Aliens: Sacrifice Comic: Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: May 1993 one-shot
Original Serialization: Aliens magazine #9 to #12, March to June 1993
Script: Peter Milligan
Painted Art And Cover: Paul Johnson
Lettering: Ellie de Ville
Editor: Dick Hansom
Designer: Heather Doornink
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics, originally Dark Horse International
Format: Prestige-format color one-shot, 48-page story
Setting: An unnamed jungle planet and its isolated human settlement

Aliens: Sacrifice was a 1993 Dark Horse comic written by Peter Milligan, with painted art and a cover by Paul Johnson and lettering by Ellie de Ville. It was serialized in the British Aliens magazine and published as an American prestige-format one-shot in May 1993. Its protagonist, Ann McKay, survived a spacecraft crash and reached a village that had endured nine months of attacks by a lone Alien. Ann discovered that the colonists had been offering it genetically grown babies, then volunteered to take the next infant's place and confronted the creature herself.

The Crash And The Jungle

Ann McKay looking across the burning wreckage of her crashed missionary ship

Ann McKay was travelling aboard a missionary ship when an engine explosion sent it into a jungle planet. She remembered the captain warning of a problem, the noise of the descent, and waking among burning wreckage with no other survivors. Ann made for a settlement she had seen from the ship and passed a group of standing stones that reminded her of Scotland on Earth. One stone had a dark red stain, and an approaching creature frightened her into running through the jungle before she eventually reached the village after dark.

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The Village Under Siege

John Masters talking with the recovering Ann McKay about the Alien

The villagers initially hoped that Ann had arrived with weapons, supplies, or Colonial Marines, and were disappointed that she was alone. John Masters tended her injuries and explained that an adult Xenomorph had arrived aboard a cargo ship about nine months earlier and killed its crew. The isolated settlement had requested help without receiving it, and Masters doubted that a single creature warranted much attention elsewhere. Ann recovered in a bed while he drank heavily, and she noticed groups of colonists moving through the village at night with lamps and a small bundle.

A Priest Among The Colonists

Ann McKay in clerical clothes offering to conduct a Sunday service

Ann explored the settlement as her strength returned and became curious about a locked building with machinery running inside. A scarred colonist called Mad Ricketts stopped her, and Masters intervened before she learned what the building contained. Masters later asked her to live with him, but she rejected the proposal and withheld the reason for her reluctance. The following morning she appeared in her clerical clothes and offered to conduct a Sunday service. Ann had avoided announcing that she was a priest because people often changed their behavior once they knew, and Masters questioned both her belief and her celibacy.

Memories Of Ann's Mother

Ann dreaming of a Xenomorph looming over her bed

Ann suffered recurring dreams of the Alien and remembered her mother's death about twenty years earlier. Her mother had criticized her desire for certainty, then ordered her to run when a Xenomorph broke into their home. Ann escaped through a window while her mother moved toward the creature, and a church across the street took the frightened girl in. She remained in the church for the next twenty years and became a priest, but her experiences in the settlement revived doubts about her faith. She also began to suspect that the colonists were concealing more than their fear of the Alien.

The Night Offerings

Colonists leaving a wrapped infant on the stone in the jungle

Ann repeatedly heard whispered voices and footsteps after dark, then watched a small procession carrying lamps through the settlement. Masters interrupted one attempt to investigate and warned that prolonged life in the village could undermine her faith. Ann asked whether she could trust him, but he answered that she could not. After avoiding him for two days, she heard the procession again and followed the colonists out through the gate. They walked into the jungle for about twenty minutes before stopping at the stained stone she had touched after the crash.

The colonists placed their bundle on the stone and hurried away, leaving Ann behind them in the darkness. She approached it and discovered a living baby wrapped in cloth, then lifted the child into her arms. The Xenomorph appeared behind her before she could carry the infant to safety. Ann had found the purpose of the night journeys, but she was alone at the offering place with the creature approaching. She tried to protect the baby as it reached for her and forced her away from the stone.

The Rescue And River Escape

The jungle river through which Ann escaped after trying to save the infant

The Xenomorph seized Ann as she held the infant, and the struggle carried them away from the offering place. Ann screamed as she fell into the river and was swept away through the darkness. She survived until morning, waking beside running water and birds, but the baby was no longer in her arms. She searched for it and found blood on the abandoned cloth instead of a living child. Ann blamed God for failing to save the infant and returned to the village without remembering much of the journey.

The Attack On The Settlement

The Xenomorph attacking a colonist inside the settlement

While Ann was missing, the Xenomorph entered the settlement and attacked its inhabitants. The colonists sounded an alarm, but the creature got through the outer wall and killed two people while wounding three others. Masters had feared that it had taken Ann as well and was relieved when she returned alive. She struck him and accused the villagers of being the real monsters after discovering the baby at the stone. Her account of taking the infant away enraged the colonists, who blamed her interference for the new attack.

Ricketts grabbed Ann and accused her of murder, arguing that removing the offering had deprived the creature of the victim it expected. Masters admitted that the settlement had been supplying the babies, but denied that they were ordinary children. Ann had felt the infant's warmth and breathing and rejected that distinction before he could explain it. Masters took her to the building whose locked door had attracted her attention earlier. The machinery inside provided both the source of the offerings and the explanation the colonists had withheld from their visitor.

The Cloning Machines

Developing fetuses in the settlement machinery used to produce offerings

Masters showed Ann tanks of developing fetuses and rows of infants maintained by the settlement's machines. The colonists grew them specifically as offerings and left one for the Xenomorph every two days. Masters believed the creature hunted animals between the offerings and that the arrangement prevented further attacks on the village. He insisted that the genetically created infants were too young to think or feel pain and could survive only a few hours away from the equipment. Ann rejected his attempt to separate them from other human children.

Ann accused the villagers of destroying the infants' futures and allowing fear and guilt to govern their lives. Ricketts answered that ordinary morality offered little protection after almost a year of attacks. The creature had killed his wife and torn away half of his face on the same day, before the offerings began. He maintained that the arrangement might have saved her and threatened one of the infants while challenging Ann's objections. Masters ordered him to put the child down, but the confrontation left Ann unwilling to accept the colony's continued sacrifices.

Ann's Offer To Take Their Place

John Masters giving Ann a grenade before she leaves for the stone

Ann offered to go to the stone instead of the next infant, accepting that her own beliefs required her to act. Masters tried to stop her, while Ricketts initially welcomed the proposal because an adult victim might delay the need for another offering. Ann prepared for the journey by binding material around her body and taking a long spear. She hoped that confronting the creature would reveal a real devil and restore the religious certainty she had lost. Her memories of her mother's death continued as she prepared to leave the settlement.

Masters could not persuade Ann to abandon the journey, and she challenged him to take her place if he wanted to stop her. He admitted that he lacked the courage, but gave her a grenade that was about the last weapon the settlement possessed. He warned that she would have to approach the Xenomorph closely to use it, which was already her intention. Ann thanked him and left with the spear and explosive. Masters remained behind, and Ricketts watched her departure as the other colonists stayed within the settlement.

The Villagers Fight Back

The villagers using a net and long poles to restrain the Xenomorph

Ann reached the stone and waited for several hours, becoming physically ill as she struggled to control her fear. The Xenomorph eventually emerged from the vegetation, and she raised her spear as it approached. It knocked her down and loomed over her while she tried to force herself to look at it. Before the creature could kill her, the villagers arrived with lamps, poles, and a net. They threw the net over the Alien and dragged it away from Ann, interrupting the attack she had expected to face alone.

Masters helped Ann as the colonists struggled with their captive, explaining that her decision had shamed them into resisting. They had prepared an attack after she left and brought the equipment into the jungle together. Ann warned that their net would not hold the Xenomorph, and the creature broke free before they could finish it. It struck Ricketts through the head with its inner jaw and killed another colonist during the struggle. Masters ordered everyone to run toward the trap they had prepared farther along the route.

The Spike Trap

The impaled Alien pulling Ann toward the pit while the villagers try to hold her

The villagers drew the Xenomorph toward a pit lined with sharpened stakes and challenged it to follow them. Masters described their cooperation as the advantage they had lacked while living in fear and acting separately. The creature fell into the trap and was impaled among the spikes, prompting the colonists to celebrate. Its tail then caught Ann and pulled her down into the pit beside it. Masters and another villager tried to hold her back, but she fell within reach of the wounded creature.

Ann heard the Alien moving behind her and realized that the stakes had not killed it. It slowly worked free while Masters urged her to climb out before it could reach her. She refused to leave because she wanted to confront the creature directly and discover whether it was the devil she had imagined. Ann took out the grenade and moved closer to its head rather than returning to the villagers above. The explosive gave her a way to finish the fight while the impaled creature remained within reach.

The Grenade And Ann's Blindness

The grenade exploding in the Xenomorphs mouth among the sharpened stakes

Ann pushed the grenade into the Xenomorph's mouth, and the explosion blew the top of its skull away. The blast killed the creature but destroyed her sight, and she regained consciousness back in the settlement with Masters beside her. Her final memories of her mother clarified that the woman had deliberately approached the earlier Alien to give Ann time to escape. Ann had spent twenty years seeking certainty after that death, but her own confrontation had not revealed the supernatural evil she expected. The creature she had killed was an animal rather than proof of a devil.

Ann remembered looking for eyes beneath the Xenomorph's dome and finding none of the religious answers she had sought. She no longer believed in either God or the devil, and accepted that her demand for absolute certainty had not been fulfilled. Her permanent blindness joined the practical consequences of killing the creature with the loss of her faith, while Masters remained beside her. The way he held her hand convinced her that he intended to stay despite her injuries. Ann expected them to live together and allowed that she might eventually come to love him.

Key Characters

Ann McKay was a priest and the sole survivor of the missionary ship's crash. She rejected the offerings, killed the Alien with a grenade, and survived with permanent blindness and without her former faith.
John Masters cared for Ann and initially concealed the sacrifices. He supplied her grenade, joined the villagers' attack, and remained with her after the Alien's death.
Mad Ricketts lost his wife and part of his face to the Alien. He defended the infant offerings before joining the resistance and being killed in the jungle.
The Alien arrived aboard a cargo ship nine months before Ann. It accepted the colonists' offerings, attacked when Ann removed one, and died when she detonated a grenade in its mouth.
Ann's mother died protecting her daughter from an earlier Xenomorph attack. Ann's memories of her death returned throughout the crisis.

Editions

Aliens: Sacrifice appeared in Dark Horse International's British Aliens magazine #9 to #12 between March and June 1993. Dark Horse published the American prestige-format one-shot in May of the same year, with a complete 48-page story. The later Aliens: Salvation and Sacrifice collection paired it with Dave Gibbons and Mike Mignola's separate story in 2001. Dark Horse collected it again in Aliens Omnibus Volume 3 in 2008, between Aliens: Rogue and Aliens: Labyrinth. The omnibus preserved Ann's survival and the ending in which she lost both her sight and her religious belief.

Behind The Scenes

Peter Milligan wrote the story, while Paul Johnson supplied both the painted interiors and cover illustration. Ellie de Ville lettered it, Dick Hansom edited it, and the credits also named designer Heather Doornink and publisher Mike Richardson. Its British magazine serialization overlapped the American one-shot's publication rather than following a numbered American miniseries. Dark Horse released the comic during the original run of Aliens: Colonial Marines, but Ann's settlement and its lone creature formed a separate story. The publisher later announced a digital release of Sacrifice for March 13, 2013, twenty years after its original publication.

Conclusion

Aliens: Sacrifice was Peter Milligan and Paul Johnson's 1993 story of a stranded priest and a settlement feeding cloned infants to an Alien. Ann McKay refused to accept the arrangement and offered herself in place of the next child, prompting the colonists to join her resistance. She killed the creature after their trap failed to finish it, but the grenade explosion permanently blinded her. The ending left her alive with John Masters, no longer certain of the beliefs that had sustained her since her mother's death twenty years earlier.