Aliens: Kidnapped: Plot, Characters & Lore
Aliens: Kidnapped was a three-issue Dark Horse Comics miniseries written by Jim Woodring and Justin Green, with art by Francisco Solano Lopez. First published in 1997, it followed a contaminated Xenomorph egg from illegal salvage to a Penga bar on Earth and the luxury resort of Celeste. Television host Darryl Zither became its unwitting carrier, while businesswoman Ivy Derringer brought the infection into her private development. The story combined the creature's attacks with a wider biological disaster that made its death insufficient to contain the outbreak.
Plot Summary
Boarding The Stranded Ship
A group of Egg Smugglers located a stranded vessel whose crew had been killed by Xenomorphs. Jeremy and his companions approached with a small craft, checked the abandoned ship's records and concluded that the Queen was confined elsewhere. They cut through its hull and advanced through passages lined with dead hosts, hoping to recover a valuable cargo without encountering the adult creatures.
Their information was wrong. The Queen attacked inside the hold and killed Eric before the others shot her down. Her acid blood splashed the survivors and damaged much of the egg supply. Rather than abandon the operation, the remaining men collected what they could and loaded thirteen eggs aboard their own ship. One specimen was covered in an unusual pink substance.
The Rejected Pink Egg
The smugglers delivered their frozen cargo to Gainet, where Rumford paid for twelve eggs. He refused the pink-coated specimen and warned that it was infected. The danger was more serious than the ordinary penalties for smuggling alien life. If another organism could invade a Xenomorph, he argued, allowing it to spread among humans would be disastrous.
Rumford gave them extra money to destroy the Contaminated Egg in their ship's hot tank and instructed them to dispose of it beyond the solar system. They accepted his payment but decided to find another buyer. One of the men suggested Uncle Saul, a Penga-bar proprietor in East Barabazon. Jeremy objected to returning there because of an earlier experience in which he had been fed part of his own brain, but accompanied the others.
Uncle Saul's Penga Bar
At Saul's Bar, the men presented the frozen egg as a rare commercial opportunity. They suggested that Penga customers might pay a fortune to taste it. Saul refused, knowing that an alien egg could kill whoever handled it. Their attempt to sell the rejected specimen stalled, but the bar's entertainment offered them another potential recipient.
A screen showed Darryl Zither, a celebrity whose broadcasts turned humiliation, torture and audience participation into entertainment. Saul proposed giving the egg to Zither, who was a regular customer. When he learned that Zither would visit the bar that evening, he kept the smugglers nearby and reconsidered the specimen as a way to promote his business rather than as food.
Zither And Ivy Derringer
During his broadcast, Zither welcomed businesswoman Ivy Derringer, whose corporation supplied a large share of the population's consumer goods. She announced Planet Celeste, a luxury development on the terraformed asteroid NY 678, which her company had acquired from the Marines. She promoted it as a place where wealthy visitors could buy pleasures unavailable on Earth, including specialized food, chemical stimulation and genetically engineered companions.
Ivy invited Darryl to accompany her there the following morning. He accepted, and the announcement impressed the patrons watching from Saul's bar. When Zither arrived in person, Saul offered him the frozen egg in exchange for regular mentions of the establishment on his show. Zither recognized the danger and demanded that Saul remove it. The proprietor instead tried to prove that it was harmless.
The Facehugger In The Bar
Saul leaned toward the Frozen Egg and treated its cold surface as proof that it could not hurt anyone. A Facehugger emerged and attached itself to Zither. The supposed display item became an active threat in front of the bar's customers, exposing the mistake in assuming that freezing had made the specimen safe.
Saul ordered the unconscious Celebrity removed and threatened the attendants with a gun. He forbade them to take Zither to a doctor or hospital, hoping to prevent the incident from being traced back to the bar. Two men dragged him home and left him in bed. The parasite completed implantation and detached before Ivy and her bodyguard Chiggerman arrived for the planned journey.
The Journey To Celeste
Ivy found Zither weak and unresponsive. He blamed his condition on something he had eaten at the Penga bar, and she interpreted his illness as a disappointing hangover. Chiggerman questioned the visit, but Ivy insisted that Zither join them. They left the discarded Facehugger behind and took him aboard her private spacecraft.
During the journey, Ivy continued describing Celeste's attractions while Zither struggled to remain conscious. She ordered the crew not to disturb her and brought him into her private quarters. Chiggerman remained outside with Captain Brewster. Neither the passengers nor the crew recognized that Zither was carrying an implanted organism capable of bringing the rejected egg's infection to the resort.
The Mutated Chestburster
Inside the cabin, Zither's Condition rapidly worsened. A black Chestburster erupted from his upper body and attacked Ivy. She seized it and struck it against the cabin furnishings, but the creature recovered and continued its assault. Her screams and the sounds of violence did not bring help because the people outside believed that she wanted privacy.
The creature killed Both Passengers and remained in the compartment as the spacecraft reached Celeste. Its dark, elongated body and toothed head differed from the pink coating that had marked the egg. The organism carried the infection with it, leaving a secretion that would become as dangerous as its direct attacks. Ivy's instructions helped conceal the deaths until the yacht had landed.
The Outbreak On Celeste
After landing, Chiggerman ordered Captain Brewster off the vessel and began organizing Ivy's schedule. The captain returned because the spacecraft needed maintenance and entered the private cabin after repeated calls went unanswered. The Xenomorph killed him. Chiggerman followed a pink trail through the yacht, discovered that the fluid dried into dust and arranged an urgent return to Earth with a replacement pilot.
The creature attacked Chiggerman as well, then escaped into Celeste's service areas. Workers argued about their contracts and privileges while it moved close behind them. The outbreak spread from the landing strip into the gardens and residential buildings. The resort's reliance on discretion and its preparations for wealthy investors delayed an open response to the deaths.
The Contagion And Quarantine
Director Drummond, who ran Celeste's security, requested reinforcements and declared martial law. Sid Thorn, Ivy's public-relations director, objected to reports that might alarm the guests or interfere with the investor reception. On Earth, a committee learned that the original outbreak had begun at the Penga bar and that Ivy's flight was the last recorded departure before Barabazon was sealed.
Investigators explained the Contagion: the Xenomorph secreted pink fluid that dried into powder and became airborne. Even traces of material produced by the microorganism were lethal to humans. All arrivals at the affected locations were impounded and departures forbidden. Drummond was told that a cloaked orbital laboratory was monitoring Celeste, while the threat of infection made his proposed evacuation unacceptable to the authorities.
Searching The Gardens
A specialist Security Team followed the secretion through the resort. Its members used directional callsigns such as Leader, Left, Right, Up and Down, along with tracking equipment and hand weapons. They treated the operation as a search for one animal, but the pink residue connected its movements to an expanding contamination zone.
The patrol found Mutilated Guests in the landscaped residences and tried to conceal the deaths from the rest of the resort. They closed buildings, arranged for bodies to be wrapped and removed, and posed as exterminators when questioned. The creature moved through ornamental gardens, pools and treatment rooms, using the resort's extensive hiding places while leaving the team a visible trail.
The Goddesseum And Pleasure District
The trail led into the Goddesseum, a bathing area among dense plants and decorative structures. The patrol passed visitors who did not understand the danger and continued through the surrounding pleasure district. At Enrico's of Celeste they found further human remains. The animal's feeding and movement had taken it through several occupied areas without producing a general warning to the guests.
Tracking equipment guided the Hunters toward Derma Else, a treatment establishment. They told an attendant to close for an hour or two, then followed the pink fluid through its inner rooms. Their preparations suggested an imminent confrontation, but the organism was approaching the end of its life without their weapons deciding the outcome.
The Creature's Death
The patrol found the Xenomorph Dead, collapsed in a pool of its own secretion. Leader reported that it had simply died and listed six collateral deaths in the marked residences and the Goddesseum. Drummond ordered the body taken to the biohazard laboratory for analysis, treating the animal's death as the end of the immediate hunt.
The Orbital Laboratory had its own findings. Its concealed presence and the authorities' refusal to permit evacuation alarmed Drummond, who argued that public safety required an explanation. He was told to wait for the analysis and consult the governing charter. Killing or recovering the creature could not reverse the contamination it had spread through the resort.
The Yacht's Return And Crash
Meanwhile, Chiggerman had survived the apparent decapitation aboard Ivy's yacht. His artificial components allowed him to continue operating, but his behavior became erratic. Commander Tennyson, the replacement pilot, threatened to arrest him after he interfered with the controls. Chiggerman resisted the weapon fire and attacked Tennyson, sending the craft back toward Celeste.
The Uncontrolled Yacht crossed the resort at low altitude, struck the elevated structures and crashed into the developed area. Fires spread through the complex. Drummond demanded immediate evacuation, pointing out that guests would attempt to escape on their own. The committee maintained the prohibition and warned that vessels departing without clearance would be fired upon.
The Destruction Of Celeste
The laboratory identified a Class Ten Virus. The authorities informed Drummond that Barabazon had been destroyed and that three devices would terminate Celeste within ten minutes. He released his staff, left the control tower and sat on a bench as the resort burned. His partly android nature offered no escape from the destruction ordered to contain the outbreak.
Two visitors left their distressed friend Myra beside him while they fetched their belongings. Her feverish speech ended when the infection violently destroyed her body. Drummond remained beside her remains as the others returned. The devices detonated, destroying Celeste and the people trapped there, completing the disaster set in motion when the smugglers refused to destroy the contaminated egg.
Key Characters
- Darryl Zither - A television host who made cruelty and audience participation part of his broadcasts. A Facehugger implanted him at Saul's bar, and he carried the infection aboard Ivy's yacht without recognizing what had happened.
- Ivy Derringer - A wealthy corporate leader and the developer of Planet Celeste. She invited Zither to the resort, mistook his illness for a hangover and died when the implanted creature emerged during their journey.
- Director Drummond - Celeste's security director, a partly android official who organized the hunt and requested evacuation. He remained trapped under the quarantine order and died when the authorities destroyed the asteroid.
- Chiggerman - Ivy's bodyguard and assistant. He survived the creature's attack through his artificial components, attempted to leave Celeste and fought the replacement pilot before the yacht crashed.
- Uncle Saul - The proprietor of the Barabazon Penga bar. He refused to buy the infected egg but offered it to Zither as a publicity gift, then forced attendants to remove the implanted host without medical help.
- The egg smugglers - The salvagers who recovered thirteen eggs and ignored Rumford's instructions to destroy the infected specimen. Their search for another buyer carried it into Barabazon.
- Rumford - The Gainet buyer who accepted twelve eggs and identified the pink specimen as infected. He paid the smugglers extra to destroy it, recognizing the potential consequences of releasing its contamination.
- Leader and the security team - The specialist patrol that tracked the creature through Celeste using the secretion it left behind. They found it dead and reported the civilian casualties, but its biological threat continued.
- The infected Xenomorph - The black creature born from Zither, sometimes discussed alongside pink Xenomorphs because of its egg. It killed several people, secreted infectious pink fluid and died before the security team could engage it.
Editions
Dark Horse Comics first published Aliens: Kidnapped as a three-issue miniseries beginning with the December 1997 issue. Jim Woodring and Justin Green wrote it, Francisco Solano Lopez illustrated it, Chris Chalenor supplied colors and Clem Robins lettered the story. Kilian Plunkett provided cover artwork. The first issue credited Philip Amara as editor, David Land as assistant editor, Corey Stephens as designer and Mike Richardson as publisher, with color separations by Digital Chameleon. It was printed in Canada.
The story was subsequently included in Aliens Omnibus Volume 5, whose first print edition was dated November 2008. It followed Aliens: Alchemy in the collection. Marvel later collected Kidnapped #1-3 in the 1,008-page Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Volume 3, published on November 22, 2022. The cover used here is the Marvel-branded digital presentation of Plunkett's Facehugger artwork.
Behind The Scenes
The story's Pink Egg produced a black organism rather than a uniformly pink adult. The visible pink material was associated with its infection and the secretion it left behind. That distinction explains why the egg can appear in discussions of unusual Xenomorph coloration while the creature itself differs from the usual adult form through its proportions and biological condition.
Celeste was called Planet Celeste in Ivy's promotion, but her explanation identified it as the terraformed asteroid NY 678. The story placed luxury development, engineered companions, private security and public-relations control around the infestation. Its final containment order treated the infected humans and the contaminated resort as a continuing threat after the Xenomorph died.
Conclusion
Aliens: Kidnapped traced one rejected egg through a sequence of commercial decisions that spread its infection from salvage to Earth and Celeste. Rumford recognized the danger, but the smugglers, Saul and Ivy each helped move it onward. The creature died during the hunt, leaving a virus that brought quarantine and the destruction of both affected settlements.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Comics
