Aliens vs. Predator (1990): Comic Overview
Aliens vs. Predator is a four-issue Dark Horse series written by Randy Stradley, with pencils by Phill Norwood. It is the first Aliens vs. Predator comic, and the first issue is dated June 1, 1990. Yautja hunters carried a Xenomorph Queen on their ship and seeded eggs on the ranch world Ryushi. Machiko Noguchi ran Prosperity Wells for Chigusa when the creatures broke out of the rhynth herd. The wounded hunter she later called Broken Tusk burned a mark into her forehead and died in the crash that destroyed the nest. Two years later his people came back, and she went with them.
Plot Summary
Eggs From The Hunt Ship
The hunters held a Xenomorph Queen in their ship, hung in cables, with eggs sealed in pods around the machinery that handled her. Acid burned across that work when a pod failed, and the hunters on the rig had to hold the Queen while they pulled eggs out of her. Top-Knot fought Broken Tusk, the hunter with the lightning-bolt mark, over who would lead the party, and Broken Tusk won.
The Lector crew saw that ship go by and took it for a meteor. The eggs were for a hunt. A tracked cart carried them along a tunnel, and the hunters dropped them onto a forest, a coast, and a stand of reeds on Ryushi. Facehuggers came off those eggs and onto the rhynth herd. One hunter died in a swamp after the drop, unmasked, with his tusks showing, and the rest of the party stayed on the planet.
Machiko At Prosperity Wells
Machiko Noguchi was taking over Prosperity Wells from Hiroki Shimura. The colony belonged to Chigusa, and the ranchers were shipping rhynth off Ryushi. Ackland headed the Local Ranchers Association. Strange specimens had turned up among the rhynth, and those specimens were Facehuggers. He had Roth, who worked for Flying A, send Dr. Kesar Revna toward Iwa Gorge instead of out to the herd. Sending him to the gorge was the deception. If the herd was quarantined, the ranchers would lose the entire year's shipment. Shigeru Chigusa was due on the shuttle Masuko Maru in about seven days, and Machiko had told the home office she was glad of the visit.
Landing Of The Lector
The tug Lector came down into the basin for the first load, and Prosperity Wells treated the crew like rare visitors. Tom Strandberg was captain and Scott Conover was co-pilot. Ackland greeted them for the Local Ranchers Association and called the loading order: himself first, then Harrison, Luccini, and Marianetti. Machiko told the ranchers the company had approved the price increase they wanted. Hiroki praised the announcement, though the raise did not undo six months of trouble with the ranchers. They watched the landing from the antenna tower, the only high place with a view of the whole basin.
A refrigerated barge sat beside the Lector to carry the herd off Ryushi. The rhynth were walked aboard that barge, and the shipment was the colony's income for the year. The loading was loud, so Machiko stayed with the boards and sent Collins to the party. Hiroki was due to leave in a few weeks, once this first phase of the colony was done, and she was taking over the administration from him. He had not let the handover change how he treated her, and she counted him as the one person on Ryushi she could rely on. She told Collins to call her Machiko. Revna had signed out a hover bike for Iwa Gorge a couple of hours earlier. At the party Conover grabbed her. She threw him through a door, Tom carried him out alive, and the two of them went back to the tug.
Crash At Iwa Gorge
Kesar Revna rode a hover bike, marked 03, into Iwa Gorge to look for more of the specimens. Hunters with spears closed on him among the rocks. The bike struck one of them, hit a structure, and exploded. He did not come back, and the colony counted him among the dead. Before he left he had sent Dr. Margaret Chen, at Chigusa headquarters on Earth, a report that treated the specimens as short-lived carriers, hybrid silicon-carbon things with no life of their own once they had delivered what they carried. Machiko read that report while the party was going on, and she expected him to come back from the gorge.
Hive In The Refrigerated Barge
Tom Strandberg and Scott Conover found an open hatch and went into a hold where the deck was sticky and green. A Queen was in there, with eggs and a human body on the floor. Facehuggers from the eggs the hunters dropped on Ryushi had taken the rhynth, and this Queen had grown among the loaded herd in the refrigerated barge. At Ryushi's noon, inside the dark the creatures had built, a Chestburster came out of a rhynth, and the two crewmen were fastened in the resin. Scott could barely make a sound. The Queen in that chamber was asleep when they later worked an arm free.
Search For Revna
Hiroki woke Machiko near noon because Revna had not returned and Miriam Revna was frightened. At Bay 12, the office of Kesar and Miriam, the specimens were on the table. Miriam said Roth, from Flying A, had brought them in, and that Kesar had gone to Iwa Gorge looking for more. Machiko did not believe the gorge was where the things had been found. Ackland had no herds within twenty kilometers of it. A find among the herd, the night before the rhynth shipped, would have brought a quarantine down on the year's shipment, so the report had been aimed at the gorge. She told Hiroki that if anything had happened to Revna, Ackland would pay for the lie.
Ikeda's copter crew searched the gorge and found a wrecked hunter ship, not a human hull, and a huge armored figure in it who was breathing. Spanner helped load him. The radio call was Copter-1 returning, with no sign of the doctor. Other hunters stood on a ridge and watched the copter leave. One of them jumped with a spear. They did not catch the aircraft. Miriam built a breather in the med center. Broken Tusk lay on the table, masked, dozing, and a screen told Machiko he had four cracked ribs. The company manual had one line for a meeting with intelligent non-humans: avoid contact until trained people arrived.
Attack On The Sheldon Ranch
Bob Sheldon lived at a ranch house with his wife, their son Bobby, and a dog they called Boy. Bob thought the growling outside was briar-wolves and sent the dog out, and Tichinde came through the house with wristblades out. Tichinde killed Bob and his wife in the house and cut Bobby's face. The boy got a hover vehicle through a broken window, outran a shot from the hunter's shoulder weapon, and reached the settlement. He said monsters had killed his parents and his dog, and that he could not see them at first. In the med center he saw the hunter on the table and screamed that the thing in front of him was one of them.
Attack On Prosperity Wells
Machiko and Hiroki looked over Broken Tusk's gear and called it an arsenal, fit for a hunt or an invasion. A strap on it was rhynth hide, so this was not his first time on Ryushi, and the mask looked familiar to Machiko. Then the Sheldon boy reached the med center. She called the colony together. Megan had flown the Sheldon ranch and found the house burning and the breeding stock slaughtered. Two other ranches did not answer. Hiroki Shimura took the defense. The armory held fifteen scatter-guns, meant for fire-crawlers and briar-wolves, and ten pistols meant for a police force the town had never had. A curfew of thirty-three hours started then. Ranchers and company staff had the barricades up around Prosperity Wells by twilight, and the walls did not keep the creatures out.
Swarm On The Lector
Miriam would not move the patient to the main complex. She said Kesar would come back to the med center, and everything she needed was there. Machiko posted a guard and did not believe it. Collins had gone to the Lector that afternoon and had not returned, so she went to the ship herself. Hiroki gave her a gun, told her to have Weaver open a satellite link to Earth after the suns set, and ask for marines. Mason escorted her because Hiroki had ordered the escort even if she refused it. A door on the tug had been left open. An adult Xenomorph took Mason from behind and killed him. The swarm poured in after that. She fired, and at least one creature's head came apart, and then she went down among the bodies.
A masked hunter threw a canister into the swarm, stood over Machiko with a spear, and fought at close range until the creatures buried him and killed him. She ran and did not look back. In the nest, Scott and the man webbed beside him broke loose while the Queen slept, and they made for an emergency hatch. At the South Lock, Machiko told Hiroki the tug was full of the creatures. He was welding the inner doors of the West Lock and wanted everyone moved to the Lector. She told him the ship could not save them. Riley was dead on the ground in blood at the lock. A hunter using a cloak speared a creature there. The cloak had let the hunters through the defenses, and it meant little to creatures with no eyes.
The Locks Give Way
At the South Gate she ordered the doors welded, including the upper level, except the East Lock. No one in or out without her word. Downey could not get the satellite link through, because Little Cygni was in the way. Hiroki's last call said the team was gone except Johnson and himself, they had not hit the creatures, the ammunition was gone, and the creatures were on them. He used her name, Machi, and the creatures were standing over the bodies. She put on armor, took a sword and extra clips, and asked who owned the fastest hover bike. It was at the East Lock with the key in it. She hit a man who questioned her for leaving, put Weaver in charge, and rode out. If they had not heard from her in twenty minutes, they were to weld that door. She ran one creature down with the bike and reached Miriam Revna with a gun in her hand.
Fight In The Med Center
Machiko left Miriam Revna a gun and told her the settlement was being overrun. An adult Xenomorph got in. Miriam hit it, and Broken Tusk killed it after it came at her. A device on him played Machiko's voice back at her. She held the hunters responsible for Hiroki and six other men. Miriam said the hunters had done that, and that this one had not. Tichinde had attacked her in the building, and Broken Tusk had saved her.
Broken Tusk fought Tichinde in the med center and killed him. Tichinde went into that fight with his mask on and a net of skulls, and Broken Tusk had taken his mask off. Machiko pulled Miriam out during the fight and took her toward Copter-1. The hover bike was wrecked, so the copter was the way off the ground. Weaver had the aircraft, and the tower was telling them the southwest side of the compound was lost.
Stampede At The East Lock
Machiko told Broken Tusk that help would come and that the colonists would see what had happened. He answered that he would be back when he was done, and he went out again. She and Miriam went up in Copter-1 with Weaver. The plan was to drive the rhynth herd out of the pens and through the swarm at the East Lock. The herd went through the swarm at the lock, and the copter was hit and came down inside the compound.
Machiko lived through the crash and came out looking for Miriam, who had been in the copter with her. The people on the ground had not seen Miriam. Miriam Revna died in that crash. Tom Strandberg and Scott Conover were the last of the Lector crew left with her, after they got clear of the hive. A Chestburster killed Tom. Conover asked Machiko to shoot him and gave her a disk that mapped the tug. She shot him.
Ram Into The Nest
A memo from Takashi Chigusa in New Osaka refused marine help. It ordered the specimens preserved, and it told the colony to wait for Shigeru Chigusa on the Masuko Maru. Machiko refused. The nest was in the refrigerated barge. She and Broken Tusk set the Lector to ram that barge and took an escape pod.
On the way in, the Queen tore Broken Tusk open and got her teeth into his shoulder. She came into the escape pod after them, and the doors closed on her and took her head off. The pod launched clear of the barge. The tug hit the nest, and the blast destroyed Prosperity Wells. Broken Tusk was alive when they came down.
Blooding Of Machiko Noguchi
In the wreck of Prosperity Wells, Broken Tusk broke a finger from a dead Xenomorph and pressed the acid into Machiko Noguchi's forehead. He treated the burn as a going-away present, the blooding a hunter leaves on someone who has come through the hunt with him, and she told him she would remember him. He died beside her after the mark was on her forehead.
After The Prosperity Wells Crash
The blast had destroyed Prosperity Wells along with the nest, so Chigusa wrote the colony off and gave the surviving colonists passage to a freeholder location in the Rigel system while the company pulled out of Cygni. Machiko was offered passage to Earth and the credits from the buy-out, and she stayed on Ryushi.
Two years later she had the lightning-bolt mark, the Queen's head bolted on her house as a trophy, a knife, a dalmatian, and a spotted rhynth named Milo. She called the dead hunter Broken Tusk. She expected his people to come back with more of the creatures, and she did not want them to decide he had failed. A ship dropped hunters in the desert near the ruins. The lander's self-destruct destroyed it after the drop, which is why a Chigusa cleanup had found no lander. She sat on the rocks, watched that blast, and sent Milo away so the rhynth would be clear of the hunters.
At the ruins of Prosperity Wells she walked up to the hunters with a dead Xenomorph at her feet and asked to come along. The leader looked at the lightning-bolt mark on her forehead, the burn Broken Tusk had left, and took her with the hunt. She had waited on Ryushi for his people, and she left with them.
Key Characters
- Machiko Noguchi ran Prosperity Wells for Chigusa and was taking the colony over from Hiroki Shimura when the hunt started. She threw Scott Conover through a door, led the defense after Hiroki died, shot Conover at his request, and set the Lector into the nest. She stayed on Ryushi after the company wrote the colony off, and two years later she left with the hunters who came back.
- Broken Tusk is the name she later used for the wounded hunter brought in from the wreck at Iwa Gorge. He was the lightning-marked leader who beat Top-Knot for command of the hunting party. He saved Miriam Revna when Tichinde attacked her, killed Tichinde in the med center, and went back out while she went up in the copter. The Queen tore him open in the crash. He burned a mark into Machiko's forehead and died.
- Top-Knot fought the hunter with the lightning-bolt mark over who would lead the party, and lost.
- Tichinde killed Bob Sheldon and his wife at their ranch, and Bobby got away. He attacked Miriam Revna in the med center, and Broken Tusk killed him there. Miriam separated him from the killing of Hiroki and six other men.
- Hiroki Shimura, also called Mr. Shimura, was the administrator Machiko was replacing, and the person she counted on. He armed the colony, gave her a gun, and died with Johnson at the West Lock when the creatures overran what was left of his team.
- Dr. Kesar Revna studied the specimens Roth had brought in from the herd and wrote Dr. Margaret Chen that they were short-lived carriers. Hunters caught him on a hover bike in Iwa Gorge. The bike exploded, and he did not come back.
- Dr. Miriam Revna put Broken Tusk on a breather in the med center and would not leave the building while she waited for Kesar. She told Machiko this hunter had not killed Hiroki. She died when Copter-1 crashed.
- Tom Strandberg captained the Lector. He and Scott Conover walked into the Queen in the hold and were caught in the resin. A Chestburster killed him after they got out of the hive.
- Scott Conover was the Lector's co-pilot. Machiko threw him through a door at the harvest party, and he lived. At the end he asked her to shoot him, gave her a disk that mapped the tug, and she did shoot him.
- Bobby Sheldon was the boy from the ranch Tichinde hit. His parents were killed, his face was cut, and he reached Prosperity Wells on a hover vehicle. In the med center he saw Broken Tusk and screamed that the thing on the table was one of the monsters. His story continues in Aliens vs. Predator: The Web.
- Ackland headed the Local Ranchers Association. After Facehuggers turned up in the herd, he had Roth send Kesar Revna toward Iwa Gorge. A quarantine would have cost the ranchers the year's shipment, and Machiko blamed him for Revna's death.
Editions
Dark Horse Comics published Aliens vs. Predator as a four-issue series continuing a prologue from Dark Horse Presents #34 through #36. Randy Stradley wrote it. The first issue, dated June 1, 1990, was pencilled by Phill Norwood, inked by Karl Story with assists from Mark Propst, Brian Stelfreeze, and Stine Walsh, colored by Monika Livingston, and lettered by Pat Brosseau. Phill Norwood painted the cover. Diana Schutz edited the issue, Randy Stradley was executive editor, and Mike Richardson was the publisher. The issue was printed in Canada, and it had a second printing.
Issue #0, dated July 1990, reprinted the Dark Horse Presents prologue. Issue #2 is dated August 1990, issue #3 October 1990, and issue #4 December 1990. The collected story credits Chris Warner with pencils on chapter 5, Robert Campanella with inks on chapters 4 and 5, and Phill Norwood with inks on chapter 6. That collection lists InColor for the colors. The series was later reprinted in Aliens vs. Predator Omnibus Volume 1.
Behind The Scenes
Phill Norwood painted the issue #1 cover, a hunter with a spear in front of a ship. Steve Perry and Stephani Perry novelized the same hunt in 1994 as Aliens vs. Predator: Prey. That novel names him Dachande. Broken Tusk is the name Machiko uses in the comic. Prey is also where Top-Knot and Tichinde are named.
Bobby Sheldon's story continues in Aliens vs. Predator: The Web. Machiko Noguchi's story continues in the 1995 Aliens vs. Predator: War comic and in S. D. Perry's novel Aliens vs. Predator: War. Aliens vs. Predator: Hunter's Planet, by David Bischoff, is a separate sequel and sends her on another hunt. Aliens vs. Predator: Blood Time is another sequel, a swamp hunt published in 1994.
Prequel And Sequel
The prologue first ran in Dark Horse Presents before the 1990 series. Issue #34, dated November 1989, carried an Aliens chapter, and #35, dated December 1989, carried a Predator chapter. Issue #36, dated February 1990, is where the two meet. Dark Horse billed Aliens vs. Predator #1, dated June 1, 1990, as the continuation of those chapters. Issue #0, dated July 1, 1990, reprinted the three chapters in black and white, and it came out after #1.
The four issues carry the hunt through the crash at Prosperity Wells and Broken Tusk's death after the mark. The sequel is the epilogue in Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special, dated April 1991, written by Randy Stradley and drawn by Phill Norwood. It covers the two years Machiko stayed on Ryushi and her leaving with the hunters who came back, and it was later collected with the series. That story comes before the 1995 Aliens vs. Predator: War comic.
Film Adaptation
Peter Briggs wrote the unused 1991 screenplay The Hunt: Alien vs. Predator from this series. He finished the first draft that summer, as a spec script, and 20th Century Fox optioned it. The script kept a colony administrator named Noguchi on Ryushi. Briggs renamed Machiko Hiroko, a more common Japanese girl's name, and he turned the colony into a jungle communications relay. Fox did not make the film. The project stalled after Joe Roth left the studio in 1993.
Paul W. S. Anderson's 2004 film Alien vs. Predator uses a different plot and a different set of characters. A few pieces of this series are in that film. The hunters held a Queen in a restraint so she could produce eggs, and they hunted the creatures as a rite. Scar fought beside Alexa Woods, the guide the expedition called Lex. Some of the weapons in the film are made from the creatures' bodies.
Conclusion
Aliens vs. Predator is Randy Stradley and Phill Norwood's Dark Horse series, first issued in June 1990. It covers the hunt those hunters seeded on Ryushi, from the Queen on their ship through the crash that destroyed Prosperity Wells. Broken Tusk died after he burned a mark into Machiko Noguchi's forehead. She stayed on the ranch world, and two years later she left with the hunters who came back for him.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Avp Comics