Aliens: Earth Angel: Plot, Characters & Lore
Aliens: Earth Angel is a 1994 Dark Horse Comics one-shot written and drawn by John Byrne, with colors by Matt Webb. Matthew Webber and Lou Ann pulled a non-human pilot out of a burning disc in the woods and carried him to a small-town doctor. A facehugger was locked on that pilot. The chestburster that followed grew into a Queen, nested among a biker gang, and died when Dr. Daniel Ripley and the survivors burned the eggs.
Plot Summary
A burning disc came down in the woods outside a small American town in the 1950s, past the last houses and out of sight of the road. Matthew Webber, called Matt, and his girlfriend Lou Ann were the first people at the wreck. They saw the fire through the trees and went toward it while the rest of the town was indoors, with no warning that a ship had come down.
Matt And Lou Ann Find The Crash
Up close the hull was no airplane Lou Ann had ever seen. She called the burning disc a flying saucer and held back in the trees, while Matt climbed to an open hatch to see if anyone was inside. The pilot in the cockpit was strapped into a heavy mechanical suit, and he was not human. Under the harness his face was a flower of ridged flesh with no eyes, and it was not the face of anyone from town.
They dragged the pilot clear before the hull finished burning. A few minutes later the disc was gone, and the fire left no wreckage behind it. The ship had destroyed itself, and Matt and Lou Ann could not tell where it had come from or why it had come down in the woods outside town. They took the pilot in the suit and started back toward the doctor's office.
The Facehugger Comes Off The Pilot
They carried the pilot into the doctor's office, where Mrs. Miller was on her way home from a visit. She treated the body as one of Matthew Webber's pranks until the doctor sent her home and took the pilot as a real patient. On the table the doctor found a dead green creature with a long tail and many legs clamped over the flower-like face, and he pulled it free. Under it, the pilot's face was the same flower of flesh, with no eyes.
The pilot woke in a panic. The doctor decided the case was past anything he could treat in that office and that Washington had to hear about it. Before he could make the call, the pilot's chest split. A red chestburster tore out through the suit and the exam table, and the two young people were left with the body.
The Chestburster Flees The Office
The new creature did not stay in the office. It got out into the trees behind town while Matt and Lou Ann were trying to help the dead pilot. Torchy's was the roadhouse on the stretch of highway the doctor hated to drive. Motorcycles lined the porch, a jukebox played inside, and the room was full of riders in purple jackets marked with a skull and crossbones.
Big Tom led the riders there, and Augie and Cherry were among the purple jackets in the room. Mickey had gone into the trees behind Torchy's and had not come back. His motorcycle was at the shack, and he had not ridden away. Big Tom left the roadhouse and went into the woods after him, with the others calling Mickey's name between the trunks.
Daniel Tries To Leave Town
At home, Daniel moved his wife and their daughter Alicia out of the house the same night. Alicia was frightened, and her mother wanted him to stop, but he would not describe the pilot or the creature that had come out of him in the office. He sent Alicia to her grandmother's for a while, and he asked his wife to leave town before he told them the rest of what had happened.
They loaded the car after dark. Daniel's wife could not call her mother first, because that house had no telephone. The road out of town ran past Torchy's, and she hated that stretch. She treated the roadhouse as a magnet for every hood and juvenile delinquent in six counties, and she wanted Sheriff McBagan to shut it down. Daniel had spoken to the sheriff. The thing in the woods worried him more than the riders did, and he said nothing about it until Alicia saw a shape in the headlights.
Big Tom Finds The Queen In The Woods
Big Tom found the grown creature in the trees. It was far larger than the thing that had left the doctor's office, with a long head, empty eye sockets, and the build of a Queen that hunted on foot. The rest of the gang searched the woods and called for Angie. Acid dripped from the creature while it moved between the trunks. It killed Angie and another rider with the tail, and it left their bodies in the brush near a scatter of green, leathery eggs. Some of those eggs were open.
The Queen Smashes The Family Car
On the road past Torchy's, the same Queen came out of the dark and hit the family car. Daniel's wife saw it in the headlights a moment before the glass went. The creature drove an arm through the windshield and filled the front seat, while Alicia screamed from the back. The car left the road with the family inside and caught fire in the dry brush.
Daniel Pulls Alicia From The Fire
Daniel got his wife and Alicia out of the burning car before the fire reached the gas tank. The Queen was on the wreck and reaching for them when he pulled Alicia from the back seat, and his wife came out of the front and ran with them into the brush. The blast threw all three of them down the hill into a clearing of green eggs and cocooned riders. The explosion killed the Queen on the road above that clearing, and Daniel found his wife and Alicia alive beside him among the eggs.
Daniel Burns The Nest
Purple-jacket riders from Torchy's were cocooned in that clearing beside the eggs. The surviving gang rode in from the roadhouse and circled Daniel, his wife, and Alicia. A chestburster tore out of one rider, and another came through a second host, before anyone could pull the men free. Daniel started a fire in the nest for the young, after the car fire had killed the Queen.
One of the riders, Steve, refused to let the cocooned men burn. The cocooned men were his friends, and he had seen creatures like this before. Steve pulled a chestburster off a host, and the creature's acid blood hit the cigarette lighter in his hand and set it burning. Daniel took a gas can off a motorcycle and soaked the eggs. The brood went up in the grass, acid sprayed out of the burning bodies, and Daniel, his family, and the riders who could run left the clearing.
Colonel Murphy Seals The Woods
The fire spread until the local crews had to stand back and let the woods burn out. At dawn, army trucks and police cars stopped on the road. A state trooper wanted an explanation, and the man with him pointed Colonel Murphy at the remains. A sergeant counted a couple of dozen of the creatures scattered through the human dead.
Murphy ordered the woods sealed and a full report by sunset. No one on that road called Washington, which was the call the doctor had wanted to make from the office. The family had left the site. They reached the wife's mother at the last house on Wolf Pit Road. On the drive out they had no way to warn her, and at the house they used the kitchen telephone for an ambulance. Daniel assured his wife that the night was over. The dispatcher asked for a name, and he gave it as Doctor Daniel Ripley.
The Earth Angel Queen
The Earth Angel Queen was the adult Xenomorph that grew from the pilot's chestburster in a single night. The host was not human. He was the eyeless pilot of the disc, and the host-born Queen that came out of him had a long domed head, hollow eye sockets, and limbs long enough to wreck a car. She hunted in the woods behind Torchy's, killed Big Tom's riders, and laid a ground nest of soft green eggs, flatter and brighter than the tall ovoids of later stories.
Those eggs lay on the ground among the cocooned riders, and some of them were open. The car fire on the road past Torchy's killed her before she left that clearing. Daniel burned the eggs and the chestbursters that came out of the bikers, and the flames ran on into the trees. Colonel Murphy sealed the woods the next morning and ordered a full report by sunset.
Key Characters
- Dr. Daniel Ripley was the town doctor. He pulled the dead facehugger off the pilot, watched the chestburster escape, and moved his family out of town the same night. He pulled Alicia from the burning car, then soaked the nest with gasoline. He gave his name over his mother-in-law's telephone.
- Daniel's wife has no first name in the story. She left with him and Alicia toward her mother's house on Wolf Pit Road, survived the crash, and reached that kitchen after the nest burned.
- Alicia Ripley was their daughter, and the only named child in the house. Daniel called her princess. She was in the back seat when the Queen came through the windshield, and she got out before the gas tank exploded.
- Matthew Webber and Lou Ann found the disc, dragged the pilot clear, and brought him to the office. Mrs. Miller used Matthew's full name when she took the body for a prank.
- Big Tom led the riders at Torchy's. He walked into the woods after Mickey and met the Queen. Other named riders were Augie, Cherry, Mickey, Angie, and Steve, who tried to pull a chestburster off a friend and lost his lighter to the acid.
- Colonel Murphy arrived with the army and the state police after the fire burned out. He ordered the woods sealed and a full report by sunset.
Continuity
Aliens: Earth Angel is a one-night outbreak on Earth, decades before the films. The crashed pilot was not a Space Jockey, and the ship destroyed itself behind Matt and Lou Ann. The Queen that grew from him attacked the town and the gang at Torchy's. The disc had no company marking, no government project, and no tie to a later ship.
Daniel Ripley gave his surname only when the ambulance dispatcher asked who was calling from Wolf Pit Road. In this story he was a distant ancestor of Ellen Ripley, with his unnamed wife and their daughter Alicia on the same Ripley family line. The sealed woods were one of the early outbreaks on Earth in the Dark Horse comics. Colonel Murphy's sunset report kept the night off the public record.
Editions
Dark Horse Comics published Aliens: Earth Angel as a one-shot in August 1994. John Byrne wrote and drew it, and Matt Webb colored it. The collected reprint in Aliens Omnibus Volume 5 opens with a title page, then a credits page that lists Byrne for script and art, Webb for colors, and both of them for the title illustration. That omnibus printing runs the story from the crash through Daniel's telephone call.
Behind The Scenes
John Byrne wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered Aliens: Earth Angel, and he drew the wraparound cover, signed 1992. Matt Webb colored the pages and shared the title illustration. Lynn Adair edited the one-shot, and Scott Tice and Harald Graham handled design. Dark Horse shipped it in August 1994 as a full-color book with a cardstock cover, rated 16 and up. The solicitation put the story in the era of diners, black leather jackets, and Buddy Holly, and called the night the first Alien invasion, in 1950s suburban America. Byrne had been a fan of the films for years.
The story reached print first as a strip in Diamond's Previews catalog, where Dark Horse gave Byrne a free hand. The January 1993 issue, Vol. III, No. 1, opened the run with a piece labeled Part 1 of 13. Most of that installment was a double-page spread of the art that became the wraparound cover. By the March 1993 issue the label had changed to Chapter 2, which dropped the cover spread from the chapter count and left a twelve-part serial. The last chapter ran in the January 1994 Previews, Vol. IV, No. 1. Dark Horse then collected those chapters as the August one-shot.
In the July 1992 Dark Horse reprint of his story Critical Error, Byrne's end notes say a photograph of Alien in Heavy Metal had steered him toward the film. That note is the same year as the signed Earth Angel cover. Earth Angel was his only Aliens comic. Before it, he had drawn the Dark Phoenix issues of Uncanny X-Men, written DC's 1986 Superman relaunch, and scripted early Hellboy issues for Dark Horse.
Conclusion
Aliens: Earth Angel is John Byrne's 1994 Dark Horse one-shot, colored by Matt Webb. It follows a crashed pilot, Dr. Daniel Ripley, and the riders at Torchy's through a single night in a small American town. The comic ends with the Queen dead in the car fire, the nest burned, Colonel Murphy sealing the woods, and Ripley giving his name from his mother-in-law's kitchen on Wolf Pit Road.
External Sources
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