcina, and Cory Petit are back to wreak more havoc with Aliens vs Avengers #3.

Some spoilers are going to be found ahead, best avoided if you’re still not caught up on the story.

Pitting aliens that burst out of bodies against the heroes pointed to a foregone conclusion: no one is safe. We saw this played out across the first two issues, many deaths off-panel during a time gap, and it only got worse with this one. Carol Danvers stands alone of the remaining Avengers and humans who escaped the dead world of Earth.

She’s not alone, though, as four mutants survived the Mister Sinister Xenomorph purge of Mars.

One of the intriguing parts of this series has been how it picks and pulls from stuff that Hickman has done in the past or wanted to play with. Mutants on Mars was part of the pitch for the Krakoan Era he led in the comics years ago. Naturally, the mutants fled the Earth for their second home of Mars when things hit the fan.

Mister Sinister is a favorite devious toy for Hickman, having played with him in the aforementioned Krakoa stuff but also the “alternate universe” stuff of Secret Wars back in 2015. The amoral mad scientist is a perfect character to have been playing with the Xenomorphs and, for the millionth time, betraying mutant kind.

We learn a bit more about the battle between the Davids and the Engineers and more about Sinister’s plot … but little else in this issue. The majority of it has the heroes once more fighting (and sadly dying to) the perfect killing machines. In the end, a new (already witnessed in the first issue) team of players enters the game.

What’s also killing things are the delays between issues. Two months between the first and second, and almost three between the second and the third. There isn’t even a current ship date for the fourth issue, which is not a good sign. Likely, this will be a better collected read because waiting months for books with little forward momentum isn’t the best.

Just like the previous issues, the sense of scale feels appropriately epic. Together, Ribíc and Svorcina are really hitting the rougher and moody tones. An inherent lightness mixes quite well with the starker and rougher fixtures of the artwork. It makes the desolate Mars look even more haunting and foreboding as the slick and deadly Xenomorphs stand out, but also easily blend into the world at large.

There are always tons of details and depth in every panel, no matter how tight or wide the space happens to be. At the same time, there is a blurry effect because the full detail of what is in the background isn’t as important. In Bar Sinister we see a bevy of X-Men bodies suspended with facehuggers upon them. While we can make out Colossus clearly, others aren’t as defined because we don’t need to know for sure which mutants were killed or sacrificed.

It also leaves room for us to learn about the four surviving mutants later in the story.

Similarly, the color palette dips into rougher textures as the colors are kept to a more toned-down variety. Svorcina employs an almost washed out type of effect to add to the desolate and dire feelings of the story. It matches the rest of the work to really deliver lighting effects that feel accurate for any given space. Multiple levels of darker and shadowy tones are pulled in to give the heftier quality to many of the pages.

As usual, Petit does what he does best to make the bevy of dialogue flow with ease. At the same time, it never overwhelms or dominates a page. He also makes little shifts here or there to let the words have a bit more of a unique feeling depending on the speaker.

Aliens Vs. Avengers #3 is now available from Marvel Comics.