“Descendant”
Creative Staff:
Story: Hans Rodionoff, Adam F. Goldberg
Art: Guiu Vilanova
Colors: Yen Nitro
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
For years, fans of James Cameron’s legendary Aliens questioned whether Carter Burke, a company man more hateable than the Xenos themselves, had actually survived the traumatic events on the terraforming colony Hadley’s Hope. Now the actor behind the beloved villain, Paul Reiser, joins his son Leon and the star-studded team of writers and producers Adam F. Goldberg, Brian Volk-Weiss, and Hans Rodionoff for a journey back to Hadley’s Hope and the twisted escape of a man who should have died.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Alien property has a whole lot of great creative talent behind it over the years and this series is no exception. This one comes from a concept by Paul and Leon Reiser and working with a few others who did the writing as well as Adam F. Goldberg and Hans Rodionoff along with Biran Volk-Weiss. That’s a lot of names but it comes down to a tighter team doing the heavy lifting of scripting and writing. The book works well with Guiu Vilanova on the artwork with Yen Nitro doing the color design to make it feel like it fits perfectly within the color aesthetic and tone of the original film itself. With some strong layout design along the way, it all comes together to create the right kind of expansion in the whole What If vein.
The premise behind this is interesting and grim at the same time. With it set to run for five issues, a decent chunk at the start here focuses on events we know where it’s revealed what Burke was up to in trying to transport Xenomorph eggs in both Ripley and Newt and then intending to eliminate the Marines. Or at least some semblance of then. This comes as the aliens attack in the command center and he flees, locking himself away from everyone else only to be attacked. While that was considered his end in the film, we discover that he’s actually been cocooned instead, waking up to discover how badly everything is going. His escape is only possible because of Gorman and Vasquez using their explosive as it frees him and gives him the chance to sneak on board the ship unseen by everyone else. We see the familiar events play out and it’s a waiting game to see the real changes.
Amusingly, it’s his time communicating with Yutani himself that seals his fate because of his mismanagement of the trip to LV-426. But he’s able to secure a deal – and lifetime employment – by doing the hard work of killing Ripley and the rest so they can’t tell the truth of what happened. But even here he’s his own worst enemy as he ends up sending them on another ship to a nearby planet that results in the third Alien film. But for Burke himself, his getting retrieved and brought back to the world seals him in a grim fate as Yutai pinned everything on him and sent him to manage a mining operation at the end of the known galaxy where he’s spent the past thirty-five years, much to the anger of his family because he’s known as the biggest Judas to humanity with what he was accused of doing. Of course, an NDA keeps him from speaking out, but we see how he’s intent on getting his own revenge here by the end in following through on getting a Xenomorph…
In Summary:
Reading this as the new 4K UHD release of the film is arriving is definitely amusing because it is the perfect kind of what if storyline. Burke’s survival here is an easy retcon that allows for some creative storytelling to take place but I absolutely love that they’ve crafted it not to follow the younger Burke and what happens to him immediately afterward but to lean into where Paul Reiser is now in his life and approach it from that perspective. There are a lot of ways that this can go with what he’s acquired at the end of the issue and how it factors into his intentions. With what we see from his daughter, I’m hoping for more illumination on his past so that it’s given some good due to increase the weight of what he’s attempting, but I’m just damn curious overall. The book leans into the look of the characters from the film really well and while it may not be everyone’s style it’s a great look to me and definitely has a lot of impact in capturing that feeling of the original work. I’m excited to see where it goes since it has space to tell the tale instead of just a standalone book.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: March 6th, 2024
MSRP: $4.99
