Alien: Annual #1 is a double-sized one-shot comic book that was published by Marvel Comics on July 20, 2022. The story places Gabriel Cruz in the middle of an Alien outbreak perpetrated by Weyland-Yutani when they decide to conduct a trial run experiment with a Xenomorph. It was written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, illustrated by Salvador Larroca, colored by GURU-eFX, lettered bv VC's Clayton Cowles, and edited by Sarah Brunstad and Darren Shan. Cover art was provided by artist Salvador Larroca and colorist CURU-eFX while variant covers were provided by Gabriele Dell'otto and Declan Shalvey. The one-shot comic serves as a tie-in to the 6-issue series Alien: Bloodlines, produced by the same creative team.
In Marvel's Alien comics line, Alien: Annual #1 was preceded by Alien: Revival and will be followed by Alien: Icarus.
Publisher's summary[]
Years before Bloodlines, Weyland-Yutani security chief, Gabriel Cruz, was a company man. His devotion to WY came first, no matter what the cost. But when the company decides to conduct a trial run experiment with a Xenomorph, will Cruz stand by and let innocent soldiers die?
Plot[]
2193. Fourteen years after the destruction of Hadley's Hope on LV-426, an anti-Weyland-Yutani organization of extremist vigilantes known as the Second Hand Movement overran Nishimura Station. Representatives of Weyland-Yutani responded by sending Chief Gabriel Cruz and a select group of soldiers from Epsilon to infiltrate the damaged station and neutralize the terrorist threat. The fireteams assignment was to infiltrate Nishimura Station while a pre-core directive synthetic, disguised as a combat android, implements and collects data on the Companies new bio-weapon, an Alien organism known as the Epsilon stain.
Aboard the USS Francis Marion, Chief Cruz prepares for his mission while some of the other soldiers harass Charlie, the teams assigned combat synthetic. Soon after, Charlie secretly initiates his own pre-determined operation aboard the Marion by exposing a previously detained human subject to a Xenomorph egg and the facehugger within, impregnating its host with the aforementioned Epsilon strain.
Meanwhile, the Marion had approached Nishimura Station, but was fired upon by a series of offensive anti-aircraft rockets that partially damaged the Marion's radio and homing beacon in the process. Four days went by before the crew successfully sent a distress call, only to watch Nishimura Station get nuked a day later, presumably by the Company, who purposefully left the crew of the Marion adrift in space with the Xenomorph on board.
Over the next several days, Charlie, who had previously hidden the crews arsenal of explosive and incendiary rounds in a locked compartment, went on to kill a number of crew members one by one, while the rest were subjected to fatal Alien attacks. Charlie ultimately revealed he was in fact a Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2 synthetic, designated Ash, ordered to conduct a trial run experiment with the Epsilon strain Xenomorph aboard the Marion.
Before Ash can cause any more damage, Chief Cruz the lone survivor of the entire ordeal, found a weapon and used it to destroy Ash's synthetic body before escaping the Marion, unharmed, in a Type 337 EEV. Ash's active AI continued to collect and transmit datalogs on the Xenomorph, believing the organism still had a great deal to teach them.
Reprint History[]
Alien: Annual #1 was collected in the Alien Vol. 2: Revival trade paperback and released on August 23, 2022.
Behind the Scenes[]
In an interview with Marvel Comics, Phillip Kennedy Johnson was quoted as saying "...for this chapter, we had an opportunity to tie the films into one of my favorite games in recent memory, ALIENS: FIRETEAM ELITE. Since the first moment I played that game, I wanted to see Gabe in his prime with his fellow soldiers, face-to-face with xenomorphs and combat synths. That’s what readers (and gamers) will see in the annual: a chapter that belongs on the shelf alongside the films, but also alongside the beloved game that my fellow superfans have spent so many hours playing over the past year.”
Gallery[]
Variant covers[]
