Alien: Romulus was a Marvel Comics one-shot that filled the gap between the film's prologue and the arrival of Rain Carradine's scavenger crew. Written by Zac Thompson with story credits for director Fede Álvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues, and drawn by Daniel Picciotto, it showed how the recovered Nostromo Xenomorph wrecked Renaissance Station. The comic showed why the station was already empty when the kids from Jackson's Star docked.
Marvel One-Shot
Marvel published the issue on October 23, 2024, after the theatrical run of Alien: Romulus. It was the first Marvel one-shot built as a direct film prequel in the Alien line, arriving between Aliens: What If...? and Alien: Paradiso. Cover art came from Leinil Francis Yu, with variants by Björn Barends and Marco Checchetto. Yen Nitro colored the interiors, and Clayton Cowles lettered the book under editor Sarah Brunstad.
The story opened in 2142, after Weyland-Yutani recovered a cocooned specimen designated XX121 from the wreckage of the USCSS Nostromo. An unmanned probe, Echo 203, carried the remains from the Zeta Reticuli system to the Remus module of Renaissance. Science officer Rook, a synthetic, wanted the creature preserved in stasis for bio-engineering research that would later feed the station's lab experiments on Z-01. Fans already knew the specimen as Big Chap, Kane's Son from Alien (1979).
Security Versus Science
Not everyone on Renaissance wanted XX121 kept alive. Security officers Adrian Kopecky and Hyla pushed to destroy or eject the specimen before it woke. Hyla had lost an eye as a Colonial Marine clearing indigenous life off a mineral moon before terraforming, got too close on what she called a bug hunt, and paid for it with her career. Weyland-Yutani stuck her on Renaissance security afterward, and she treated the cocooned Alien as a threat the scientists refused to see.
Rook and the Remus science team disagreed, locked the creature on a cryogenic control rig, and kept the internal temperature subzero while they studied it. Adrian backed Hyla's plan anyway: wait until the scientists were preoccupied, sneak into the Remus lab, and dump the cocoon back into space. They did not understand that the cryo bed was the only thing still holding Big Chap down.
Experiments On The Xenomorph
Days later, Rook logged a successful DNA harvest from XX121 and identified the organism as a composite of human and endoparasitoid alien tissue. From that material he synthesized its basic ovomorph form and replicated the second parasitoid stage of the life cycle, the cloned facehuggers that would later fill Renaissance's stores. Small samples fed a compound Rook believed held the accelerant behind the creature's growth, work aimed at the immortality search that once obsessed company founder Peter Weyland and the older Prometheus research thread.
Remus scientist Mattos argued the life-form was invaluable to the weapons division, while Rook dismissed that as shortsighted and talked about building better humans instead of better bombs. The Bioweapons Division grew tired of waiting either way. They ordered the parasitoids sent down to the Romulus module, took half of Rook's stock against his protests, reassigned most of the staff, and left him a skeleton crew on Remus. A human superior shut the synthetic down cold: Rook worked for them, and progress would not wait on his objections.
Outbreak On Remus
With the lab thinned out, Adrian and Hyla finally snuck into Remus, opened the cryochamber, and saw the synthesized parasites for themselves before cutting containment. XX121 tore free at once and killed Adrian first, ripping into him before the rest of the lab understood what had happened. Scientists and security died in the corridors as Big Chap moved through Remus. Some crew tried to seal compartments, others ran for weapons, and Rook kept the research running, even calling Romulus Lab to begin Phase 01 trials for compound Z-01 while the outbreak spread. Bodies piled up, systems failed, and what Rain later walked into was the aftermath of this night, left frozen after the survivors ran out.
Facehuggers Unleashed
Big Chap headed for Romulus and smashed open the parasitoid stores Bioweapons had forced out of Remus. Cloned facehuggers spilled into the corridors and latched onto staff who had survived the first minutes of the attack, including Mattos, who had been arguing that one Xenomorph could wipe a failing colony cheaper than an evacuation when the swarm hit. Implanted hosts produced more chestbursters, and Rain's group later found early hive material cocooned through the station. The Romulus and Remus modules were already lost before any scavenger ship arrived from Jackson's Star.
Rook Torn In Half
With Adrian dead and the station collapsing, Hyla and Rook formed a temporary alliance. She wanted XX121 killed before it wiped Renaissance. He wanted enough time to finish Z-01, and he handed her a thermal tracker keyed to the creature's body temperature so they could hunt it through the modules. Rook guessed the Alien was heading for Romulus to protect the young parasitoids. When they found it, Big Chap tore the synthetic nearly in half, leaving Rook ruined but still functional enough to keep working and keep arguing for the compound.
Death Of Big Chap
Rook warned that shooting the Xenomorph was dangerous because its acid blood could burn through the hull and decompress the station, but he also said Renaissance could survive a few seconds of vacuum if they killed it where he could trigger the emergency seals. Hyla lured Big Chap into that killbox and emptied her F44AA Pulse Rifle into the creature until it finally went down. That Weyland-Yutani security rifle was the weapon that killed Kane's Son on Renaissance, decades after Ripley had blown it out of the Narcissus airlock. The acid burned through deck after deck toward the outer hull while the remaining crew scrambled for seals and exits.
Final Fate Of The Station
As Z-01 processing hit one hundred percent, Rook called the purified compound perfect and triggered seal-station protocol. When the acid breached the hull, decompression tore through the open modules. Hyla and the rest of the human crew were sucked into space while Rook dragged himself onward to save the sample. Renaissance was left locked and drifting, filled with corpses, facehugger stores, and hive residue for the scavengers who arrived later aboard the Corbelan IV.
Key Characters
- Rook - Remus science officer synthetic who preserved XX121 for Z-01 research and sealed the station after the massacre.
- Hyla - Former Colonial Marine turned Renaissance security officer who lost an eye on a bug hunt, killed Big Chap, and died in the decompression.
- Adrian Kopecky - Security officer who helped cut the cryo bed and died first when XX121 woke.
- Mattos - Remus scientist who pushed weapons applications for XX121 and died when the freed parasitoids overran the station.
- XX121 / Big Chap - The original Nostromo Xenomorph, recovered in a cocoon, revived on Remus, and finally shot dead by Hyla.
Legacy
Big Chap survived the Narcissus long enough for Weyland-Yutani to find it, died on Renaissance, and left behind cloned parasites plus the Z-01 sample Rook finished before sealing the station. The results of the comic are visible throughout Alien: Romulus: Big Chap's hanging corpse, the ruined labs, the facehugger stores, and Rook briefing scavengers over a station full of dead colleagues. All of it was already in place before Rain, Andy, or the Corbelan IV left Jackson's Star.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Comics | Alien Merchandise | Alien Romulus Lore
