Aliens: Taste: Plot, Creatures & Lore
Aliens: Taste was a four-page short story written by Edward Martin III and illustrated by Mark Nelson, first published in Dark Horse Comics #11 in July 1993. It followed an unnamed extraterrestrial cook opening Xenomorph eggs and preparing their facehuggers as food. Its anonymous narration considered different attitudes toward danger, ending with the revelation that the parasites were ingredients in an alien kitchen. The cook handled the eggs directly and used a pan, knife and fork to prepare the meal.
Plot Summary
Opening The Eggs
A supply of Xenomorph eggs stood together on a metal work surface, with machinery and containers nearby. One egg opened to reveal the facehugger curled inside. Large, taloned fingers reached between its petals, preparing to remove the creature. The hands belonged to an extraterrestrial much larger than the parasite it was handling. Other eggs remained grouped behind it as the cook worked on this specimen.
The cook pulled the egg's opening apart by hand, exposing the fluid and the creature within. Its broad fingers held the petals back while the facehugger's legs rose from the liquid. The egg was being opened deliberately as part of food preparation, rather than left to release its parasite toward a passing host. The creature inside remained surrounded by fluid while the hands widened the opening.
Extracting The Facehugger
The Facehugger emerged with its legs extended and its tail curled beneath it. The cook held the opened egg between both hands and squeezed it, forcing more fluid through the top. The parasite was alive during the extraction, but its size allowed the much larger creature to handle the egg directly. Fluid spilled from the egg as the hands compressed its sides.
The cook continued preparing the contents without using the parasite to infect a host. Its equipment included a pan, utensils and a work area for the food. The extracted facehugger was an ingredient for the next stage of the meal, joining other specimens that the cook was preparing in the same kitchen. It was transferred from its protective egg into a space equipped for cleaning, cooking and serving it.
Cooking The Facehuggers
The cook fried a facehugger in a broad pan over an open flame, turning and lifting the creature with a flat utensil. Steam rose from the pan as the food cooked. Wearing a white apron, the large, broad-mouthed alien worked beside hanging kitchen tools and a supply of additional eggs. The pan stood beside the surface where cooked specimens were laid out.
Several prepared Facehuggers lay spread out on a white sheet on the work surface. The cook held another specimen above them with a fork and used a knife as it finished preparing the food. Its attention remained on the meal, with the dangerous parasites handled as ordinary ingredients for its own consumption. The tray held multiple facehuggers with their legs and tails visible.
Creatures
- The Cook was an unnamed, large extraterrestrial with a broad mouth, prominent teeth and taloned fingers. It wore an apron and prepared facehuggers with ordinary kitchen equipment. Its species and homeworld were not named.
- The Facehuggers were taken directly from their eggs and cooked as food. The story showed their extraction and preparation without an implantation or a chestburster birth.
Editions
Dark Horse Comics #11, cover-dated July 1993, first published the four-page story. Edward Martin III wrote it, Mark Nelson provided the art, Ray P. Murtaugh supplied the colors, and Willie Schubert lettered it. The issue's cover was drawn by Arthur Adams and colored by Matthew Hollingsworth, and featured Godzilla alongside smaller images of the Predator, James Bond and a Xenomorph. Taste appeared alongside stories featuring those other characters in the anthology issue.
Aliens Omnibus Volume 4 collected Taste in July 2008, together with stories including Aliens: Stronghold and Aliens: Music of the Spears. Marvel reprinted the story in Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Volume 2 in January 2022, which included material from Dark Horse Comics #11 among its collected short stories. The original four-page story remained part of these larger collections.
Behind The Scenes
Taste paired its food preparation with an anonymous reflection on risk. The narration moved from ordinary domestic safety to the appeal of adrenaline and more unusual experiences, before the kitchen established the literal meaning of the title. The alien cook had no spoken dialogue, and the story provided no personal name or species designation. Its actions supplied the cooking sequence while the narration discussed different appetites for stimulation.
John Bolton's title illustration in the omnibus showed an egg surrounded by biomechanical hive structures. It was separate from the cover of Dark Horse Comics #11. The story's depiction of facehuggers as food also differed from the usual implantation cycle, making the unnamed cook a consumer of the parasites rather than one of their hosts. The final kitchen scene showed several specimens being prepared together.
The Reapers in Aliens: Reapers also ate facehuggers, taking them from Xenomorph eggs. Unlike the apron-wearing cook in Taste, they foraged in a hive and bit into the parasites directly. Both stories depicted other extraterrestrials treating a Xenomorph life stage as food.
Conclusion
Aliens: Taste was Edward Martin III and Mark Nelson's short account of an alien preparing facehuggers as a meal. Its four pages followed the eggs from opening to extraction and cooking, ending with the apron-wearing cook at work. The story left the creature's identity and location unnamed. Its ending showed the parasites laid out as prepared food beside the cook's utensils.
External Sources
- Dark Horse Comics #11 credits and contents at the Grand Comics Database
- Dark Horse backlist catalog, including Taste in Aliens Omnibus Volume 4
- Marvel's Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Volume 2 publication details
Tag Categories: Alien Comics
