William Gibson's Alien 3 Comic: Plot & Characters

William Gibson's Alien 3 is a five-issue comic series published by Dark Horse Comics from November 2018 to March 2019, adapted and drawn by Johnnie Christmas with colors by Tamra Bonvillain. It is based on the first-draft screenplay that William Gibson wrote for the third film, which was set aside before Alien 3 was made. The series was part of Dark Horse's 20th Century Fox Uncovered line. The story follows Hicks, Bishop and Newt after the Sulaco strayed into UPP space, and turns the Xenomorph into the prize of a Cold War arms race between two space stations.

Plot Summary

UPP Soldiers Board The Sulaco

On its way home from the events of Aliens, the Sulaco suffered a software failure and drifted into territory claimed by the Union of Progressive Peoples. Its course for Gateway was cancelled and the ship was set to intercept the Anchorpoint Cluster instead. A UPP interceptor docked with it, and a squad of soldiers under their captain moved through the dark corridors to the hypersleep vault, where the torn half of Bishop lay on the floor. An egg opened in the vault and a facehugger seized the soldier Kurtz. His comrades fired, dragged him back to their craft with the creature still on his face and left before the ship crossed back out of their sector under the treaty.

Anchorpoint Sends A Boarding Team

The Sulaco arrived on autopilot at Anchorpoint Station, a Weyland-Yutani deep space cluster. Tully woke Jackson in the middle of her downtime, because the marine transport had come in with two passengers from military science who wanted it checked for biohazards. In the office of Rosetti, the station's senior officer, the Weapons Division pair Welles and Fox admitted that the company had routed the ship through UPP space on purpose, because it was carrying weapons-related specimens. A suited team that included Welles, Fox, Jackson, Tully and the loud technician Sterling then crossed the docking bay and boarded the ship.

Finding Newt And Hicks

Inside the vault the team found the broken body of Bishop and a child in one of the cryotubes. The girl was Newt, who woke screaming and had to be sedated. Fox later found the rest of Bishop in the officers' quarters, while Corporal Dwayne Hicks was still asleep in his own tube beside the one marked with the name of Ripley. Sterling was sent back to the cargo lock, and the survivors were moved to the station's medical lab. There Hicks, now in quarantine, lit a cigarette and was told that smoking was not allowed. He answered with a calm "yes ma'am" and put it out.

Rodina Studies The Parasite

The interceptor carried Kurtz back to Rodina, the UPP space station. In its cybernetics laboratory a senior officer in a suit and a tattooed researcher studied a holographic image of the facehugger while Kurtz lay on a table nearby. Whatever the parasite had left inside him had begun to grow, and a mass of tentacles pushed out of his chest as the scientists watched. The UPP had also kept the torso of Bishop from the Sulaco, and they began to search the android's memory for the record of what had happened on the ship.

A Chestburster Erupts On The Sulaco

The second issue opened on the Sulaco six hours earlier, when a chestburster tore out of a gasping man in armor. On Anchorpoint, Hicks asked Spence where Ripley was, and Newt, whose real name was Rebecca, burst into the room to see him. Ellen Ripley remained in a coma, and when Newt asked whether Ripley was dreaming, she was told that it was better not to. In the tissue culture lab, Tully and Jackson filmed a growing mass of tentacles and resin that had been scraped from the ship. Spence reported that Newt was in catatonic shock.

Welles Takes Charge Of Newt

Rosetti received a transmission from Gateway Station confirming that the Weapons Division had authority over the matter and that Welles and Fox were now operational. Tully argued with Rosetti that the station was being turned into a germ warfare lab, but the order stood. Welles met Newt among the trees of the eco-module and told her that she would undergo therapy at Gateway and then go to her grandparents. A sample that Tatsumi had scraped from the ship was passed on to Welles, and the two company agents began to direct the work in the labs.

Rodina Reads Bishop's Memory

In a security bubble on Rodina, UPP officers and scientists reviewed what they had taken from Bishop. His memory showed the egg in the vault and the facehugger overcoming Kurtz, and they concluded that each individual creature could become a queen and that the species was a weapon. Because a selective memory wipe was impossible, they decided to repair the android and return him to Anchorpoint while keeping a copy of his data. Later the UPP officer Rivera called Anchorpoint by video to demand the return of Kurtz. Rosetti claimed that he had never heard of the man and that Bishop was being held as a citizen.

Walker And Sterling Return To The Sulaco

Walker and Sterling were sent from the machine shop to the Sulaco to pull out its cooling grid, with Sterling grumbling that this was the company's way. They found the grid fouled by something hanging inside the ship and dragged it back to the shop. Rosetti debriefed Hicks, who said that his orders had been overridden at New Brisbane, and Welles introduced herself to him. Fox had the alien material tested for compatibility with human DNA and learned that it rewrote human genes in real time. He told the others that the station itself would serve as the containment facility.

The UPP Returns Bishop

On Rodina the scientists watched their own tissue culture grow and decided that the organism had been designed for genetic manipulation, perhaps as part of an ancient experiment. A UPP vessel then docked at Anchorpoint and an officer handed Bishop back, walking again on new polycarbon legs. Rosetti and Welles wondered whether his memory had been tampered with, but Fox found no evidence of reprogramming. Bishop admitted that part of his memory was missing and remarked that his repairs were not bad work for humans. Welles then pulled Spence and Tully off the project and put Bishop in charge of cloning the embryos.

The Culture Tank Bursts

In the tissue culture lab, Tully, who described himself as an ecologist, and Spence were arguing over the samples when one of the culture tanks cracked. A mass of alien flesh burst through the glass and struck Welles, and Tully was caught by the creature and infected. Spence ordered decontamination, and the victims were hosed down in yellow protective suits. In the quarantine area Newt read a letter from Hicks about her grandparents in Oregon, with a map she wanted to keep for Ripley. In the docking bay a workman replaced a damaged unit on the Sulaco without noticing the hiss of a Xenomorph hidden in a crate.

Newt Leaves On The Sulaco

The Sulaco was given a revised departure time, and Halliday put Newt into hypersleep aboard it for the long trip to her grandparents in Oregon. Hicks saw her off with a simple affirmative, and the ship pulled away from Anchorpoint. Spence later told Hicks at Lovers Lane that Fox and Welles had been running recombinant DNA work on the alien tissue, and that Tully and Sterling were missing. Halliday joined them, and they decided to go to the lab and destroy the cultures. In the fog of a damaged section, a worker in suit twelve called out to them before a Xenomorph killed him.

Xenomorphs Overrun Rodina

The UPP experiment broke loose at the same time. In the Rodina biolab the station crew found cocooned victims and a chestburster, and adult Xenomorphs attacked the troops sent to contain them. The soldiers fired into the corridors, but one of the creatures smashed through a sealed hatch and the station fell into chaos. On Anchorpoint the operations staff could no longer raise Rodina by radio. They learned that the UPP battlecruiser Nikolai Stoiko was only hours away, and that it was heading for the stricken station.

Welles Becomes A Hybrid

Fox learned from Walker in the mess that the cooling grid had been swapped and left in the dock. Hicks, Spence and Halliday reached the lab to destroy the embryos, where Bishop told them that he had been about to do it himself and began the sterilization. Welles fought Spence over the cultures, but she had already been infected. Her body twisted and a newborn creature tore its way out of her head and shoulders. It turned on Rosetti, who had just congratulated Spence, and killed him in the lab before Bishop drove it back with an electric charge. Welles had become one of the hybrid Xenomorphs bred from the altered tissue.

Hicks Launches Ripley In A Lifeboat

With the station breaking down around them, Hicks carried the comatose Ripley to lifeboat five, sealed her inside and launched her away from Anchorpoint. Bishop called everyone back to operations. Spence went to search for Tully and found him in locker AG-28, mutated and frozen in death. At the same time on Rodina, the UPP technician Tatjana Malik crouched beside a dying comrade among the cocoons. In the Anchorpoint docking bay, Fox reached a shuttle and shut himself inside while a cocooned victim with a new chest wound hung in the shadows nearby.

The Stoiko Destroys Rodina

Malik broadcast a warning that a genetically modified variant had been bred on Rodina. The Nikolai Stoiko answered by firing a twenty-megaton warhead into the station, which burst apart after a Xenomorph escaped its hull. In operations, Hicks learned that Fox had fried the launch circuits of every lifeboat after the fifth and that the colonial transport Kansas City, with three hundred colonists aboard, was due in three days. The station was nonmilitary and held no weapons. Hicks decided to blow the fusion plant before the transport arrived, and Bishop set the overload for 2200, an hour and a half away.

Halliday Dies In The Eco-Module

Hicks found an M41A rifle with only a few rounds left, while Walker readied a truck and oxygen for the escape. As the survivors crossed the eco-module, a Xenomorph burst out from among the trees and seized Halliday. Hicks opened fire, but the creature killed her. In the fifth issue Spence ran back to the others and told them that the creature had killed Halliday but that they had killed it in return, though Hicks admitted that he had missed. Another survivor named Amaya had also been taken, and the group decided that they were finished out there and had to get down to the dock.

Following The Resin Nest

The survivors found that a mass of resin had spread through the corridors, and Hicks explained that it was something the creatures extruded to build their nests. With the elevator wrecked, they planned to climb through the service tunnels from AP-80 to C-10 and follow a ventilation duct to the dock. Bishop climbed alone to the Fusion Control Booth and bypassed the overload failsafe. On his way down a rung snapped and he crashed to the floor, breaking his polycarbon legs. In the duct a Xenomorph grabbed one of the men from below, and he was dragged off despite the fire Hicks poured into the creature.

Fighting Through The Dock

In the machine shop Walker gathered spare air bottles and pressure suits, and the group pushed on to the dock with the clock running down. They found Fox cocooned in resin, still alive inside the growth. The fight in the dock killed another suited survivor, whose helmet filled with blood, and a blast tore through the shuttle and set the bay on fire. Walker was caught by one of the creatures in the attack. Bishop dragged himself to the lock controls and opened the dock, and the rush of escaping air pulled a Xenomorph out into space.

Malik Shoots The Clinging Xenomorph

The survivors blasted out of the dock in their craft with Spence at the controls, but a Xenomorph had clung to the outside of the vessel. Malik, the UPP survivor who had escaped the destruction of Rodina, opened fire on the creature with a stream of rounds and burned it off the hull. The Xenomorph shrieked as the fire consumed it. Spence stared out of her helmet in disbelief, and the craft pulled away from Anchorpoint before the fusion plant reached its overload.

Anchorpoint Explodes

At 2200 the fusion plant overloaded and Anchorpoint vanished in a ball of fire. Bishop, who had set the timing, explained that he had thought they might need the extra time. He told Hicks and Spence that they were not infected, since he had worked out the incubation period, and that Chang was not a carrier either. Malik, however, was dying of radiation poisoning. Bishop told Hicks that humanity could become a species again, united against a common enemy that knew no other mode than war, and urged him to trace the creatures to their point of origin. The survivors then docked with the Kansas City.

Key Characters

• Dwayne Hicks was the Colonial Marine corporal woken on Anchorpoint. He launched Ripley to safety, led the survivors through the station and escaped before it exploded.
• Bishop was the damaged android whose memory the UPP copied on Rodina. Rebuilt with polycarbon legs, he set the fusion plant to overload and survived with Hicks.
• Newt was found in her cryotube aboard the Sulaco. She was sent on the ship to her grandparents in Oregon before the outbreak began.
• Ellen Ripley stayed in a coma for the whole story. Hicks put her in lifeboat five and launched her away from Anchorpoint.
• Spence was the Anchorpoint lab technician who joined Hicks against the Weapons Division and escaped with him.
• Welles and Fox were the Weyland-Yutani Weapons Division agents who took over the research. Welles was infected and became a hybrid, and Fox was found cocooned in the dock.
• Rosetti was Anchorpoint's senior officer, killed by the creature that burst from Welles.
• Tully was the station ecologist who was infected in the lab and was later found dead and mutated in a locker.
• Halliday put Newt aboard the Sulaco and was later killed by a Xenomorph in the eco-module.
• Walker and Sterling were the machine shop workers who brought the cooling grid back from the Sulaco.
• Tatjana Malik was a UPP technician who warned that a modified variant had been bred on Rodina, survived its destruction and joined the escape, dying of radiation poisoning.
• Kurtz was the UPP soldier seized by a facehugger on the Sulaco and taken to Rodina.

Collected Editions

Dark Horse released the five issues monthly, beginning with the first issue on November 14, 2018, and ending with the fifth issue in March 2019. Johnnie Christmas wrote the adaptation script and drew the art, Tamra Bonvillain colored it and Nate Piekos of Blambot lettered it. Christmas and Bonvillain made the standard covers, while variant covers came from Paolo Rivera, James Harren, Daniel Warren Johnson, Tradd Moore and Christian Ward. Daniel Chabon edited the series.

The hardcover William Gibson's Alien 3 was published by Dark Horse Books on July 24, 2019. It collected all five issues in 144 pages. After Marvel took over the Alien license, the full series was reprinted in Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 4, released on March 15, 2023, alongside Alien: The Original Screenplay, Aliens: Resistance and Aliens: Rescue in a 1,072-page hardcover. The same script was later turned into a novel by Pat Cadigan and an audio drama, both published under the title Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay.

Behind The Scenes

Gibson wrote his draft for producers Walter Hill and David Giler in the late 1980s, and most of its ideas were dropped from the finished film. The comic follows his script rather than the 1992 movie. Ripley spends the whole story in a coma, Hicks and Bishop take the lead, and Newt survives and is sent home to Earth. The prison planet of the film does not appear, and the story is set instead on Anchorpoint Station and the UPP station Rodina, with the Xenomorph treated as a biological weapon in a cold war.

The same draft was adapted again as the Titan Books novel Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay, which uses different names for several of the minor characters. The fates of Hicks and Newt in this version can be compared with the other versions of the story in Hicks and Newt's alternate fates. The idea that the alien material could rewrite human DNA, producing creatures that burst out of their victims in new shapes, is the main change Gibson brought to the creature.

Conclusion

William Gibson's Alien 3 is Dark Horse's adaptation of the unmade first draft of the third Alien film. It follows the Sulaco from its capture by UPP soldiers to the destruction of two space stations, with Hicks, Spence and Bishop escaping to the Kansas City. The series gives Gibson's draft its first full visual form for readers who want to see the sequel that was never filmed, and it reads very differently from the most praised Alien comics. It pairs naturally with Alien: The Original Screenplay, the later adaptation of Dan O'Bannon's first draft, and its gene-altered creatures join the other Xenomorph types.

External Sources

• William Gibson's Alien 3 #1 at Dark Horse
• William Gibson's Alien 3 hardcover at the Grand Comics Database
• Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 4 at the Grand Comics Database

---

Tag Categories: Alien Comics