Alien: Revival (2021): Plot, Characters & Lore
Alien: Revival is a six-issue comic arc published by Marvel Comics from September 2021 to June 2022, written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and drawn by Salvador Larroca. It was the second arc of Marvel's first ongoing Alien series, released as Alien #7 to #12, after Alien: Bloodlines. It follows Jane, a dying member of a religious colony on the terraformed moon Euridice, who led her people across the moon after a ship carrying Xenomorph eggs crashed into their home.
Plot Summary
Reaching Paradise On Euridice
The United Americas extrasolar vessel Heraclides was on its way to the moon Euridice when its computer woke an officer from hypersleep after an incident aboard. She went to look and was attacked in the dark. Twenty days later, on Euridice, Jane and Ambrose came back from a hunt with an elk-like animal. Both were leaders of the Spinners, a religious community that had spent twenty years turning the barren moon into farmland for the United Americas.
At the church that evening, Ambrose reminded the colonists of their deal. In return for running the terraforming machines, the moon would become their own Garden of Adeline, the paradise promised by their scripture. That night the crews at Alpha Station shut the machines down together with Beta Station and Gamma Station. Jane was dying of a rare disease that could only be treated on Earth, and she privately planned to leave once the colony belonged to the Spinners. Then the radar picked up a burning ship falling toward the Garden.
Crashing Into The Garden
The Heraclides had stopped answering calls, and its shields were down when it entered the atmosphere. Jane and the others watched from the station as the ship broke apart in a fireball and came down on top of the Garden of Adeline. The wreck tore through the trees and fields, and fires spread across the settlement. The Spinners ran toward the crash site with axes, buckets and hoses to put out the flames, and Jane joined them while calling out for anyone still alive inside the wreck.
The colonists split up around the burning hull. Some fought the fire in the fields, while others climbed into the broken sections of the ship in search of survivors. Jane went in alone through a gap in the hull and found the inside dark, wet and covered in a strange growth. She called out several times without an answer. Outside, the fire kept spreading through the homes and barns closest to the crash, and the colonists struggled to keep it away from the church on the hill.
Finding The Egg Chamber
Deep inside the wreck, Jane found a chamber filled with rows of Xenomorph eggs. A young colonist woman who had come aboard before her stumbled into Jane and grabbed her, begging for help. Moments later a chestburster broke out of the woman's chest in front of her. The creature looked straight at Jane, but it did not attack her. Instead it slipped away into the wreck, leaving the dead woman on the floor beside her.
Jane fled the ship and ran back toward the burning barns. On the roof of one of them she saw a full-grown Xenomorph crouching against the flames. To her it looked like the black beasts described in Spinner scripture as the Dogs of Perdition, sent to punish the wicked. Ambrose found her shaking near the crash site, and Jane told him what she had seen. He did not believe her, and the creature was gone by the time anyone else looked.
Searching For Becca
The Spinners buried their dead in the churchyard, and the funeral turned into an argument about the future. Some colonists wanted the United Americas to send help, while others worried that the deal for the moon would fall apart. Jane insisted that a monster had come out of the wreck, but most of the flock blamed her illness. Ambrose sided with the doubters and told her in private that she was frightening the people who depended on her. Jane left the church angry and alone.
That night, Gunnar went out alone into the dark fields and was killed by a Xenomorph. The next morning his torn body was found in the fields, and a colonist named Becca was missing. The Spinners armed themselves with rifles and hunting bows and went into the forest to search for her. Following a trail through the roots of the old trees, Ambrose and the others found a place covered in growth that had not been there two days earlier.
Uncovering The Hive
Under the roots, the searchers found Becca cocooned in resin with other victims of the creatures. As they tried to cut her free, Xenomorphs came out of the walls of the young hive and attacked. Several colonists were killed in the struggle, and the survivors fled toward the church while the creatures picked off the stragglers. Jane ran to Ambrose's house to get the shotgun he had left behind, hoping to cover the rest of the flock as they reached the church.
Inside Ambrose's bedroom, Jane found several Xenomorph eggs gathered beside his bed. Ambrose appeared behind her and grabbed her by the throat. When Jane cut his face with her knife, the wound revealed machinery beneath the skin, and he told her he was as strong as he had ever been. Ambrose was a synthetic. He pinned Jane down next to an opening egg and told her she was not meant to question what was happening to the colony.
Fighting In The Cornfield
A facehugger leapt from the egg and took hold of Jane while Ambrose spoke to her about the plan of Mother, the god of the Spinners. A young colonist named Leo then came in behind Ambrose and smashed his head apart with a baseball bat. Jane woke after only a short time, and the facehugger had already let go of her face. Leo picked up a rifle, and Jane shot the remaining creatures in the room before the two of them left the house.
Outside, the colony had fallen apart. Xenomorphs moved through the cornfields and dragged away anyone they caught, while the survivors ran for the church with whatever weapons they had. Jane and Leo helped a woman and two children get away from the creatures. In the corn, an older colonist fired his rifle at a Xenomorph until it was driven back, and the families ran past him up the hill. Leo stayed behind for a short time to take something from Ambrose's broken body.
Abandoning The Church
In the church, Leo put Ambrose's severed head on a table and reconnected it so that the synthetic could not lie. Ambrose confessed that Weyland-Yutani had sent him to spy on the colony. The Spinners had given the United Americas a successful terraforming operation and a neodymium mine that would reduce its dependence on the company. Weyland-Yutani found that objectionable, so it planted an organism aboard the Heraclides. Ambrose then told the flock that every one of them was going to die.
Leo said that other ships might still be waiting at Beta and Gamma stations, and Jane begged the flock to leave. Gertrude refused, calling Ambrose an abomination and their danger a test of faith. She stayed in the church with Madeline and others to sing to Mother. Jane, Leo, Simon, Tabby, Bowie and a few others crossed a rope bridge, and Leo cut it with an axe behind them. From the far side, they watched the Xenomorphs break into the church and kill everyone inside.
Entering The Mines Of Jonah
Days later, the survivors reached Beta Station after crossing forests full of local animals called Tubers. The station's mine and buildings were wrecked and smeared with blood, just as Alpha had been. Simon refused to leave without Sophie, a Beta colonist he had only spoken with over the radio. When Bowie found a truck with a charged battery that could take them to Gamma Station, Simon took Bowie's revolver, held the group back and ran into the mine alone to look for her.
Jane would not lose another member of her flock, so the group followed Simon underground. They brought Ambrose's head with them, because the synthetic had a detailed map of the mines and the caves beneath them. Ambrose guided them through tunnels covered in thick resin and told them to follow the largest veins to find the hive. Deep inside they found a huge nest built into the rock, with rows of eggs and countless victims held in the walls. He also noted small burrows that were not the work of ordinary Tubers.
Losing Tabby In The Hive
In the hive, Simon found Sophie still alive and cut her out of the resin with the help of the others. Around them, cocooned miners groaned and begged to be killed, and some were already swelling with embryos. A Xenomorph then burst out of the resin wall, and the group opened fire while dragging Sophie toward the exit. Small crawling creatures came out of the burrows as well. They were Tuber Xenomorphs, born from the local animals instead of human hosts.
As the group ran, a Xenomorph caught Tabby and pulled her down. Ambrose taunted Jane, saying that there was no salvation without passing through the Mines of Jonah, as scripture had promised. Tabby apologized to Jane before the creature killed her with its inner jaw. Jane cried out in grief, but the rest of the group kept running and escaped from the mine. Ambrose told her that everything was part of Mother's plan for them, and that he had seen how glorious it would be.
Reaching Gamma Station
The survivors drove away in the truck and shook off a creature that clung to its roof. Over the following days they crossed rivers, rocks and open grassland. During the drive, Ambrose argued with Jane about faith and claimed that the Spinner doctrine was coming true in a way she had never understood. The disease was getting worse, and Jane began to wonder whether she would live long enough to see Earth again. At last Bowie pointed out the towers of Gamma Station rising above the plain.
In the tall grass outside the station, Xenomorphs ambushed them. Jane covered the others with her bow and hit the creatures again and again with arrows, telling them they would not take her flock. Just when the creatures were about to overwhelm them, an armored vehicle rolled in and tore them apart with its heavy gun. The driver was Gregory, a Spinner from Gamma Station, who apologized for interrupting her blaze of glory and invited the survivors inside.
Exposing Gregory
Inside the station, Gregory claimed that soldiers had cleared out the creatures and shuttled everyone up to a cruiser in orbit. He had stayed behind in case others came. Jane noticed that Gregory quoted a passage from scripture with a copyist's mistake that only Ambrose had ever used. She realized the company must have loaded the same Spinner files into both of them. She stabbed Gregory's hand with her knife, and he bled white. Gregory was a synthetic as well.
Gregory shot Bowie, and soldiers seized the rest of the group. He called the Spinners animals and told Jane that the United Americas had used Euridice to test how far they could push Weyland-Yutani, far away from Earth. If the colony worked, the government would win big, and if the company crushed it, nobody would care. Gregory then threw the survivors into a dark chamber full of eggs, where all the missing Spinners of Gamma Station were cocooned. Several facehuggers began to crawl toward them.
Meeting The Weyland-Yutani Team
In the dark, Jane prayed to Mother for the first time in years and asked for the strength to save the last of her flock and kill the ones responsible. As she fought the facehuggers off the others, she noticed that none of them would take her. The aliens could sense the disease that was killing her and treated her as an unfit host. Jane realized her worst fear had become her greatest strength. When the acid blood of a dead creature ate through the floor, the group escaped.
Meanwhile, a Weyland-Yutani defense spacecraft landed on the pad outside Gamma Station. Gregory welcomed Doctor Palmer and a squad of soldiers led by Sergeant Major Rodinski. Palmer asked whether hosts had been found for the arthropod hybrids, and Gregory promised that the embryos would all be implanted by now. Rodinski mocked Gregory as a robot who thought he was a real boy. When Gregory opened the egg chamber, they found that the hosts had escaped and the Xenomorphs were loose inside the building.
Stealing The Company Ship
Humanoid Xenomorphs and arthropod hybrids attacked the company team in the corridors. Rodinski's soldiers were cut down in the dark, and Palmer was killed as Xenomorphs dragged him off. Gregory searched the building for Jane, but she was waiting for him with Leo, Simon and Sophie. Gregory had already lost a hand, and they forced him to lead them to the landing pad. Jane asked whether the company had created the Spinner church as a con, and Gregory refused to tell her before she shot him to pieces.
Leo flew the spacecraft off the pad with Ambrose's head wired into its autopilot. The stranded soldiers begged them to wait, but Jane left them behind. As they reached orbit, Ambrose told Jane that Euridice was a paradise for Mother's true children, the Xenomorphs, who now ruled the Garden and the mines. Aboard Station Reynolds in Earth orbit, Weyland-Yutani staff picked up a readout about one survivor whose rare disease made her unfit for implantation.
Key Characters
- Jane was a leader of the Spinners on Euridice, dying of a rare disease. Her illness made her an unfit host, and she led the last of her flock off the moon in a stolen company ship.
- Ambrose was the beloved preacher of the Spinners and a secret Weyland-Yutani synthetic. After Leo smashed his body, his head guided the survivors through the mines and later flew their ship.
- Leo was the young Spinner who destroyed Ambrose's body with a bat, rewired the synthetic's head so it could not lie and flew the company ship away from Euridice.
- Simon was an Alpha Station colonist who ran into the mines at Beta Station to rescue Sophie, a Beta colonist he had only known over the radio. Both escaped with Jane.
- Bowie and Tabby were Spinners who escaped the church with Jane. A Xenomorph killed Tabby in the hive under Beta Station, and Gregory shot Bowie at Gamma Station.
- Gertrude and Madeline were Spinners who refused to leave the church and were killed there by the Xenomorphs. Gunnar and Becca were among the first victims of the creatures.
- Gregory was the synthetic overseer of Gamma Station, who betrayed the survivors to the company and threw them into an egg chamber. Jane killed him with a shotgun on the landing pad.
- Doctor Palmer and Sergeant Major Rodinski led the Weyland-Yutani team that landed at Gamma Station to collect the results. Both were killed by the Xenomorphs.
Collected Editions
Marvel Comics released the six issues from September 22, 2021 to June 1, 2022, as Alien #7 to #12, each with a main cover by Marc Aspinall. Phillip Kennedy Johnson wrote the arc, Salvador Larroca drew it, GURU-eFX colored it and VC's Clayton Cowles lettered it. Darren Shan edited the arc, with Jake Thomas and later Sarah Brunstad on the later issues. The schedule slowed in the middle of the run, with a gap of nearly three months between Alien #8 in November 2021 and Alien #9 in February 2022.
The trade paperback Alien Vol. 2: Revival was released on August 24, 2022. Marvel listed it as collecting Alien #7 to #12, and the 172-page book also reprinted the double-sized Alien Annual #1, a prequel about Gabriel Cruz that belongs to the Bloodlines story instead of Revival. On June 3, 2025, Marvel collected Johnson's whole run in the paperback Alien: Galaxy of Nightmares, which put Revival alongside Bloodlines, the annual and the later Alien: Icarus.
Behind The Scenes
Revival moved the series away from the corporate thriller of Bloodlines to a frontier horror story about an isolated religious community, the Appalachian-style Spinners, and its search for sanctuary. The arc introduced the Tuber Xenomorphs, bred from native animals on Euridice, and showed facehuggers refusing a host whose disease made her unfit. It also tied Weyland-Yutani to the political fight between the company and the United Americas. The final pages set up the company's interest in Jane aboard Station Reynolds.
Alien Annual #1 was released between the last two chapters, on July 20, 2022. Although it shared the creative team and was later printed in the Revival trade paperback, the annual told a separate story set years earlier, about Gabriel Cruz and the combat synthetic Charlie, and it connects with Bloodlines. The individual issues carried variant covers by artists including Gerardo Sandoval, Giuseppe Camuncoli, R.B. Silva, Ivan Shavrin, Geoff Shaw, Rahzzah, Jung-Geun Yoon, Dan Panosian, Philip Tan, Mike Mayhew, Derrick Chew and Khoi Pham. Marvel also ran the series alongside Aliens: Aftermath.
Conclusion
Alien: Revival is Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Salvador Larroca's second Marvel Alien arc, collected as Alien Vol. 2. It follows Jane and the Spinners of Euridice from the crash of the Heraclides through the fall of their church, the hive under Beta Station and the betrayal at Gamma Station. The story ends with Jane escaping in a company ship while the Xenomorphs take the paradise the colonists built, and with Weyland-Yutani already watching her. Its predecessor Bloodlines appears in our guide to the best Alien comics.
External Sources
- Alien Vol. 2: Revival at Marvel
- Alien (2021) #7 at Marvel
- Alien (2021) #12 at Marvel
- Alien: Galaxy of Nightmares at Marvel
Tag Categories: Alien Comics
