Daniel Grant was the head of Neo-Pharm in the Aliens: Genocide comic, Dark Horse's 1991 story of a raid on the Xenomorph homeworld. His company sold Xeno-Zip, a stimulant built on royal jelly, whose synthetic formula drove some users into lethal rages. He bargained with the military for a ship, Marines, and a commander, Major Alex Lee. On the expedition he survived sabotage, a planted facehugger, and the betrayal of Corporal Henriksen. David Bischoff's Aliens: Genocide novel gives him a fuller past and renames his commander Colonel Kozlowski. He came home with the jelly, saying he would not do it again at the cost of eleven good kids.
Biography
Running Neo-Pharm In Manhattan
Grant rode through a rebuilt Manhattan in a limousine, handing a companion money to buy herself something nice. Outside, a television reporter ordered his cameraman to stop filming him and point the lens at the passing tycoon instead. Reporters crowded Grant at his building with questions about his meteoric rise, the split from his last wife, a run for office, and rumours that his empire was in trouble. He answered with a joke about learning something new every day and a string of short denials. Asked about lethal side effects of his new wonder drug, he claimed full confidence in the hardworking men at Neo-Pharm.
Downstairs in the labs he went after Dr. Wyckoff over the Xeno-Zip reports. He pressed until Wyckoff agreed that a small group of users was reacting to the fake elements in the drug and that genuine royal jelly would make a perfect product. Grant shouted that he had invested every last penny in the company, along with his property, his hotels, his shuttle, and even his casinos. The real jelly had come to Earth with the Xenomorph Queen Mother, and that supply was running out. Wyckoff admitted there was only one known source left.
Bargaining For The Homeworld Expedition
Grant answered with a grin and a raised finger, saying they would just have to go there and get it. He sent his scientists to work and took the plan to Generals Burton and Niles. In exchange for a staffed deep-space tactical vessel he offered the military an uninterrupted supply of the flawed Xeno-Zip, a drug some officers already wanted for soldiers. He told them to leave the egghead work to his staff and simply provide the guns, the grunts, and the gondola. When they named Major Alex Lee as commander, he chewed on a cigar and said he could not wait to meet the man.
The novel by Bischoff fills in the debts behind the deal. In that version Grant grew up on the Beta Centauri colony with hard-drinking parents, bought Neo-Pharm with money they gave him, and built Grant Industries around Grant Tower in New York. He also owed millions to the gangster Morton Fisk. Fisk confronted him at the Flickers nightclub, and moments after he walked away a machine gun killed Grant's date, Mabel Planer, while Grant dived to the floor and escaped. General Burroughs and Admiral Niles run the novel's meeting, and the commander is Colonel Alex Kozlowski.
Waking Aboard The Razzia
At the launch hangar Grant told Wyckoff that the mission was everything and that Neo-Pharm was doomed if it failed. He met his advisers, including Begalli, who had jumped ship from MedTech, and he admired the huge Corporal Henriksen on sight. On the Colonial Marine ship Razzia he woke to a warrior Xenomorph lunging over his sleeper. The creature was a training hologram, and the commander laughed that it had gotten him up and around. He called her Miss Lee, and she corrected him to Major Lee and reminded him that he was the one who had wanted to play big white hunter.
Grant later showed Lee and Henriksen the hold where a donor clone grown from the cells of Dr. Friel carried an implanted embryo. He insisted the host was not really alive and could not feel pain, and he told Lee he was risking his own life on the experiment. When the infant queen burst out as a chestburster, gunfire destroyed it, and Grant realised that not everyone aboard had known about the creature. That night he drank alone until Lee joined him. He warned her that the sabotage would continue and that nothing was deadlier than the enemy within.
Attacked By A Planted Facehugger
After the landing, Grant held the Xeno-Zip he had taken from Jastrow and said he had meant to give it back. On the plain Begalli identified the red Xenomorph creatures as mutations fighting the black hive for territory. Grant then insisted on entering the hive with the troops. He told Lee that on a moral level he needed to do it to look himself in the mirror again. While he searched for another suit of armor, a hidden Xenomorph egg opened and its facehugger leapt at him with a scream. He dived away and wrestled it off his face until Lee killed it, remarking that it was her job.
Grant raged that he had authorised only one creature for incubation and called the egg a blatant attempt on his life. He blamed Begalli and the rival company MedTech. Lee then showed him the timer clamp found on the egg, and Begalli stayed with the expedition. The novel has him watch Jastrow and Argento die before he volunteers, and Kozlowski agrees to let him come. Its landing craft is the USS Anteater, the planet is G-435, and the same planted egg attacks him in a locker room before Kozlowski kills the facehugger.
Betrayed At The Royal Jelly
Lee forced a captured warrior to guide the party to the jelly. When Begalli called it beautiful, Grant shot back that eight good people had died for that crap. He called himself careless, ignorant, and inhumanly selfish, then accused Begalli of sabotaging the mission from day one. Begalli admitted only to independent research and articles he planned to publish, and moments later a Xenomorph seized him from behind and killed him. Grant wondered who the saboteur was if not Begalli. Then Henriksen ordered Grant and Lee to drop their weapons, saying one blast would put Neo-Pharm, the Xeno-Zip patent, and all of Grant Enterprises up for grabs.
Grant called him a combat android built by MedTech to ruin him. Henriksen laughed and fired, and the shot struck Lee. Grant knocked him down with an armored fist and told him he was too arrogant to be an android after all. Lee feared her hip was broken and wondered why she was not dead, and he explained that the armor's under-plating was designed to withstand severe concussions. In the novel the traitor is spelled Henrikson, admits that MedTech pays him, and credits a pheromone for winning Grant's trust before his blast hits Kozlowski in the thigh.
Escaping The Homeworld
After so many spies, renegades, and hit men, Grant told Lee it was time he dropped out of the corporate world. When she teased him about saving her life, he called it returning the favor. On the way back a fresh wave of aliens came up behind them, and Henriksen tackled Grant for his gun. A bottle of Xeno-Zip spilled in the struggle. Grant told the corporal to take the gun, then forced a handful of the pills into his mouth as a special bonus. He left the dosed traitor to the creatures and told Lee he could take care of himself.
Running for the lander beside Lee, Grant radioed O'Connor to drop the perimeter walls and tell Captain Nash to start the engines. He admitted that what he hated about her was that she was always right. Back on the mother ship he came to her bedside, where she lay with a hairline fracture ahead of five weeks in the sleeper tube. He said he would never repeat the mission at the cost of eleven good kids. Calling himself a wiser, better person after a long, horrible day, he told her a man really could learn something new every day.
Behind The Scenes
Grant was created for Aliens: Genocide, a four-issue Dark Horse series published from November 1991 to February 1992. Mike Richardson plotted it, John Arcudi scripted it, and Damon Willis and Karl Story drew it. David Bischoff's 1994 Bantam novel kept the plot but changed several names. Lee became Colonel Alexandra Lee Kozlowski, Henriksen became Corporal Lars Henrikson, General Burton became General Burroughs, and Grant Enterprises became Grant Industries. The book also gives Xeno-Zip the street name Fire, adds the MedTech chief Lardner Foxnall as his rival, and has a drunken Grant tell Kozlowski that his former wife was the only person he ever really loved.
The novel's ending goes further than the comic. The Razzia returns with twenty-five hundred gallons of jelly, and Grant offers Kozlowski the job of heading a security team for Grant Industries. She refuses to leave the Marines and turns down caviar and a gourmet dinner. She then invites him for beer and pretzels instead and lights the cigar he gave her. In both versions Grant beats the traitor, leaves him to the aliens with the drug in his system, and comes home with the jelly. S. D. Perry's later Aliens: Criminal Enterprise sends a Grant Corporation team working for Neo-Pharm to Fantasia without bringing Grant himself on stage.
Conclusion
Daniel Grant began the story as a showman who joked with reporters and treated a war zone as a supply problem. He staked his companies on the jelly, bullied his scientists, and talked the military into lending him soldiers. The homeworld then showed him what that bargain cost, from the planted egg to the eight dead he blamed on his own selfishness. He saved Lee, beat Henriksen with his own hands, and left the planet admitting she had been right. The comic ends with him counting the cost in eleven good kids, and the novel ends with Kozlowski offering him beer and pretzels.
Appearances
- Aliens: Genocide (comic, 1991-1992)
- Aliens: Genocide (novel, 1994)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Lore
