Aliens: Colonial Marines Comic: Plot & Lore
Aliens: Colonial Marines was a ten-issue Dark Horse series published irregularly from January 1993 to July 1994, written across its run by Chris Warner, Kelley Puckett, Paul Guinan and Dan Jolley. It followed Lieutenant Joseph Henry and a punishment platoon on the USS Melville, including Private Carmen Vasquez, younger sister of Jenette Vasquez, as they fought Xenomorphs and human hybrid Bug-Men after the fall of Charon Base. The campaign ran from a toxic dump and the Sun Gun rail station to Bracken's World and a final assault on an Alphatech communications relay ruled by Ernst Kleist. Planned as twelve issues, the series was cut short and closed by killing most of its cast in the relay's destruction.
Plot Summary
Hive Claims The Waste Crew
Before Lieutenant Joseph Henry ever took the USS Melville, a Schiller Biological waste crew drifted into a live hive in yellow pressure suits. Xenomorphs closed from every wall while a distant father justified himself to his son over the radio. He said he was not the monster they made him out to be, that Henry's mother had accepted his choices, and that death was as much a part of life as living. The crew's last clear words were panic as the hive finished them.
That slaughter set the board for the dump run that would become Henry's punishment tour. Alphatech and the Corps already knew the sector was poisoned with organized Alien activity after Charon Base. The waste station was never empty. It was a warning the Melville would arrive too late to read.
Henry Takes Command
Lieutenant Joseph Henry, son of a powerful Earth politician, broke a superior's jaw and drew another insubordination charge. Petrovic punished him with command of the sector's worst platoon and a billet on the USS Melville. The brief was to escort company man Beliveau, dump toxic waste at the Sun Gun, and haul labor toward a deep-space array. Henry took the misfits anyway and drilled them like a combat unit from the first watch.
When security contact with the dump was lost, Henry forced the platoon to gear up over protests and woke them into a live Alien fight. Hard cases, washouts and company hangers-on filled the roster because nobody else would take the run. Henry made it clear he still meant to fight like a Marine. Rumors of organized Xenomorph activity after Charon Base already rode the same sector.
Carmen Among The Marines
Private Carmen Vasquez had joined the Corps determined to match the toughness of her older sister Jenette Vasquez, who had died fighting Xenomorphs on LV-426. Carmen kept to the barracks routines, the weights and the weapons drills, and she talked like a Marine even when the rest of the platoon laughed at the family name. Henry did not soften the assignment for her. She was one more rifle in a unit nobody else wanted.
The other Marines knew the story of Hadley's Hope and treated Carmen as either a mascot or a target. She answered both with work. When the Melville left for the waste station, Carmen was on the roster with the rest of Henry's rejects, and she carried the same fear she would not name aloud. The mission that was supposed to be a dump inspection was about to put her in front of the same species that had killed her sister. The dump run was already the wrong place for a Marine still measuring herself against a dead sibling.
Xenomorphs Swarm The Bay
The waste station was not empty. Henry's team found a hive already dug into the dump works, and the Aliens that rose out of the dark moved with a discipline no wild nest should have. Armed Bug-Men pushed with them, one carrying a heavy BOLT gun while others flanked the bay with rifles. Pulse rifles opened up while alarms and hazard lights painted the corridors red.
Henry kept the survivors moving and refused to treat the fight as a simple pest clearance. The hybrids and drones pressed from multiple decks at once, and the dump's own toxic systems made every breach worse. Carmen saw her first live Xenomorph in that press and froze until another Marine hauled her clear. The mission that was supposed to punish Henry had become a siege inside a poisoned station.
Marines Enter The Hive
Deeper inside the installation the walls gave way to resin and tunnels that belonged to a hive rather than a human plant. Henry pushed a team into those passages to find survivors, company gear and whatever had organized the Aliens. Helmet lamps cut across ribbed corridors while the Marines called ranges and checked corners. They found corpses, shed skins and evidence that someone had been steering the infestation rather than merely dying in it.
The hive did not behave like the wild nests from the films. The Sun Gun tunnels rewarded patience and punished anyone who chased a single kill. Drones held ground, withdrew on cue and funneled the Marines toward kill zones. Henry began to suspect a human hand behind the pattern. The platoon collected what proof it could and fought its way back toward the sections that still answered to Melville control. Every delay cost ammo the Melville could not easily replace.
Carmen Faces The Horror
Carmen had talked tough in the barracks, but the first corpse of a Xenomorph stopped her cold. The shape of the skull and the wet shine of the carapace were the same threat that had taken Jenette, and for a moment Carmen could not raise her rifle. A swarm hit the team before she recovered. Cvercko dragged her out of the open and shoved her back toward the others while pulse fire chewed the corridor.
After that contact Carmen stopped pretending the legends were enough. She stayed with the squad, shot when ordered and kept her eyes on the dark between the lights. The fear did not leave, but it no longer locked her in place. Henry needed every Marine who could still move, and Carmen forced herself into that number. From then on she checked corners and magazines like any other rifleman Henry still trusted.
Kleist Feeds A Captive
One Marine who went down in the acid later woke cocooned in resin instead of a medbay. Kleist's man held out food while a masked attendant told him to save his strength after days unconscious, and Xenomorphs watched from the walls. The same program then forced glowing royal jelly into captives' mouths, promising strength and purpose while turning them into tools for the Father. Acid blood had put the Marine down. The hive decided what came next.
Xenomorph Lunges In The Station
On the rail-gun platform known as the Sun Gun, the Marines fought room by room while Aliens dropped from overhead runs and side locks. One drone lunged through a hatch and nearly tore a rifleman apart before massed fire put it down. The noise of pulse rifles and the scream of the creatures carried through the metal of the station. Henry's platoon was outnumbered and low on clean exits.
They held long enough to pull surviving civilians and company men into a pocket they could still defend. Among those pulled out was a strange hybrid captive the Marines began to call a Bug-Man, along with company security man Vormitag. Henry wanted answers more than another body count. The Sun Gun had to be abandoned before the hive finished the job. Henry kept the unit moving because stopping meant another hive corridor.
Firefight In The Corridors
Corridor fights bought the platoon minutes rather than victories. Each junction bought Henry a little more time to reach the next seal. Marines stacked at junctions, dumped magazines into the dark and fell back to the next seal when the resin advanced. Henry and specialists Chen and Rake used the station layout against the swarm where they could, collapsing routes and forcing the Aliens into kill funnels. Every sealed door was temporary. Nobody on the roster still thought this was soft duty.
During the retreat the team uncovered clearer proof that humans were being altered toward Alien forms rather than simply impregnated. The discovery matched the organized attacks and the presence of the hybrid captive. Henry began to treat the infestation as a campaign with a commander. Getting off the Sun Gun alive became the first objective of a longer war. The Melville was still reachable, and Henry intended to board it with proof rather than rumors.
Escape From The Sun Gun
Henry, Chen, Rake and survivor Dinkel purged a tox-bay hatch and blew Xenomorphs into open space to clear a path. The remaining Marines used EVA gear and whatever boats still answered to reach the Melville. They left the Sun Gun burning behind them with the hive still inside its bones. The cost in dead and wounded was high, but the platoon was no longer trapped on the rail platform. Nobody on the roster still thought this was soft duty.
They brought the Bug-Man captive and Vormitag with them. Henry wanted both under guard until someone explained the hybrid and the company interest in the sector. The Melville set course away from the dump with a crew that had stopped joking about soft duty. Rest was the next promise on the board, and it would not last. Whoever had bred the Bug-Men still owned the sector, and soft duty was finished.
Melville Above Bracken's World
The Melville made for Bracken's World, a wet backwater the Marines expected to use for repair and leave. From orbit the planet was water, storm light and a few coastal footholds. Henry briefed the survivors on watches, ammo counts and the hybrid locked below. Company man Beliveau stayed close to the command deck and offered little that Henry trusted. The fight left no clean ground and no time for speeches.
Bracken's World should have been quiet. Instead the Melville's sensors and the local traffic painted a picture of another Alien push already under way on the surface. Henry ordered a landing plan and kept the Bug-Man under double guard. The platoon went down armed for a colony fight rather than a beach holiday. Henry kept the hybrid caged and Beliveau in sight while the dropships rolled out. Henry kept the unit moving because stopping meant another hive corridor.
Landing On Bracken's World
Dropships put the Marines onto a Bracken's World grid landing pad above the water and the colony works. Beech stayed aboard the Melville while the ground teams split. Nyland and Carmen escorted the Alphatech party toward the main colony. Henry took a recon team after a signal from a kelp farm that led them to a rogue Alphatech outpost.
Inside that outpost Henry saw a Bug-Men transmission and walked into an ambush before Maryland's APC and the second dropship pulled the stranded team clear. They sheltered next in Sector 1, the small refuge that still answered. Salt spray and pad lights made the whole arrival feel temporary. The welcome was thin and already edged with fear.
Ambush At The Outpost
At the rogue Alphatech outpost past the kelp farm, Henry's recon team walked into an ambush after he saw a Bug-Men transmission on the screens. Pulse rifles and scavenged explosives bought seconds while Xenomorphs poured the compound and the APC was still too far out. The fight was an outpost scrap, not a street battle in Sector 1, and it was the screens that proved hybrids were already organizing the sector. Maryland's APC and the second dropship pulled the survivors clear before the outpost finished them.
That ambush fixed the true shape of the Bracken's run. Bug-Men had marked the outpost, but the colony fights that followed would be swimming Xenomorphs and dock fires, not hybrid infantry in the streets. Henry kept what he had seen off the council channel for now and used the APC as a mobile strongpoint on the way to Sector 1.
APC On The Colony
The APC under Maryland hauled Henry's battered fire teams off the outpost kill zone and onto colony roads toward the settlement that still answered. Rain, spray and industrial glare made every approach look the same until the buildings rose out of the wet. Marines dismounted at choke points and swept for resin, eggs and ambushes. The colony was not yet a hive, but it was leaning that way.
Henry used the vehicle as a mobile strongpoint while Carmen and the others cleared side streets. Local militia wanted Marines to stand and fight in place. Henry wanted mobility and a clean link back to the pad. That tension would matter once the colony's water approaches opened under swimming Aliens.
Henry Rallies The Colonists
Inside the main town Henry climbed onto a crate with a pulse rifle across his chest and talked the colonists into a defense alongside Herk Mondo's people. He refused to tell the council or Nyland everything he had seen at the outpost. He did not promise rescue from Earth. He promised that running without a line would kill them faster than holding with the Marines.
During the defense Henry bought neck micro-bombs wired to his own heart so the platoon could not desert him. The colony still ended in fiery ruins, and the council blamed him until he dismissed their demands cold. Beliveau then lured him on with classified talk of an Alphatech weapons cache and a lost communications array. Henry kept the company man close and treated every smile as a possible trap.
Xenomorphs In The Water
The attack did not only come down the roads. Xenomorphs moved through the surrounding water, dark shapes under the surface that the shore guns could barely track. Marines fired into the spray while colonists dragged children and stores toward the inner blocks. Henry shifted teams to the docks and the low walls where the water met the town. The survivors marked the lesson and carried it into the next deck.
Aquatic approaches made every seawall a weak point. Aquatic Xenomorphs used that, feeding into gaps the Melville's people had not wired yet. Carmen and the rifle squads burned magazines holding the line while Henry tried to keep the defense from breaking into panic. Bracken's World was becoming another Sun Gun, only with civilians in the middle. Henry refused to abandon the town the way the rail station had been left to burn.
Beliveau On The Melville
Between fights Henry pressed Beliveau for the real brief. The company man talked around Alphatech interests, missing arrays and the need to clear the company's name, but he never gave Henry a clean map of the war. Henry began to believe Beliveau had used the Marines as a probe while the company hunted a different target. The Bug-Man captive in the hold was part of that hunt. Henry kept the unit moving because stopping meant another hive corridor.
On the Melville the crew argued over who was using whom. Some Marines wanted Beliveau locked up. Henry kept him working because the company still held codes, weapons caches and orbital data the platoon lacked. Trust was gone. Utility was not. He kept Beliveau on the deck under watch and made him earn every code he still held. The survivors marked the lesson and carried it into the next deck.
Aquatic Xenomorph Attack
On the open water a Marine craft met a larger Alien form that came up from below in a sheet of spray. Guns on the boat hammered it while the crew fought to keep from capsizing. The creature was built for the wet world in a way the dump drones had not been. Henry's people learned again that the enemy adapted to whatever host terrain Alphatech's war had given it.
They killed the attacker or drove it under, then ran for the nearest hard shore. Reports of more shapes in the channels followed them in. Henry ordered the boats back under town guns and told the colonists the water was no longer a road. Every approach to Bracken's World now belonged to the swimming Aliens until proven otherwise. Henry closed the water gates and put the next fight back on ground an APC could climb.
Dropship Over The Coast
When the town could no longer hold every front, Henry used dropships to shift fire teams along the coast toward facilities the Aliens wanted. From the air the colony looked like a thin ring of lights around black water and burning docks. Carmen rode the rails with a rifle and a headset, calling targets for the door gunners. The Melville's air wing was small, but it was still faster than the roads.
Henry's own face on those runs looked carved down to duty. He had stopped talking about leave and started talking about cutting the head off the campaign. Beliveau finally admitted that the Father behind the Bug-Men was the prize Alphatech cared about. The Marines were going to be the ones who had to reach him. Henry accepted that and began planning the lift to whatever cache Beliveau would open. Nobody on the roster still thought this was soft duty.
Explosions At The Docks
The docks went up in a chain of blasts as fuel, ammo and Alien acid met in the same narrow works. Marines pulled colonists out of the fire lanes while swimming Aliens tried to push through the smoke. Henry spent the last of his easy reserves holding a corridor to the pad. When the smoke thinned, Bracken's World was still contested, but the Melville's people had a path off the mud.
They left with survivors, scars and Beliveau's partial confession. The Father was still out there, and the company still had hardware Henry needed. The next stop would not be another colony leave. It would be an Alphatech cache Beliveau claimed was stocked to kill Aliens. He told the platoon to rest on the hop and to expect robots rather than a clean handoff. The survivors marked the lesson and carried it into the next deck.
USS Melville Destroyed
Liston reported from planetary range that the USS Melville's orbit had decayed into Bracken's upper atmosphere. Beech, left aboard in royal jelly withdrawal, could not hold the ship. Structural failure tore the Melville apart in a white fireball while Henry's ground teams watched the feed go dead. With the ship gone, the platoon was staying on Bracken's World whether the council liked it or not.
Alphatech Weapons Hangar
Stranded after the Melville's loss, Henry struck an uneasy deal with Beliveau. In exchange for Marine muscle, Beliveau opened the Joliet Mining Facility, an Alphatech weapons cache packed with prototypes built to erase Xenomorphs. A Shop Steward synthetic and other prototype synths had held the site against Alien probes for weeks. Henry took the deal because his platoon was out of clean options.
They fought through the facility, loaded what they could, and escaped on Beliveau's Alphatech assault craft when the hive pressed too hard. The Shop Steward sacrificed himself covering the withdrawal. Henry wanted the guns first and the arguments later. The cache put prototype firepower in Marine hands for the road still ahead.
Defense Of The Weapons Cache
Aliens hit the cache while the Marines were still inventorying crates. Robots already in the fight used the prototype weapons with a cold efficiency that made Henry's people look slow. The platoon joined the defense, learned the new guns under fire and kept the hangar from becoming another hive. Carmen and the rifle teams adapted faster than the officers expected. The fight left no clean ground and no time for speeches.
When the wave broke, Henry loaded what the dropships could lift and left the rest under robot guard. Beliveau looked pleased to have Marines dependent on company iron. Henry looked pleased to have iron that killed Aliens. Both men knew the alliance would last only until the Father was in reach. Until then Henry would take every prototype crate the robots would release. The survivors marked the lesson and carried it into the next deck.
Battle For The Facility
A second assault on the facility turned the hangar and the outer yards into a single firefight. Prototype rounds and robot guns were the only reason the yard held. APCs and powered dropship runs cut across resin and wreckage while Marines dumped prototype rounds into the swarm. The Bug-Men wanted the cache as badly as Henry did. Losing it would have ended the campaign before the relay. The fight left no clean ground and no time for speeches.
Henry held the yard long enough to finish the lift. Wounded went up first, then ammo, then the last fire teams. The Melville's people left the robots to whatever fate the company had built them for. With the new weapons aboard, Henry finally had the tools for a strike on the Father's house. He ordered the assault craft prepped for the relay run before the crew talked itself into mutiny. Nobody on the roster still thought this was soft duty.
Neck Micro-Bombs
During the colony defense Henry had bought micro-bombs implanted in the Marines' necks and wired to a detonator in his own chest. The charges would fire if a Marine strayed from him or if his heart stopped. He revealed that leash when the next target, the lost communications array, came into focus. From then on desertion was not a private choice.
Crew Breaking Under Strain
En route toward research station #2378, the assault craft's crew came apart from the inside. Rake disabled and hijacked Liston until Henry reclaimed the synthetic with rewritten obedience. Vormitag, deep in jelly psychosis, killed Beliveau. Rosemas, himself in withdrawal, bludgeoned Vormitag in turn.
Royal jelly turned up aboard the craft, and the reprogrammed Liston laid out Beliveau's real mission. Alphatech wanted its name cleared and USCM Colonel Alan Bradshaw found. Henry kept watches honest while half his people shook and the other half watched the hold. He crossed a line most officers never touch when he unbound Liston to kill humans on his order.
Corridor Assault Team
Before the final jump, Henry stacked assault teams in the Melville's corridors and drilled them on the new weapons until the motions stuck. Carmen checked mags and armor with the others and said little about the sister whose legend had gotten her into this unit. The platoon looked harder and thinner than the misfits who had left for a dump run. They also looked ready to mutiny if Henry blinked.
Beliveau chose that stretched moment to admit more of Alphatech's brief. The company needed the lost communications array cleared and a rogue colonel named Alan Bradshaw blamed or found. Henry heard the politics under the words and kept the plan simple. Find the Father. Kill the campaign at the source. Everything else on the Melville was noise until that shot was fired. Henry kept the unit moving because stopping meant another hive corridor.
Dropships To The Relay
With the Melville already gone, Henry pushed on Beliveau's Alphatech assault craft toward the lost subspace communications array the Bug-Men had overrun. At research station #2378 on the way, Liston slaughtered a Xenomorph horde until the surrounding Aliens went disoriented. Henry abandoned Nyland there to keep Liston close, and that choice split the crew from him. The assault plan now depended on speed, prototype firepower and Liston's new obedience alone.
Dropships and the assault craft closed on the hive-wrapped relay with no ship overhead for overwatch. Inside the hold the captive Bug-Man kept changing into something worse than the hybrid dragged off the Sun Gun. Henry refused to abort. The Father was waiting in the array, and the road back was already burned.
Marines Open Fire In The Hive
Henry put the Melville's people into the relay the hard way, crashing a path into hive-coated decks where Alphatech halls had been. Marines piled out into resin corridors and opened fire on drones already nested in the walls. APCs and armed buggies followed where the tunnels allowed. The station was no longer a company asset. It was a hive with a throne at the center. The fight left no clean ground and no time for speeches.
Losses started immediately. Acid, ambushes and collapsed spurs ate whole fire teams while Henry pushed for the core. Carmen and Boston rode one of the vehicles until a crushed Xenomorph sprayed the chassis and flipped them out of the advance. The rest of the column kept going because stopping meant dying in place. Henry did not slow the column for the wreck behind them. Nobody on the roster still thought this was soft duty.
Carmen's Last Stand
Carmen dragged the badly wounded Boston from the wreck and heard him beg for a mercy kill before a facehugger or worse could take him. She never got the clean choice. A mass of Xenomorphs closed on the crash while the other Marines were already too far ahead to turn back. Carmen got a smartgun into her hands and fired into the swarm until the barrel and the dark swallowed her.
Her last stand was short. The Aliens overran the position and killed her in the open, the sister of Jenette Vasquez dying on a company station far from LV-426. Henry learned later, if he learned at all before the end, that one more name from his original misfit roster was gone. Carmen had come to the Corps to equal a legend and left it as a body in a hive corridor. The Vasquez name ended there in acid smoke while the assault rolled on without her.
Hive-Covered Communications Relay
From outside, the relay was a spherical communications array wrapped in blue resin and dish arms, a company jewel turned into a Bug-Men cathedral. Henry's remaining force forced deeper toward the core where the Father was said to wait. Liston fought with the cold precision Henry had bought when he rewrote the synthetic. The human Marines around them were running on rage, withdrawal and the last of the prototype ammo.
Every deck closer to the center cost more blood. Henry paid that price because Kleist was still breathing ahead of him. Henry himself was wounded and still moving, locked on the idea of ending the man who had built the hybrids. The Melville could not save him if he stayed. He stayed anyway. The Father was close enough to smell through the resin, and Henry would not turn back. Henry kept the unit moving because stopping meant another hive corridor.
Henry Faces The Father
In the core Henry found the Father on a throne of company tech and ritual junk. The man admitted he had once been Professor Ernst Kleist, survivor of the Charon disaster from Aliens: Rogue, and that Major Bradshaw had been a convenient Alphatech scapegoat already dead for months. He called himself the Cosmos' Herald and mocked Henry's psych file and politician father. Henry screamed him down and shot him.
Kleist's death tripped the station's destroy sequence. Bleeding out, Henry ordered Liston to get the surviving Marines back to the ship at any cost. Liston confirmed the order, then ripped Henry's heart and detonator from his chest so the neck micro-bombs would not fire when their controller died. Henry did not leave the core.
Last Push Through The Hive
The survivors drove a buggy through resin tunnels while drones dropped around them and the station began to die. Liston held the escape together long enough for the last Marines to clear the worst of the hive. Behind them the relay cooked toward detonation with Henry and Kleist still inside its heart. The punishment platoon that had started on a dump run ended as a handful of bloody names in a fleeing craft.
Alphatech Relay Self-Destruct
The Alphatech communications relay finally tore itself apart in a white-hot ring of fire. A shockwave rolled through the dark green starfield while red speed lines tore the frame open. Below the blast the survivors' ship punched clear of the dying station. Afterward Liston's damaged unit drifted in open space, named Ernst Kleist as the Father, noted Alphatech's liability and shut itself down.
Key Characters
- Lieutenant Joseph Henry commanded the Melville's misfit platoon after repeated insubordination charges. He led the fights on the Sun Gun and Bracken's World, rewrote Liston, killed Ernst Kleist in the relay core and died there after ordering the synthetic to save the survivors.
- Private Carmen Vasquez was Jenette Vasquez's younger sister. She froze on her first live Xenomorph, fought through the later campaigns and died in a short smartgun last stand after her vehicle flipped in the relay hive.
- Beliveau was the Alphatech executive riding the mission. He steered Henry toward company caches and the lost communications array, admitted the Father's importance and was shot dead by Vormitag during withdrawal psychosis before the final assault.
- Liston was the high-powered synthetic Henry had reprogrammed to obey him without the usual human safety limits. Liston ripped out Henry's heart to defuse the neck micro-bombs, extracted the survivors from the dying relay, and later filed a final spaceborne report naming Kleist before shutdown.
- Ernst Kleist, calling himself the Father and the Cosmos' Herald, organized the Bug-Men after surviving Charon Base. He used Major Bradshaw as a scapegoat, ruled the resin-covered relay and died when Henry shot him.
- Vormitag was company security pulled off the Sun Gun. Royal jelly withdrawal drove him to murder Beliveau before Rosemas killed him in turn.
- Rake, Chen, Nyland, Rosemas, Dinkel and Boston were among the Melville Marines and hangers-on who fought, broke or died across the ten issues.
Editions
Dark Horse published Aliens: Colonial Marines as ten color issues from January 1993 to July 1994, after planning a twelve-issue run. Chris Warner wrote the opening arc with Tony Akins and Paul Guinan on art, Kelley Puckett and Allen Nunis handled the Bracken's World stretch, Guinan returned for the weapons-cache issue, and Dan Jolley finished the series with John Nadeau. Robert Mentor and Joe Phillips painted the covers, Clem Robins lettered the run, and Randy Stradley and Dan Thorsland edited it. Dark Horse later collected the story in Aliens Omnibus Volume 2, and Marvel reprinted it in the Original Years omnibus line.
Behind The Scenes
The series was the first Dark Horse Alien comic to put a film character's relative in the lead supporting cast, through Carmen Vasquez. It also tied itself to Aliens: Rogue by bringing Ernst Kleist back as the Father after Charon Base's destruction. Creative teams changed repeatedly across the irregular schedule, which shows in the shift from the dump and Sun Gun arc to the wet war on Bracken's World and the compressed finale. The early covers even billed the book as a twelve-issue series before the cut to ten forced a kill-them-all ending on the relay.
On AvP Central the comic already appeared as a short entry in the Colonial Marine comics list, where Lieutenant Henry's misfit unit and the Bug-Men were flagged as a colorful story that turned darker as the deadline closed in. This article covers the ten-issue plot itself, including Carmen's death and Henry's last order to Liston. Later collections kept those beats intact for readers catching up in omnibus form.
Conclusion
Aliens: Colonial Marines sent a punished lieutenant and the Corps' leftovers through a company war against Xenomorphs and hybrid Bug-Men, and it ended with almost none of them alive. Carmen Vasquez fell in the relay hive, Beliveau died to his own wrecked security man, Henry killed Ernst Kleist and stayed behind, and Liston finished the report in open space. The comic remains the main Dark Horse showcase for Joseph Henry and for Carmen as Jenette's sister. Later games and comics reused the Colonial Marines name, but this ten-issue run is the one that burned Henry's platoon out for good.
External Sources
- Aliens: Colonial Marines #1 at Dark Horse Comics
- Aliens: Colonial Marines at the Grand Comics Database
Tag Categories: Alien Comics
