Aliens/Vampirella: Plot, Characters & Lore
Aliens/Vampirella is a six-issue crossover comic written by Corinna Bechko and drawn by Javier García-Miranda, with covers by Gabriel Hardman. Dynamite Entertainment published it with Dark Horse Comics from September 2015 to February 2016 and collected it in a hardcover in July 2016. Vampirella traveled to the first human colony on Mars to study ancient catacombs built by the Nosferatu, where a chamber of Xenomorph eggs hatched. The Chestburster that tore out of her own chest grew into a winged Queen, and Vampirella fought it beside the colonist Lars and an awakened Nosferatu before the last survivors bombed the colony from above.
Plot Summary
Arrival At Mars Colony One
In the distant past, robed Nosferatu fled through the red halls of an underground base on Mars while a Xenomorph hunted them. One of the vampires fought back and bit the creature, and its acid blood sprayed into his face and melted it. Ages later, a ship carrying Vampirella in a sleep pod reached Mars Colony One, where Base Director Tucker and a small crew met her. The colonists had dug a shaft down to the buried base and believed it could be as much as 100,000 years old, but for six months nobody had dared to touch anything inside. Vampirella could read the ancient writing, and she was to stay until a relief ship arrived a few days later.
Vampirella went down into the freezing ruins, which the Swedish colonist Lars called the Catacombs, with Jake, Suse, and Vicky. The colonists had never heated the base because they feared that warmth might wake the bodies they had found there. Dead Nosferatu were sealed into the walls, and Vampirella saw that something had done this to them at a time when humans had not yet learned to farm. The Nosferatu had not built the place for themselves, and part of it looked to her like a slaughterhouse.
The Egg Chamber
A wall cracked open onto a chamber full of eggs that the scanners had read as fossilized and lifeless, and Vampirella wanted the area sealed off. Facehuggers then leapt out at the crew, and Vampirella pulled a Facehugger off one of the colonists before another one caught her. Within moments, Vampirella and the three colonists were down with the creatures clamped over their faces, and only Lars escaped.
Quarantine In The Catacombs
While the Facehugger held her, Vampirella saw the faces of the dead Nosferatu, the eggs, and the creature itself, and heard voices calling her name. She woke up 26 hours later. Lars had escaped the attack and called the colony, but he turned down Tucker's offer of medics and sealed the hatch so that nothing could reach the base before the crew rotation home. After a few hours, the Facehuggers shriveled and dropped off, and Lars locked their husks in another room. Tucker then put the catacombs under an automatic 48-hour quarantine from the surface. While the survivors waited without food, Vampirella began to cough, and a Chestburster tore its way out of her chest.
Deaths In The Catacombs
Jake, Suse, and Vicky died as their own Chestbursters broke out, and the three creatures slithered off into the dark. Vampirella survived the wound, and she had Lars rip Jake's suit into strips to bind her chest, because it would heal faster with the edges of the wound together and enough blood in her. To get her strength back before the creatures could reach the colony, she bit Lars and drank from him, and she promised that he would not become a vampire unless she wanted him to.
In the control room on the surface, Tucker and his staff watched Lars on camera and argued over whether Vampirella had caused the deaths. One colonist suggested that she had Lars under her control and that vampires might even breed through eggs. Tucker promised Lars an armed escort as soon as the time lock on the hatch ran out, and Lars asked them to warn his wife, who was arriving on the relief ship, not to land yet. While they waited, Vampirella found a huge shed skin and realized that the creatures were growing quickly.
The Armed Escort
When the time lock ran out, an armed escort in gas masks led by Dee came through the hatch and aimed their laser sights at Vampirella, while some of the colonists watching from above called it murder. Adult Xenomorphs attacked the escort from behind and killed the team, and the camera feed broke up just as the watchers decided that Vampirella was killing them. Lars slammed a hatch that cut one creature in half, and Vampirella threw off another, spread bat-like wings, and carried Lars across a chasm to shut them both behind heavy metal doors.
Vampirella had expected a people as advanced as the builders of the base to have moved on to synthetic blood long before they reached Mars. In the next chamber, she and Lars found a blood factory, with drained humanoid bodies hanging over a vat of blood and stores of meat. The Nosferatu who built the catacombs had been drinking real blood, and they had been farming it from living prisoners.
The Nosferatu Base
On the surface, Tucker and the long-haired colonist recovered the last seconds of the escort's camera feed, which showed a creature that was clearly not a vampire. Below, Vampirella and Lars powered an old Nosferatu viewscreen with flashlight batteries made by Weyland Corp, which were designed to work with almost any device. The base map showed that the catacombs were far larger than the colonists knew, and an old recording showed robed Nosferatu with tridents being slaughtered by Xenomorphs. The recording showed that the vampires had been prey in their own base.
The relief ship reached orbit under its commander Troy, and Lars's wife Sarah decided to take its excavation unit down to the surface. The unit was built to drop explosives for precision digging, could carry two people at most, and was closer to a bomb than to a transport. In the colony, Tucker and the long-haired colonist rejected the idea of burning out the catacombs because it might blow up the colony, and instead they reversed the air scrubbers to flood the ruins with a toxic ammonia fog.
Vampirella and Lars searched for a sealed Nosferatu sleeping chamber on the map, hoping that some of the vampires had survived in suspended animation, and Lars armed himself with a trident-like prod. A Xenomorph burst out of the blood vat, and Vampirella smashed it with a metal cart. The ammonia then poured out of the scrubbers, and the pair escaped up a ladder and through a narrow passage covered in resin, where Lars speared a Xenomorph, until they reached the sleeping chamber, which had no vents.
The Sleeping Nosferatu
The chamber door crushed the head of a pursuing Xenomorph as it closed, and the creature's acid dripped onto a glass coffin and burned the face of the Nosferatu sleeping inside, who woke with a roar. For the Nosferatu, sleep was close to death, without breathing, and they rested on soil, which could come from any planet. Only three of the creatures had chased Vampirella and Lars, and a hole in the floor showed that the fourth, the one that had burst out of Vampirella, had tunneled away.
Into The Greenhouse
The fourth Xenomorph, which later appeared as the winged Queen, came up in the colony's greenhouse, where it found a colonist named Marta tending the tomato plants. Another colonist later found Marta's body among the greenhouse trees, and the same Xenomorph killed him. Tucker believed that the gas had cleared the catacombs and that Lars was dead, so he ordered a colonist named Norm to clean the air in the ruins, suit up, and go down to look. Below, Vampirella and Lars climbed up the tunnel the creature had dug, but a Xenomorph caught Vampirella's wing and tore it. Lars, hanging upside down in the tunnel, drove the creature off with the prod, which gave off an electric shock.
Vampirella and Lars came out into the greenhouse, found the dead colonists, and knew that the two Xenomorphs that had chased them would soon follow. Healing her chest had drained Vampirella, she could not glide on her torn wing, and she refused to drink from Lars again because he might not survive it. Down in the catacombs, the burned Nosferatu smashed his way out of his sleep pod. Lars reached Sarah by phone on the relief ship and warned her that Tucker had poisoned the air, that the creatures were the real danger, and that she should not land, before the line was cut.
The Winged Queen
Vampirella and Lars climbed a tower ladder onto a catwalk, but its cable snapped, and they fell into the greenhouse trees. There Vampirella found a cluster of eggs guarded by a Xenomorph Queen with bat-like wings, the same creature that had hatched out of her own chest and killed Marta. She smashed an egg and its Facehugger with the prod, and as the Queen screamed, the awakened Nosferatu appeared beside them and demanded blood.
The winged Queen flew at them, and the Nosferatu turned into a huge bat-like creature, grabbed Vampirella and Lars, and carried them off through the trees while the Queen tangled herself in the vines. Back inside the base, the Nosferatu spoke to them in their own language, and after a Xenomorph attacked them in a tunnel, he seized Lars to drink from him. Vampirella stopped him by claiming Lars as her own, and she promised him bagged blood once they reached the colony, but no living humans.
On the relief ship, Sarah learned that Tucker had told her Lars was dead, and the ship cut communications with the colony. In the control room, two colonists were puzzled that the last call had come from the greenhouse, where Marta's shift had ended long before. The greenhouse camera showed torn vines, blood, and smashed tanks, and then a Xenomorph's face filled the screen, and the colonists understood that the gas had not killed the creatures.
The Nosferatu's Story
The Nosferatu had been one of the first of his kind to leave Earth for Mars, glad to escape the sun, and he had been trained to herd the humans that his people bred as livestock for blood. As one of the Water Diviners, he helped find water underground near stone ruins left by an older alien race. In the ruins, the Nosferatu found giant figures, like the Space Jockeys, dead in their chairs with their chests burst open, and the discovery spread a parasite through the colony. Some infected Nosferatu survived, but their human herds had no way to heal and died. Before he entered his sleep chamber, he had sent word to Earth to stop all flights to Mars, which left his people stranded on the planet.
Sarah reached Lars again and told him that she would not leave him on Mars. Moments later, the winged Queen drove her tail up through the tunnel floor and impaled Lars while Sarah watched over the video link. The Queen burst into the tunnel and screamed at Vampirella and the Nosferatu, and he called up the rats that had always followed the human herds and sent them to chew into her eggs in the greenhouse. Vampirella and the Nosferatu ran through a door and into a group of armed colonists, who blamed them for the killing.
Escape From Mars
After seeing Lars die, Sarah received orders to quarantine Mars, break orbit, and head home. She refused to abandon Vampirella or the colonists, and she decided to take the excavation unit down, pick up anyone left alive, and drop its explosives on the colony, with only the pilot Jean beside her. In the base, Tucker faced Vampirella and the Nosferatu with a steel stake and a mallet, but a Xenomorph impaled him from behind before he could use them.
In the greenhouse, the Queen screamed over the rats as her eggs opened, and the creatures attacked the colonists in the corridors. A Xenomorph drove its inner jaw through a colonist's head, and Facehuggers came over the door and took a masked colonist. Vampirella shot another Facehugger in mid-leap with a pump shotgun, and when a closing door crushed one more, its acid burned another colonist. Only Vampirella, the Nosferatu, the long-haired colonist, and a young dark-haired colonist were left.
Sarah Micho called from the launch pod and told them that she could not risk landing, so they would have to fly up and meet her in midair in the colony's short-range M9-B craft. On the way to the hangar on the far side of the base, the long-haired colonist admitted his part in the attempts to kill Vampirella. A Xenomorph impaled the young colonist with its tail in the hangar dome, Vampirella shot it with her shotgun, and the long-haired colonist flew the M9-B out as the Queen leapt onto it and smashed through the greenhouse dome.
The Queen clung to the M9-B as it climbed. The Nosferatu told Vampirella that his time was over and his family was dead, asked her to tell the humans not to ruin everything the way his people had, and took his bat form to drag the Queen away. He fell toward the surface locked with her as the M9-B docked with Sarah's launch pod, with only Vampirella and the long-haired colonist aboard. Sarah dropped her payload on the colony, and as the explosion rose behind them, Vampirella told her that Lars had been a good man, and a weeping Sarah told Jean to take them home.
Key Characters
- Vampirella came to Mars Colony One to read the Nosferatu ruins. She survived a Chestburster by healing herself with Lars's blood, fought the winged Queen that grew from it, and escaped on Sarah's launch pod.
- Lars was a Swedish colonist who sealed the catacombs after the Facehugger attack and let Vampirella drink from him. The winged Queen killed him with her tail while his wife watched.
- Sarah Micho was Lars's wife, who came on the relief ship. She took the excavation unit down to rescue the survivors and dropped its explosives on the colony.
- Tucker was the Base Director of Mars Colony One. He sent an armed escort to kill Vampirella, flooded the catacombs with ammonia gas, and was killed by a Xenomorph while trying to stake her.
- The Nosferatu was one of the first vampires to settle Mars, woken when Xenomorph acid burned his face in his sleep pod. He saved Vampirella twice in his bat form and fell to the surface with the Queen.
- The winged Queen grew from the Chestburster that came out of Vampirella and had bat-like wings like hers. She tunneled up into the greenhouse, killed Marta there, laid her eggs among the trees, and was last seen falling toward the surface with the Nosferatu.
- Jake, Suse, and Vicky were the colonists who went down into the catacombs with Vampirella, and all three died when their Chestbursters broke out.
- Dee led the armed escort that Tucker sent into the catacombs, and Xenomorphs killed her whole team.
- Marta was the colonist who worked in the greenhouse, and the fourth creature, which later appeared as the winged Queen, killed her there.
- Troy commanded the relief ship, and Jean flew Sarah's launch pod down to Mars and back to orbit.
Editions
Aliens/Vampirella #1 went on sale on September 2, 2015, and the sixth and last issue followed on February 10, 2016. Each 32-page issue credits Corinna Bechko as the writer, Javier García-Miranda as the artist, InLight Studios as the colorist, Simon Bowland as the letterer, and Gabriel Hardman as the cover artist, with Jordan Boyd coloring the first cover. The indicia call the series Vampirella/Aliens Volume 1, published by Dynamite Entertainment in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, with the Dark Horse Comics logo beside Dynamite's, and the issues were printed in Canada.
Dynamite collected all six issues in a 144-page hardcover in July 2016. The digital editions of the single issues carried extra pages under the banner Dynamite Digital Exclusive Content, which reprinted García-Miranda's black-and-white art for the story pages. The first five issues also closed with Dynamite's Dynamite Dispatch news page, which showed the cover of the next issue beside a short teaser for its story.
Behind The Scenes
Corinna Bechko said before the launch that she had loved Alien since she first saw it as a child on an old television, and that the franchise had always done well with strong women in the lead. The first issue had an incentive variant with a black-and-white version of Gabriel Hardman's cover, and a New York Comic Con exclusive cover by Andrew Mangum and Gene Jimenez. The indicia of the first issue thank Aaron Walker at Dark Horse Comics, which held the Aliens comic license at the time.
Aliens/Vampirella is one of the Aliens crossovers, and it gives Vampirella an unusual place among Chestburster survivors, because she lived through the birth without surgery and healed herself with blood. The bat-like wings of the Queen that grew from her own Chestburster are an example of the DNA reflex, in which a Xenomorph takes traits from its host, and the creature is one of the winged Xenomorph hybrids of the comics.
Conclusion
Aliens/Vampirella is Corinna Bechko and Javier García-Miranda's six-issue crossover for Dynamite Entertainment and Dark Horse Comics. It follows Vampirella from the opening of the Nosferatu catacombs under Mars Colony One through the outbreak in the colony to the winged Queen that grew from her own Chestburster. The comic ends with Lars dead, the Nosferatu falling to Mars with the Queen, and Sarah bombing the colony before she and Vampirella head home.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Comics | Alien And Predator Crossovers
