ALIEN

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
FIGHT CENSORSHIP SUPPORT CBLDF ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY - 1979 - 2012 Writer: Archie Goodwin Artist: Walter Simonson First Pub; June, 1979 Heavy Metal Communications, Inc. Reissue: Sept. 7, 2012 Titan Books $14.94 US ISBN: 978-1-781161-29-6

Over 40 years later and "You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you?"

The perfect Alien Monster movie.

We're well into 2022 and Disney is about to make an ALIEN TV Show.

It's going to suck, but so did half the sequels, two prequels, and one spin-off and none of that ever stopped 20th Century Fox and the stewards of ALIEN from pushing through a dizzyingly incompetent display of foul dumpster milk through the decades.

Out of everyone involved in making the movies, only James Cameron can still feel pride in knowing he never made a bad ALIEN movie, and, in fact, made one of the only two great ones out of 8 movies and 40 years altogether.

Still that first ALIEN: Writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett's magnum opus, as directed by a middle-aged Ridley Scott. ALIEN is, arguably of course, Scott's magnum opus as well.

The editor and publishers (National Lampoon) of a popular illustrated magazine of the time, HEAVY METAL, were eager to the point of desperation to secure the graphic novel rights of the movie.

The Heavy Metal publishers hired writer Archie Goodwin, a writer and editor from their competition, the CREEPY and EERIE illustrated magazines. Archie suggested Penciller and Inker Walter Simonson, and Walt brought onboard his wife Louise as one of the colorists.

Boom! We're off to the races! Now all Goodwin and Simonson had to do was see the early cut.

Ah yes, that early cut.

ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY - 1979 Heavy Metal Cover

ALIEN fans who have the DVDs or Blu-Rays with the extra cuts, know just how heavily edited the theatrical version of ALIEN was. What many don't know is that ALIEN was edited nearly to the wire. And by wire I mean a mere week before wide release.

The original cut of ALIEN ran over three hours.

Goodwin pared that down a bit, keeping the essentials, without knowing that, after his viewing, Director Scott was forced to further edit his bloody gorefest to avoid an X-rating.

The upshot of that is, ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY isn't quite the same story as the movie that hit theaters and fans have memorized this entire time. It's a creature unto itself, familiar and yet... you know.

That said, this graphic novel became a smash hit in its time, being the first graphic novel or comic book to break into the New York Times Best-seller list and it stayed there for eight weeks. Keep in mind that this was 1979, years before the NYT had a section for graphic novels and ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY is what compelled the publication to do so.

Walter Simonson's use of standard comic book panels are quickly destroyed on subsequent pages as he chose to let the action break out of conventional standards. Connective tissue discussion between characters get tiny, almost postage stamp sized boxes, while the frightening set pieces may splash across two full pages.

This works amazingly well as Walt accurately adapted Archie's writing, knowing precisely when to be subtle and when to be flamboyant in a way that cunningly duplicates the audience's reaction. That is, if 40+ years of reading and listening to fan reaction to the movie is any indicator.

Of course, ALIEN being one of the best Science Fiction Horror movies ever made, where does this graphic novel place in the...

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
The beacon signal that "Mother" picked up comes from a single planetoid. Lambert describes it as 1200 meters in diameter to which Captain Dallas replies "Tiny".

Hoo boy, is it ever!

Continued at Alien The Illustrated Story SCIMO

Like the movie its based on, ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY has matured without ageing into obsolescence. As our technology has, in some ways advanced in a different direction, it only serves to make ALIEN appear as an alternate time line story, not an outdated one.

Five Fanboys all the way!

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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