Aliens vs. Predator: Hell-Bent: Comic Overview
Aliens vs. Predator: Hell-Bent is an eight-page story in Aliens vs. Predator Annual #1, written and penciled by David Ross. The annual is dated July 7, 1999. Dawn Marshall led a work crew of eighteen to Charon 13, a barren world in a system her people treated as forgotten. Adult Xenomorphs had taken most of that crew when a Yautja hunter reached the geothermal station AS-3, and Marshall sent the station down into the lava pit under it.
Plot Summary
Charon 13
Five days after they landed on Charon 13, Dawn Marshall was leading a work crew of eighteen, and the adult Xenomorphs in the hive around the station had left her dying. Kenner took a call that another of the crew had been found in that same condition. The group had Marshall with them when they came on a hunter who was not one of theirs. One of them pulled a Facehugger off his face, too late to keep a Chestburster out of him. That embryo would have come out as a Predalien.
Station AS-3
AS-3 was a geothermal processing station, built to draw energy from the core of Charon 13, more than five miles straight down. Marshall called it a remote place where humans and Xenomorphs had run into each other, and she did not know how the hunter had reached it. She believed she was walking around with her own death, and she thought the Yautja was in the same condition. Kenner sealed a hatch while the rest of them ran the gantry. Marshall wanted the question of the station's power left until they were inside the main complex and nothing was following them.
The Main Complex
Jasmine asked Marshall if she was all right, and Marshall told her to stay on the task in front of her. By Marshall's count the crew had lasted about a week in the station, and only three of the eighteen were left. She was tired of being the one the hive ran down. They got into the main complex and found the upper level clear, with the hive below them. The shuttle answered and the station systems were up, but the clamps that held the ship would move only by hand, so one of them would have to stay. In the lava pit under the complex, the heat and the pressure had turned the air thick, and the glow did not change between night and day.
The Hive
The adult Xenomorphs thrived in that heat. Marshall thought the temperature was what made them fierce, and the hunter went in among them with a combistick. A shot from his shoulder cannon burned through one of them. He seemed to expect the heat to kill him before the hive did. The crew knew what the Facehugger on him had meant, and Marshall sent the other two on toward the shuttle. She told them to tell the company that the station had gone to hell.
The Fall
Marshall heard explosions under the station, and then a transmission from the shuttle. The ship seemed infested, and the crew who had gone to it were lost. That had been their last way off Charon 13. She thought the hunter had come for the sport of the hunt, drawn by their distress beacon, and that she was no longer alone on AS-3. The adult Xenomorphs overwhelmed him. Xenomorph acid spilled from the ones he cut, and he went down in the fire as the structure started to fail.
The lava pit under AS-3 was burning when Marshall collapsed the bracing struts, and the station fell into it. Her crew and her friends were dead, and the hunter was in that fire with the adult Xenomorphs that had overwhelmed him. A Chestburster stirred in her as the station dropped, and it did not have time to get clear. Marshall went down with the hive.
Key Characters
- Dawn Marshall led the work crew of eighteen on Charon 13. She stayed when the shuttle clamps needed a hand, then brought AS-3 down into the lava pit as a Chestburster stirred in her.
- The Yautja hunter is not named. The crew pulled a Facehugger off him too late to stop the Chestburster he was carrying. He fought the hive at AS-3 with a combistick and a shoulder cannon, and the adult Xenomorphs overwhelmed him as the station fell.
- Jasmine, Jag, and Kenner were among the crew Marshall had names for after the landing. Jasmine asked if she was all right, Jag was there when the group had her, and Kenner sealed a hatch on the way to the main complex. Marshall sent the last two toward the shuttle. A transmission from that ship made it sound infested, and that part of the crew was lost.
Editions
Dark Horse Comics published Aliens vs. Predator: Hell-Bent in full color, as an eight-page story in Aliens vs. Predator Annual #1, dated July 7, 1999. David Ross wrote it and penciled it, Mark Lipka inked it, Dave Stewart colored it, and Michael Taylor lettered it. Jae Lee drew the title illustration, and Stewart colored that painting. Philip Amara edited the annual, and Jeremy Perkins designed it. The story was later reprinted in Aliens vs. Predator Omnibus Volume 2.
Behind The Scenes
Jae Lee drew the cover of Aliens vs. Predator Annual #1, and he also drew the separate title painting that opens Hell-Bent, colored by Dave Stewart. The story was one of five in the annual, with Old Secrets, Pursuit, Lefty's Revenge, and Chained to Life and Death. David Ross had both the script and the pencils, with Mark Lipka on inks.
Conclusion
Aliens vs. Predator: Hell-Bent is David Ross's 1999 Dark Horse story, inked by Mark Lipka and colored by Dave Stewart. It follows Dawn Marshall and a Yautja hunter through the geothermal station AS-3 on Charon 13, and it ends with both of them dead in the fall into the lava pit, each carrying a Chestburster.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Avp Comics
