Aliens: Resistance: Plot, Characters & Lore
Aliens: Resistance was a four-issue Dark Horse Comics miniseries written by Brian Wood and drawn by Robert Carey, with colors by Dan Jackson. The first issue went on sale on January 23, 2019, and the series followed Amanda Ripley after Alien: Isolation. Weyland-Yutani had forced her to stay silent about the Xenomorph, until former Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks brought her a stolen ship and a lead on a hidden bio-weapons program. The trail ran from an unregulated colony terminal on Earth to the colony ship Gaspar and a classified blacksite whose nine-kiloton failsafe Davis turned on the company.
Plot Summary
Earth, Three Years Later
Amanda Ripley signed off from Sevastopol Station in 2137, alone in a suit. Three years after that call she was on Earth, and Zula Hendricks landed a VTOL and took her aboard. Amanda had worked as an engineer, spent three days floating after a disaster, and had trouble with small spaces. Zula came alone, carrying a partner who no longer had a body.
That partner was Davis, the synthetic who had served with Zula on the Europa. She had dived two hundred meters to recover his neural chip, and he spoke first from a computer, then from a portable pod she could carry. Together they meant to use an unregulated colony ship as cover, because a normal departure would have put Amanda back under Weyland-Yutani watch. The plan needed a terminal that launched those ships, and a way into the company building that guarded the traffic.
The Colony Terminal
Colony ships left the terminal twice a day, and the hall was full of people who had been promised a clean start on another world. Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks treated those departures as the gap in Weyland-Yutani security: the ships were unregulated, skipped inspection, and could hide two passengers who needed to get off Earth. The company made the passage cost everything a colonist owned, and people who were desperate enough paid it. Amanda went into the company tower to steal the cover they needed, while Zula waited with a weapon that could punch through the building if the infiltration failed.
The Weyland-Yutani Tower
Inside the Weyland-Yutani tower, three pale synthetics caught Amanda Ripley before she could finish the theft. Zula Hendricks answered with a missile into the building, and the blast threw Amanda and the synthetics down the corridor. An acid round, a bullet loaded with alien blood, grazed Amanda's shoulder on the way out. They left Earth on Zula's stolen ship, the Celestial, and Amanda went into cryosleep for the nine-day run to the colony ship they had chosen as cover.
Xenomorphs On The Gaspar
The colony ship was the Gaspar. A terminal on the approach listed colonist 03638 as Alec Brand, and adult Xenomorphs were clamped to the hull when Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks closed in. Davis read the ship's capacity as eleven hundred colonists and five non-human support staff. There were no life signs. The passenger manifest had been erased, and the voyage had been reclassified as a resupply run. Amanda's conclusion was the one the company was counting on: eleven hundred people on an unregulated ship would not be missed.
The Classified Blacksite
The Gaspar was held at a Weyland-Yutani blacksite over an unnamed planet, and the pages marked the station classified. Hooded prisoners in orange jumpsuits were gassed inside the facility before Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks arrived on the Celestial. Zula had stolen that ship, and its power signature was small enough that she compared it to a fingernail. The colony ship's hull was scored with acid, and it showed no life signs while it hung at the station.
The Crate Tunnel
Davis rode in Zula Hendricks's rifle for the boarding, and she and Amanda Ripley went in suited. A synthetic with a gold visor met them in a tunnel of cargo crates and came apart under their fire. Amanda's visor cracked in the fight. Davis warned that this model of synthetic could smell exhaled nitrogen, so a leak would give her away, and they taped the crack before they moved on. The station was moving the Gaspar's missing passengers toward a moon.
The Gaspar Leaves
The synthetics filed all eleven hundred colonists back aboard the Gaspar and sent the ship off its original course, into a lower orbit aimed at an unnamed moon. Davis identified the blacksite's last defense while that happened. Because the facility was running illegal genetic work, it carried a self-destruct charge of nine kilotons. He moved the Celestial around to the far side of the home planet so the station would lose the ship, and he told Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks to take the bomb. The charge was the evidence and the weapon. If they could turn it, the blacksite would not get to finish the test on the moon.
Fire On The Hull
Synthetics on the hull opened fire while Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks tried to reach the failsafe. Zula was thrown clear of the station. Amanda went after her instead of staying on the console, and the ignition readout locked before either of them could trigger the charge. Davis had moved into the nine-kiloton device to hold it. His signal thinned from inside the bomb, and he stopped answering. Both women were adrift in their suits, the Gaspar was falling toward the moon, and the failsafe was out of their hands.
Re-entry
Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks both fell after the Gaspar, in white suits, with an eighteen-second clock before the heat would kill them. Davis had left them a hex capsule, and that capsule carried them through the burn behind the colony ship. Davis was inside the nine-kiloton device during that fall. They came down on the same moon the synthetics had chosen for the Gaspar.
The Jungle Clearing
The Gaspar lay in a jungle clearing with smoke over the trees, its bays open and its panels marked with crosses. Hundreds of footprints left the wreck and ran into the brush. The eleven hundred colonists had left the wreck on foot. Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks came down the ridge toward a hull that had been emptied on purpose.
The Wreck
From the treeline, Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks watched the broken colony ship and the ground in front of its ramps. The colonists had been put back into orange and yellow jumpsuits and driven into the jungle as tagged hosts, part of a forced-evolution program rather than a settlement. Alec Brand, the man the terminal had listed as colonist 03638, was among them, running with a yellow headband while the creatures hunted the group. Amanda and Zula fired from the ridge to break that hunt, and the noise brought a black adult Xenomorph up the slope at Zula.
The Black Xenomorph
Zula Hendricks killed the black adult Xenomorph on the ridge. Its blood pooled in the dirt, and she saved Alec Brand's thermal profile so they could find him again in the trees. Two bullet-resistant synthetics in orange and gold visors, trailing white vapor, walked up to the carcass and stayed beside it. Davis reached Zula through a micro-transmitter in her hairclip, using the Celestial in a nearby orbit as a relay. He had one window each time the ship came around. He described the moon as a thin upper atmosphere over a dense, hot lower layer that hid the surface from probes, and he wanted one colonist tag as proof of what the blacksite had done.
Davis was speaking from inside the nine kilotons. The station had found him, and someone on the blacksite was trying to drive him out of the charge. He told them that after the detonation the world would be closed to ships for generations. Amanda Ripley answered that she and Zula Hendricks would finish the exposure with him, on the moon, before that window closed.
The Experiment
A nightmare showed the orange-jumpsuit colonists with chestbursters coming out of the hosts, and pale, tube-bodied creatures spraying a green mist while an insect was forced into a man's mouth. The art labeled the location classified and left the bearded man unnamed. That was the blacksite's program working through the people taken off the Gaspar. Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks were back in the jungle, and their tracker read ninety-nine. They were one contact short of the colonist Davis had asked them to bring out.
Alec Brand's Account
Alec Brand came out of the tree roots and struck Amanda Ripley with a rock before he understood who was holding the tracker. She and Zula Hendricks told him they were trying to get him off the moon, not tag him for the creatures. He described the Gaspar as a cheap colony ship. Things had watched the hull during deceleration, and a gravity projector from the orbital facility had caught the vessel and pulled it in. The operation showed no company logos, which he took as deliberate, and he remembered an injection after the landing.
Zula treated his testimony as the case: illegal bio-research, kidnapping, conspiracy, and mass murder, with more than a thousand victims and Alec as the one who could say it in person. The Celestial was hidden on the far side of the home planet, out of the blacksite's reach, and the nine-kiloton failsafe was under hostile occupation with Davis inside it. Getting Alec to that ship meant crossing the jungle while the creatures that had been set on the colonists were gathering for a rush.
The Charge
Davis was on a gantry inside the blacksite when the station isolated him. He cut the nuke off from electronic approach so the only attack left was a physical one, and he told Amanda Ripley he would send the records, and a copy of himself, to the Celestial. Dawn was less than thirty minutes away when the adult Xenomorphs charged the clearing. Amanda shouted for Alec Brand to run, the first time his name was spoken aloud in the issue, and he strapped into an acceleration chair on the ship. Amanda and Zula fired the last clips they had while the Celestial lifted, with the charge closing behind the ramp.
Detonation
Davis told them to use the charge or lose it, and the nuclear detonation followed as the Celestial cleared the blast. The closing captions put their duty with humanity and with each other. Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks embraced aboard the ship, and Alec Brand was with them. Davis is not drawn on the Celestial after the explosion. His download of the blacksite records, and of himself, is the plan he states from the gantry, and the issue does not show that transfer finish. The home planet and the moon stay unnamed. The last page ends on the three survivors and the blast behind them.
Key Characters
- Amanda Ripley left Sevastopol in 2137 and, three years later, joined Zula Hendricks to break Weyland-Yutani's hold on the Xenomorph program. She was caught by pale synthetics in the company tower, fell with Zula behind the Gaspar, and lifted off the moon with Alec Brand as the blacksite detonated.
- Zula Hendricks was the former Colonial Marine who stole the Celestial, carried Davis in a pod and then in her rifle, and killed the black adult Xenomorph on the ridge. She saved Alec Brand's thermal profile and got him aboard before the nine-kiloton charge went off.
- Davis was Zula's synthetic partner from the Europa, reduced to a neural chip she had recovered from a two-hundred-meter dive. He moved into the nine-kiloton failsafe, relayed through her hairclip from the Celestial's orbit, and said he would copy himself and the station records to the ship. The issue does not show him aboard after the blast.
- Alec Brand, colonist 03638, survived the Gaspar's diversion to the moon, hid in the jungle, and struck Amanda with a rock before he understood the rescue. He described the gravity projector, the missing logos, and the injection, then strapped into an acceleration chair and left with them.
- The blacksite synthetics guarded the tower, the crate tunnel, and the hull. A gold-visored model could smell exhaled nitrogen. Two later synthetics, in orange and gold visors and trailing white vapor, walked up to the Xenomorph Zula had killed and were left beside the acid.
Editions
Dark Horse Comics published Aliens: Resistance as a four-issue miniseries, with issue 1 on sale January 23, 2019. Brian Wood wrote all four issues. Robert Carey drew them, Dan Jackson colored them, and Nate Piekos of Blambot lettered them. Mike Richardson was the publisher, Spencer Cushing edited the series, and Konner Knudsen was the assistant editor. Josie Christensen was the digital art technician. The indicia thanked Carol Roeder, Steve Tzirlin, and Nicole Spiegel at Twentieth Century Fox, and the issues were printed in Canada.
The issues carried episode titles: Intercepted, Extraction, Abandoned, and Detonation. Roberto De La Torre painted the main cover of issue 1, and Tristan Jones painted a variant for that issue and the main cover of issue 3. Lin Huang designed issue 1. Skyler Weissenfluh designed issues 2 through 4. Dark Horse collected the miniseries as a 96-page trade paperback on August 7, 2019, with a De La Torre cover. Marvel reprinted the four issues in Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 4, a hardcover released on March 15, 2023.
Dark Horse announced Aliens: Resistance at New York Comic Con in 2018 as Brian Wood's return to the Alien line after Aliens: Defiance. The solicitation followed Amanda Ripley from Alien: Isolation and paired her with Zula Hendricks, the former Colonial Marine Wood had written in that earlier miniseries. Dark Horse continued Amanda and Zula's story in Aliens: Rescue.
Conclusion
Aliens: Resistance was Brian Wood and Robert Carey's 2019 Dark Horse miniseries about Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks after Alien: Isolation. It follows them from a colony terminal on Earth onto the Gaspar, through a classified blacksite, and down to a moon where eleven hundred colonists were used as hosts. Davis detonated the nine-kiloton failsafe from inside the charge, Alec Brand left with the two women on the Celestial, and the miniseries ends on that ship with the blast behind them.
External Sources
- Aliens: Resistance #1 at Dark Horse
- Aliens: Resistance trade paperback at Dark Horse
- NYCC 2018 announcement at Dark Horse
- Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 4 at Marvel
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