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Batman / Aliens is a two-issue limited crossover comic book series that was first published by DC Comics and Dark Horse Comics from March-April 1997. It was written by Ron Marz, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, colored by Matt Hollingsworth and Gregory Wright, lettered by Sean Konot, and edited by Bob Schreck, Denny O'Neil, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Diana Schutz and Scott Peterson, with cover art by Wrightson. The series was preceded by the short story prequel Aliens: Incubation, produced by the same creative team.
Batman/Aliens was eventually followed by a sequel, Batman/Aliens II, from December 2002-February 2003.
In the overall Dark Horse crossover comics line, Batman / Aliens was preceded by Tarzan versus Predator: At the Earth's Core, and was followed by Predator versus Judge Dredd.
Publisher's Summary[]
#1: He's seen many faces of terror from his watch over Gotham City — he's seen murderous clowns, strange creatures, and all forms of killer psychopaths. But he's never seen anything like this. Amongst the Mayan ruins of the Amazon forest, the Dark Knight is out of his element as he faces an intergalactic infestation of... Aliens.
#2: Everything they are, everything they do, is designed to propagate their species. And everything he does is designed to protect life, especially human life. Deep in the Amazon jungles, the two will collide. Human against inhuman. Man against beast. Batman against Alien. Don't miss this exciting, pulse-pounding conclusion as the Dark Knight confronts the ultimate horror!
Plot[]
Days after an extraterrestrial spacecraft crash-landed on Earth, an auto-piloted plane set to ditch in the Gulf delivered Batman into a jungle near the Mexican/Guatemalan border to search for a missing person. There, he crossed paths with an American covert ops team, codenamed Dead-Man's Hand, who were on a classified mission of their own. After surviving a physical encounter with a crocodile, Batman was nearly killed by the team's Captain, Sealey, just for having witnessed their presence in the jungle, but was ultimately spared and allowed to join them on their journey through the jungle.
Soon after, Batman and the squad of mercenaries discover a downed alien spacecraft. Upon further inspection of its interior, an extraterrestrial humanoid with a hole in its chest had been discovered before sounds coming from the jungle led them to a nearby ancient ruin where a human corpse, who met a similar fate, had been discovered. Here, Batman revealed he was investigating the disappearance of the deceased, a Wayne Tech geologist named Abel Barrett. When both parties were set upon by Xenomorphs, several members of the covert ops team were killed, while Batman became familiar with the Aliens' life cycle and collected two Facehuggers in specimen jars.
Captain Sealey sacrifices himself to blow up a nest of the Xenomorphs, leaving only Batman and two members of the team alive, making their way to the team's evacuation point. One of the survivors, an intensely ambitious woman named Hyatt, leaves her teammate to be killed by one of the last Xenomorphs and ambushes Batman, holding him at gunpoint while she relieves him of the lost geologist's digital recording device and one of the specimen jars. She says that the Xenomorphs can be an incredibly potent weapon if properly used, and bringing the information about them back to the U.S. government will make her career. She is so fixated on Batman that she fails to notice a gargantuan Xenomorph - the result of an embryo being implanted into a crocodile - rise behind her. The crocodile-alien kills Hyatt before Batman is able to kill the creature by tying its legs and tipping it into the mouth of an active volcano. After destroying the downed alien spacecraft with an explosion that obliterated any evidence of its existence, Batman escaped and headed for Belize, where he was recovered and brought back to Gotham.
In the Batcave, Bruce Wayne listens to the geologist's last message to his family, cut off as the man is attacked by a Xenomorph. Bruce decides to drop the specimen jars containing the Facehuggers into the cave's depths and tell no one about them as he believed the creatures were much too dangerous, stating "not because of what they are, but because of what we are."
Reprint History[]
Batman / Aliens was collected in a trade paperback edition released in November 1997, collecting the two-issue series plus the newly colored, twelve-page prequel story Aliens: Incubation, from Dark Horse Presents, Vol. 1 #101-102, which was also by Ron Marz and Bernie Wrightson. The trade paperback reused the cover art from issue 1 by Wrightson and was edited by Bob Kahan and Lynn Adair.
The comic was collected again, alongside the other crossover stories that pit Batman against the Xenomorphs, in the DC Comics/Dark Horse Comics: Aliens trade paperback, released in April 2016. The release used a modified version of Staz Johnson's cover to Batman vs. Aliens II #2.
Behind the Scenes[]
Veteran comics writer Ron Marz is perhaps most well known for his time working on DC Comics' Green Lantern, specifically the Emerald Twilight story chronicling the downfall into madness of the main Green Lantern Hal Jordan. He would later get to write Green Lantern versus Aliens for Dark Horse and DC. In addition, Marz also wrote the stories Predator: Demon's Gold and the Batman / Aliens prequel story Aliens: Incubation for Dark Horse, the latter with Batman/Aliens collaborator Bernie Wrightson.
Wrightson is a much-acclaimed horror comics artist, known for his pioneering work on DC's Swamp Thing, which helped bring the horror genre into superhero comics.
Series co-editor Denny O'Neil was for years the main editor of all Batman comic book series for DC throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He is often credited with overseeing and originating the modern, edgier "Dark Knight" persona of the character.
Goofs[]
- While the solicitation for issue #1 stated Batman would be "Amongst the Mayan ruins of the Amazon forest," the North American countries featured in the comic (Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize), are not considered to be part of the Amazon, which is located in South America.
Gallery[]
Issue covers[]
See also[]
- Superman vs. Aliens - A similar crossover comic book series featuring the DC superhero Superman.
- Green Lantern versus Aliens - A similar crossover comic book series featuring the DC superhero Green Lantern.
- Superman and Batman vs. Aliens and Predator - The final installment of the DC superhero comic book crossover event.
