Aliens: Alien: Plot, Characters & Lore

Aliens: Alien was a twenty-four-page story written by John Arcudi and illustrated by Paul Mendoza, first serialized in Dark Horse Comics #17-19 from January to March 1994. It followed Suom, a young member of an extraterrestrial village terrorized by a Xenomorph known as the Night Reaper. His attempt to prove himself on a hunt led to the deaths of his companions, shelter in a ruined spacecraft and an encounter with a human whose helmet concealed his face. The story followed the villagers' understanding of these events rather than presenting the human visitor as its central character.

Plot Summary

The Night Reaper

The village beneath the moon before a Night Reaper attack

A village on an Unnamed World lived under repeated attacks by a creature its inhabitants called the Night Reaper. The villagers were a humanoid extraterrestrial species who hunted with spears, wore animal skins and decorated their faces with markings. Families barricaded their homes after dark, but their doors could not keep the predator outside. A nocturnal attack destroyed another household while most of the strongest hunters were away gathering food.

The Night Reaper was an adult Xenomorph. Its victims' screams no longer brought the village running to help because previous rescue attempts had taught the inhabitants how dangerous it was. Suom, a young member of the community, watched the creature after it emerged from the ruined dwelling. He approached to observe and plan, rather than attempting a rescue he could not accomplish.

Suom's Place In The Hunt

The Night Reaper waiting beyond the village as the hunters departed

The returning hunters found grief instead of the welcome they expected. Their leader, Ar'Jum, declared that they would hunt the Night Reaper rather than continue losing their families whenever they left to find food. Other villagers feared that an expedition would cost them more of their limited number of strong hunters. Ar'Jum selected Shius and Klum, whose families had died, to accompany him.

Suom volunteered as the fourth hunter. Although he was almost eighteen summers old, his facial markings showed that he had neither made nor taken a life, the village's requirements for adulthood. Ar'Jum initially dismissed him as a boy. Suom gained admission by explaining that he had seen the Night Reaper and survived, giving him knowledge that the other hunters possessed only through descriptions. Ar'Jum told him to bring a larger spear.

The Failed Hunting Party

The Night Reaper leaping toward the spear-armed hunting party

The Four Hunters left before dusk and crossed the open country searching for the creature. By late in the night, several wondered whether they should return to defend the village. Klum repeatedly found possible tracks, but the trails faded without leading to the animal. Suom questioned whether the tracker had located the Night Reaper at all. Ar'Jum insisted that the village was fortified and that the threat was somewhere near them.

The Ambush began when the Xenomorph sprang from the rocks. Suom identified it, but the hunting party had little time to respond. The creature killed Klum with its inner jaws, then struck Ar'Jum with its tail. The spears and experience that had sustained the villagers' ordinary hunts did not protect their leader or tracker from the sudden attack.

Shius And The Acid Blood

Shius staggering away after his spear wounded the Night Reaper

Shius thrust his spear into the Night Reaper, wounding it but releasing its acid blood. The fluid burned his body and rose around him in clouds. The Xenomorph recoiled from the injury, giving Suom an opportunity to reach his companion. Shius asked whether he had killed it, but Suom could see that the creature remained alive.

Suom helped the wounded hunter retreat across the Open Plain. Shius was badly hurt and needed shelter, while the Night Reaper recovered behind them. The expedition that was supposed to establish Suom's adulthood had instead left two hunters dead and a third unable to continue unaided. He brought Shius toward a large hollow structure whose broken outline offered a place to hide.

Shelter In The Wreck

Suom examining unfamiliar machinery and a dead host inside the wreck

The apparent shelter was the damaged hull of a Crashed Spacecraft. Its surviving walls provided cover from the exposed landscape, and Suom placed Shius inside. He watched through the night, afraid that the Night Reaper might follow them. With daylight, his fear eased enough for him to explore their surroundings and try to understand the strange structure they had entered.

The wreck contained Unfamiliar Technology and the remains of a human with a torn-open chest. Suom had no vocabulary for its machinery, chambers or equipment, and the dead occupant offered no explanation. The corpse suggested an earlier Chestburster emergence, but Suom did not reconstruct that history. Shius interrupted his exploration after hearing something moving outside, bringing him back to the entrance.

The Faceless One

The helmeted Faceless One approaching the wreck beside a wheeled cart

Outside stood a Helmeted Human wearing a protective suit, carrying a firearm and accompanied by a wheeled cart. To Suom, the opaque visor made the visitor another strange creature, one without a visible face. The figure approached slowly, raised his hands and made sounds the villagers could not understand. Suom watched with his spear ready, uncertain whether the apparent hesitation concealed an attack.

The Faceless One, as Suom understood him, moved past the young hunter and lifted Shius. Suom protested and threatened him with the spear. The stranger put the injured villager down, responding to the objection even though the two could not communicate through ordinary speech. Shius believed the creature had understood Suom and asked only to be taken home. The encounter gave the young hunter a reason to reconsider his first fear.

The Attempt To Save Shius

The Faceless One carrying the injured Shius while Suom objected

By nightfall, the Stranger had provided a fire and food. Suom told Shius that the visitor seemed to want to help them, despite having hurt him during the earlier handling. The unfamiliar provisions were not especially pleasant, but they filled his stomach. Suom's attention shifted from defending himself against another monster to judging whether they might survive with the stranger's assistance.

Shius Died without answering Suom's reassurance. His injuries could have killed him, but Suom also saw the Faceless One holding an injector and wondered whether there was another explanation. The lack of a common language prevented him from asking what had been administered or understanding its purpose. The visitor's aid did not give him certainty about the death, leaving suspicion alongside his gratitude for the food and warmth.

The Night Reaper's Death

The Night Reaper attacking Suom beside the campfire

The Night Reaper returned to the camp while Suom was considering Shius's death. Its arrival brought back the terror of the failed hunt. The creature that had killed his companions closed on him, but the Faceless One intervened with his firearm. A shot tore through the Xenomorph and killed it almost immediately, accomplishing what the hunting party's spears had failed to do.

For a time, Suom watched the dead creature and the weapon capable of defeating it. He thanked the stranger for saving him and his people, then asked to take the Night Reaper's head home. He wanted proof that the attacks were over and recognition for surviving the expedition. The Faceless One severed the head for his own purposes and refused to surrender it, leaving Suom without the trophy he expected.

Suom's Betrayal

Suom driving his spear into the Faceless One after being denied the trophy

Suom's Suspicion turned toward the stranger's intentions. He imagined the Faceless One entering the village as its savior and using the powerful weapon to become chieftain. The thought joined his jealousy over the trophy and his uncertainty about Shius's death. He interpreted the refusal as an attempt to take the reward for everything he had endured, although he had no shared language through which to establish the visitor's actual plans.

Suom drove his Spear through the Faceless One's chest and killed him. He then took the dead man's equipment, including the firearm and damaged helmet. His attack satisfied the village's requirement that he take a life, but its victim was the person who had killed the Night Reaper and helped him survive. The Xenomorph's death did not end the violence surrounding the failed expedition.

Return To The Village

Suom raising the human stranger's helmet as a false trophy before the villagers

By the following morning, Suom returned alone across the plain. The villagers recognized the youngest member of the hunting party and saw that he carried a trophy. Very few of them had seen the Night Reaper alive, and they accepted the damaged helmet as its severed head. Their desire to believe that the danger had ended helped make his apparent victory convincing.

The Stolen Firearm hung at Suom's side as he raised the helmet before the village. He returned with the status of a man and the prospect of greater authority if he learned how to use the weapon. The community did not learn how Ar'Jum, Klum and Shius had died, or that the supposed monster's head belonged to the stranger who had saved Suom. His claim to recognition depended on concealing that final encounter.

Key Characters

Suom was a young villager whose markings identified him as someone who had neither made nor taken a life. He survived the hunt, killed the stranger who rescued him and returned with the man's helmet and firearm.
Ar'Jum led the village and organized the expedition against the Night Reaper. He accepted Suom because the younger hunter could identify the creature, but died during its ambush.
Shius joined the hunt after losing his family. His spear wounded the Xenomorph, whose acid blood burned him; he escaped with Suom but died after the stranger attempted to help him.
Klum tracked several possible trails across the plain without finding the creature. The Night Reaper killed him when it attacked the hunting party.
The Faceless One was an unnamed human in a protective suit. He brought food, attempted to treat Shius and killed the Night Reaper, but Suom murdered him after he refused to give up the creature's head.
The Night Reaper was the villagers' name for the Xenomorph that attacked their homes. It survived the spear wound and destroyed the hunting party before the Faceless One killed it with his firearm.

Editions

Dark Horse Comics #17-19 published the three installments in January, February and March 1994, with eight story pages per issue. John Arcudi wrote the story, Paul Mendoza supplied the artwork, James Sinclair colored it and Vickie Williams lettered it. The collected credits also named Mendoza as the artist of the title illustration reproduced before the story in the omnibus.

Dark Horse collected Alien in Aliens Omnibus Volume 5 in 2008, alongside stories including Cargo, Kidnapped and Survival. The twenty-four pages formed a continuous account of the village's hunt and its aftermath. Marvel later included it in Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Volume 2, published in January 2022, which collected material from Dark Horse Comics #15-19 among its anthology selections.

Behind The Scenes

Alien presented a human as an unfamiliar visitor through the perceptions of another intelligent species. The helmet, firearm, injector and spacecraft were recognizable to readers, while Suom understood them through his own experience of hunting, tribal authority and fear. His suspicion that the visitor intended to seize leadership was his interpretation; the stranger's words were not translated into an explanation of his motives.

The Final Trophy was the Faceless One's damaged helmet, which the villagers accepted as the Night Reaper's head. That substitution mattered because the stranger had kept the actual Xenomorph head after killing it. Suom returned carrying evidence of his own murder rather than the kill the village believed he had made, together with a weapon whose power he had witnessed but did not understand.

Arcudi also wrote the separate 1991 short story Aliens: The Alien, illustrated by Tony Akins with layouts and inks by Paul Guinan. That earlier story concerned an assassination of the Space Jockey that threatened Earth, with a different cast and setting. Paul Mendoza's Alien was the later three-part story about Suom and the Night Reaper, despite the similar titles.

Conclusion

Aliens: Alien followed a village's attempt to stop a nocturnal predator and a young hunter's desire for adulthood. Arcudi and Mendoza ended the hunt with a human defeating the Xenomorph, only for Suom to murder him and claim a victory the village misunderstood. The final return paired the end of the Night Reaper's attacks with the arrival of an unfamiliar weapon in the hands of an ambitious survivor.