Warning! This article contains spoilers for Alien #6
Marvel's alien for its capacity for carnage, but now Marvel has revealed that’s not necessarily the case.
In Alien #6 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson with art by Salvador Larroca and Guru-eFX, the ex-operative for Weyland-Yutani Gabriel Cruz, his son Danny, and a Bishop synthetic are betrayed by one of their own while escaping Epsilon Station. Iris, who has been working with Danny to supposedly take down the in-orbit Xenomorph laboratory run by Weyland-Yutani, turns on the team after she discovers Danny has a Xenomorph growing inside of him. Once on an escape vessel, she incapacitates Bishop and Gabe and takes control of the ship. Bishop doesn’t stay down for long, however, and forcefully retakes control of the pod, revealing Iris to be a synthetic herself! Before Iris is shut down for good, though, she has one last revelation for the Xenomorph-fighting team.
Iris reveals that the cosmic human-Xenomorph hybrid woman Gabriel has been haunted by ever since surviving his own alien impregnation isn’t an otherworldly creature, but a vision of the future. Iris makes it clear that Weyland-Yutani’s goal with the Xenomorph isn’t to simply weaponize them, but to create human-Xenomorph hybrids just like the woman in Gabe’s visions. While the implications are that the company will create cross-species with aliens and people, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will stop there, which could give Marvel some free reign to get creative with biologically-flexible alien creatures, just as another comic series tackled in the past.
The limited series that was only available with a action figure, Alien: Space Marines, was a 13-issue mini-comic series published by Dark Horse Comics. Unlike the publisher’s well known dark and gritty Alien adaptations, these comics were perfect for kids, allowing fans to see the full range of the Xenomorph’s biological imprint in creative and light-hearted ways. Among the all-new Xenomorph concepts were the Scorpion Alien, the Rhino Alien, and the Mantis Alien. In the issues, facehuggers were able to impregnate of these other alien races creating the interesting hybrids presented in the comics. While assuredly the purpose was to sell all kinds of different toys while using the popular Alien brand, the result was still a fun and creative take on the Alien mythos that was by all counts entirely plausible based on the established Xenomorph biology.
Alien fans now know what the goal of the experiments on Epsilon Station are after Weyland-Yutani’s true use for the Xenomorph was revealed.
