Anthony Crespi was a Colonel Doctor in the Colonial Marine Corps and a theoretical analyst sent to the Innominata research station in Aliens: Labyrinth. In S. D. Perry's Aliens: Labyrinth he was forty-one, with more than fifteen years in his field, and the novel calls him Tony throughout. The comic first shows him with a Marine unit near Solano's moon, nine years before that posting. He came to work with Paul Church, uncovered a hidden laboratory of altered human bodies, entered the research maze, and ended as another of Church's experiments.
Biography
Earlier Life
S. D. Perry's novel gives Crespi a fuller professional background than the comic supplies. In the book he was forty-one, a theoretical analyst with more than fifteen years in his field, and a man who had once relied on instinct in what he called the days of his warrior youth. Those days, he believed, were behind him when the transport Arkham closed on the Innominata. Lieutenant Colonel Heller woke the crew after nearly a year of cold sleep and brought the ship in at 0900. Crespi was sent both to assist Church and to report on what the station was hiding.
Admiral D. U. Pickman, head of ETops in the novel, had given Crespi written authority to take the Innominata by force if he found cause. Pickman had ordered the covert wipe on Myna 8 that killed civilians and Marines, and he spent his career hunting drone nests. The Arkham crew had heard stories of expendable technicians and secret tests. Crespi shared rank with Church and had little patience for idol worship, yet he still treated the posting as serious work. The comic gives him the same secret command authorization, without naming Pickman or that earlier disaster.
Briefing With The Colonial Marines
The comic opens Crespi's story in Aliens: Backsplash, on an armored transport near Solano's moon. Captain Wilcox told the Colonial Marines they were officially backup for the lead team, and a retreat escort if the assault failed. In the novel, Sergeant Crespi was second in command on that vehicle, one of a group brought in for firsthand experience against the species. Wilcox then told them their real task was to watch Rupp and Hollister, two sweepers in heavy protective armor, destroy every Alien in the cavern with particle-plasma projectors. Crespi had never seen a live drone except in recordings, and Wilcox sounded sure the Marines would only have to watch.
The sweepers killed the first drones they saw, then the cavern answered with many more. Acid and smoke filled the transport, the vehicle was wrecked, and the surviving Marines tried to fight their way out toward daylight and a rescue ship. In the comic he later said the creatures had attacked his squadron nine years before the Innominata posting and had killed everyone but him. S. D. Perry's novel adds that Corporal Cady Trask, a recent lover from that unit, died in the same fight, and that Crespi had been living on borrowed time ever since that rock near Solano's moon.
Escape From The Caverns
Crespi and a fellow Marine named Gibbs reached daylight on Solano's moon, but a huge Xenomorph seized Crespi from behind before they could reach the rescue craft. The creature was drawn with a crest, extra arms, and a body bigger than the drones around it, and it held the wounded Marine in its grip as he cried out. The comic never uses the word Queen for that creature, but the figure is a Xenomorph Queen. Gibbs fired into her, green acid sprayed from the wounds, and she shrieked and let Crespi fall. The two men then made for the ship together.
Gibbs did not survive the last yards to safety. A Xenomorph killed him at the ship, and Crespi was the Marine who lived to be pulled away from Solano's moon. In S. D. Perry's novel, the Queen seized Crespi by his already broken ribs before Gibbs shot her off him. The book also has Gibbs die in that same reach for the lock. Crespi carried that loss into the Innominata posting, along with the knowledge that the species had destroyed the rest of his unit on Solano's moon.
Arrival At The Innominata
Years after the escape, the comic shows Crespi waking from a cryopod on the voyage to the Innominata. A message on the screen read "Wake up Tony. I'm six months older than you were. O Death, where is thy stinger? Ouch!" Crespi answered "Uh huh. Not funny, honey," then called the bridge, where Lieutenant Colonel Heller said the ship would dock at 0900. A coded entry then gave him full discretion to take emergency command of the station by force if he found probable cause. In S. D. Perry's novel, Crespi knows the joke is Heller's, and the coded orders come from Admiral Pickman.
At the station, Crespi reported for duty to Admiral Thaves, who welcomed him, hinted at influential friends, and said Church might find a use for a theoretical analyst. In the novel, Crespi said he had been sent to succeed Colonel Doctor Lennox as Church's research partner, and Thaves admitted he had tried to block that posting. Church later received him politely and offered routine work, saying the station's course was set. In both versions Church claimed it had not been necessary to replace Lennox, and that there was little for Crespi to do. Crespi still carried his emergency authority, and those first meetings only deepened his suspicion.
Research On The Innominata
Church showed Crespi official tests on live Aliens, including a maze and a pit where electric shocks were used to keep captured specimens from going dormant. Crespi watched a starving creature face human bait, and he challenged the scale of the operation. In the comic he told Church about the squadron lost near Solano's moon, and he asked how long Church thought he could get away with the work. Church offered scientific explanations, including a drug in the novel called FITR, a telepathine meant to change how a man appeared to an Alien. The public research looked brutal, and it was not the whole of the work on the Innominata.
A technician named Mortenson died during the course of that work, and official accounts soon diverged from what Crespi could verify. Church kept walking specimens through the corridors and performing autopsies, presenting the creatures as if they were under complete control. Crespi kept asking questions, and Lieutenant Sharon McGuinness began her own inquiry beside him. The records showed a high crew death count and unscheduled shuttle arrivals. Those numbers, and Mortenson's fate, pushed Crespi from uneasy colleague to investigator.
Mortenson's Funeral
Church presided over a funeral for Mortenson and spoke as if a colleague had simply ended. He then tried to keep the body for research, while Thaves brushed aside protocol. The official story became that Mortenson had been jettisoned into the void. In the novel, Crespi later seemed to receive visual confirmation of that disposal, before the hidden laboratory showed that the body had never actually left Church's possession. Crespi did not accept the official account of Mortenson's death on the Innominata.
McGuinness compared medical records and shuttle traffic, and the two officers found evidence that the station's paperwork had been altered. Unscheduled arrivals and missing crew made the official deaths look incomplete. Crespi still attended Church's demonstrations, including a control walk with a living Alien, but his trust was gone. The funeral had been a performance, and the body was part of the experiment. That conclusion sent Crespi and McGuinness looking for a second laboratory.
The Hidden Laboratory
Crespi and McGuinness broke into Church's concealed laboratory and found altered human bodies and tanks of unfinished work. Church denied killing Mortenson, then asked them to hear how he had survived a sick hive decades earlier, when he was twenty. Crespi shot him during the confrontation and saw machinery inside the wound, briefly taking Church for a synthetic. The implants were part of a Company makeover that had also given Church an aged face. The hidden room made clear that the maze tests were only the public half of the project on the Innominata.
Church told them a long account of captivity, crude experiments, and a dead Chestburster cut from his own chest. He then spoke of combining human and Alien biology into a new form of life. Crespi had come to stop illegal research, and instead he was being invited to accept it. McGuinness wanted him to act against Church at once, before that invitation could go any further. The next step, for Crespi, was the maze itself.
Trapped In The Maze
Crespi entered Church's research maze and was caught in the machinery of that test. A Xenomorph attacked, acid struck him, and the injuries were fatal. McGuinness tried to reach him, and Church, from above, told Crespi he should have listened to her. The scientist then claimed that he had not survived his own hive, that he was the hive, and that Crespi was a soldier he could not hate enough. In S. D. Perry's novel, Crespi had swung a metal bar at a maze drone, and the creature's acid poured onto his chest before McGuinness reached him on the Innominata.
McGuinness reached Crespi while he was still alive, with the acid still burning. In the novel she hoped he could be saved, then saw that the front of his torso was already gone. Church continued to speak from above in the comic, as if the Marine's death were already settled. The wounds left no real chance of survival, in the comic or in the book. McGuinness stayed with him in that corridor of the Innominata maze, and what happened next ended Crespi's life.
Killed By McGuinness
Sharon McGuinness ended Crespi's life with her own hands, in a mercy killing shown in both the comic and the novel. The comic draws her locking her arms around his head and breaking his neck. S. D. Perry's novel makes the request explicit: Crespi asked her to kill him, then asked her to kill Church, and pleaded with her by name. McGuinness whispered "Rest now," then turned his head and snapped his spine. Tony Crespi died in that corridor, not later in Church's tank.
Official recordings were later used to show that McGuinness had killed Crespi with her bare hands and then assaulted Church. Marines took her into custody on that charge. In the novel, Church watched the neck break on a monitor and treated the death as a waste of a specimen he had wanted intact. Admiral Thaves still did not know the true work in the hidden laboratory, and he kept Church in place. McGuinness was removed as the supposed killer, while Church retained Thaves's protection and took Crespi's body for the tank.
Crespi In The Tank
Church placed Crespi's dead body in a tank as another experiment, then sprawled in a chair beside it and said, "I hope you know, Tony... none of this is personal." The change in the tank was Church's experiment on a corpse, not a recovery that brought Crespi back. At the end of the comic, Church was still running the Innominata, with Crespi transformed in the tank. The novel keeps that fate and continues past the moment Church speaks to the tank. In the book, Church visits the changed body, then turns to other unfinished work. Crespi does not escape that last experiment, in either Aliens: Labyrinth or the novel.
The transformed figure in the tank still shows Crespi's face, now bound into Church's attempt to join human and Alien biology. That ending completes the work Crespi had been sent to expose, and it does so with his own body. Church called the result impersonal, as if a colleague had become one more specimen. The comic closes on that tank and on the station still in Church's hands. S. D. Perry's Aliens: Labyrinth leaves the same Marine in the same tank, with Church still in control.
Personality And Traits
Crespi was a career officer who put work first, even in the novel's account of his earlier life. He trusted training, evidence, and written authority, and he had little patience for flattery or official stonewalling. On the Innominata he asked direct questions, challenged Church in front of staff, and used Pickman's orders when Thaves tried to turn him aside. He could also be drawn in by the science itself, and that curiosity delayed his final move against the hidden laboratory. The comic and the novel both show a Marine who wanted the truth, and who paid for that demand.
The Solano disaster stayed with him. In the comic he spoke of not knowing how the creatures truly were until they killed his squadron. In the novel he felt that he had been living on borrowed time ever since that fight, and that memory returned when he saw Church's live specimens. Crespi remained loyal to the Corps and to the people trying to expose the station, especially McGuinness. He died still trying to stop Church, not as a convert to the experiment that later used his body.
Comic And Novel Differences
The collected comic places Aliens: Backsplash first, then the Innominata investigation. S. D. Perry's novel opens with a glimpse of Church's captivity, then follows Crespi waking aboard the Arkham, much as the comic shows him leaving his cryopod. The book names Admiral Pickman as the source of Crespi's emergency authority, gives his age as forty-one, and records more than fifteen years in his research field. The comic gives him the same secret authorization but does not explain it through Pickman or the Myna 8 wipe. The novel also names Corporal Cady Trask as a lover lost in the Solano fight, a relationship the comic does not describe in those terms.
In the comic, Crespi later says the Solano attack happened nine years before the Innominata posting. The novel calls that fight years ago, without giving that nine year figure. The comic draws a Queen in that escape without using the word, and the novel names her and has her seize Crespi by his broken ribs. The comic shows McGuinness breaking his neck, and the novel adds that he asked her to kill him and that she told him to rest. The book expands the Arkham voyage and the Lennox posting, then still leaves Crespi in Church's tank on the Innominata.
Famous Quotes
- "Colonel Doctor Anthony Crespi reporting for duty, sir." - Anthony Crespi, arriving on the Innominata in Aliens: Labyrinth.
- "Yes... nine years ago on Solano's moon. They attacked my squadron. Killed everyone but me. We knew they were dangerous, of course, but I didn't know how they were." - Anthony Crespi, in Aliens: Labyrinth.
- "You have one hell of a lot of nerve, Church." - Anthony Crespi, in Aliens: Labyrinth.
- "How long do you think you could get away with this?" - Anthony Crespi, to Paul Church, in Aliens: Labyrinth.
Behind The Scenes
Anthony Crespi first appeared in Aliens: Backsplash in Dark Horse Comics #12 and #13, then in Aliens: Labyrinth, a four-issue series written by Jim Woodring and illustrated by Kilian Plunkett from September 1993 to January 1994. Plunkett also supplied the title illustration and cover art, Matt Hollingsworth colored the comic, and Ellie de Ville lettered it. The first issue's publisher description introduced Crespi as the survivor of Backsplash, linking that earlier fight to his new assignment on the Innominata. S. D. Perry novelized the story for Bantam Spectra in 1996, expanding Crespi's age, his authority from Admiral Pickman, the Arkham voyage, and the Solano mission.
A differently depicted Colonel Crespi later appeared in the 1995 game Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure, which borrowed the name from Labyrinth along with Church's. That game character is not the same officer who dies in Church's maze. The Labyrinth Crespi remains a comic and novel figure, defined by the Solano disaster, the Innominata investigation, and the tank at the end of the story. Woodring and Plunkett's version is the source for the station plot, and Perry's book is the source for the earlier life details that the comic leaves unsaid. No later novel or comic returns this Crespi as a living officer after Labyrinth.
Appearances
- Aliens: Backsplash, in Dark Horse Comics #12 and #13.
- Aliens: Labyrinth (Dark Horse, 1993-1994).
- Aliens: Labyrinth (S. D. Perry, Bantam Spectra, 1996).
Conclusion
Anthony Crespi entered the Aliens: Labyrinth story as a survivor of a Marine disaster and as an officer sent to inspect a research station. He found Paul Church running official maze tests and a second laboratory of human experiments, and he died trying to stop that work. The comic and the novel agree on his fate: Church kept him in a tank and continued the research under Admiral Thaves's protection. Crespi's investigation revealed the scale of the project, but it did not end it. The last image of him is not a Marine in uniform, but a transformed body still used by the scientist he had been sent to watch.
The novel's earlier life, the Solano briefing, and the Innominata assignment together explain why that ending matters. Crespi had already outlived one Xenomorph massacre, and he treated the Innominata posting as a chance to understand the species and to police illegal work. Church used both the science and the Marine's body. Readers who want the station plot in full can turn to the Labyrinth comic and to S. D. Perry's novel, and to the page for Paul Church. Crespi remains the officer who opened that investigation and never left the tank.
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Universe Scientists | Alien Lore | Colonial Marine Characters
