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Aliens: Taste is a comic book short story that was first published by Dark Horse Comics in the company's self-titled anthology series Dark Horse Comics #11, July 1993. It was written by Edward Martin III, illustrated by Mark A. Nelson, colored by Ray Murtaugh, lettered by Willie Schubert, and edited by Randy Stradley. The issue of Dark Horse Comics also featured featured a jam cover with an Aliens segment by Arthur Adams.
In Dark Horse's Aliens comics line, Aliens: Taste was preceded by Aliens: Sacrifice, published concurrently with Aliens: Colonial Marines, Aliens: Earth Angel, Aliens: Rogue and Aliens: Crusade, and was followed by Aliens: Backsplash.
Plot[]
An anonymous monologue guides the reader through a short story where a facehugger is purposefully squeezed from an Alien egg by a set of taloned fingers and thrown onto a grill to be cooked and consumed by a giant extraterrestrial creature for its taste.
Reprint History[]
Dark Horse Comics[]
Aliens: Taste was first reprinted the the United Kingdom in Aliens magazine, Vol. 2 #17, in November 1993.
The comic was eventually collected as part of Aliens Omnibus: Volume 4 in July 2008.
The comic was released digitally through Dark Horse Digital on June 26, 2013, collected with Aliens: Incubation and Aliens: Lucky and reusing Bernie Wrightson's cover art from Dark Horse Presents #101.
The comic was to be collected and released again as part of Aliens: The Essential Comics Volume 2, scheduled for release in August 2020, but the collection was cancelled.
Marvel Comics[]
Following Marvel Comics' acquisition of the rights to Alien comic books, the comic was collected as part of Marvel's Aliens: The Original Years Volume 2 collection, alongside many other early Dark Horse stories. The collection was released in January 2022.
Behind the Scenes[]
The off-beat Taste was the only story ever written by long-time Dark Horse Comics and Aliens editor Edward Martin III, who otherwise worked on numerous other Aliens stories.
It is also notable as one of the few Aliens stories from Dark Horse Comics to depict an alien species other than the Xenomorphs. Other notable non-Xenomorph aliens featured in the franchise include the lizard-like space travelers in Aliens: Theory of Alien Propagation, the Reapers from Aliens: Reapers, the alien pilot shown in Aliens: Earth Angel, the hunting village aliens from Aliens: Alien, the extraterrestrial scientists in Aliens: Incubation, the various alien species in Fire and Stone and, of course, the Predators and Engineers. Such species were for many years limited to Aliens comics from Dark Horse, although several recent Alien novels have also introduced non-Xenomorph species, such as Alien: Out of the Shadows and Aliens: Bug Hunt.
Trivia[]
- Aliens: Taste isn't the only comic book short story to focus on extraterrestrial life forms that eat facehuggers. Aliens: Reapers also featured a group of extraterrestrial life forms foraging for facehuggers to consume by harvesting Xenomorph eggs from a Queen's hive.
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