One Marvel Being Trumps The Xenomorphs, According To Aliens Vs Avengers #1

The first teaser for 1992's "Alien 3" suggested the film would be about the parasitic Xenomorphs invading Earth: "On Earth, everyone can hear you scream!" declared the narrator. Of course, the released film was nothing like that and 32 years later, the Xenomorphs haven't set foot on Earth outside of the "Alien vs Predator" films.

Noah Hawley's TV series "Alien: Earth," premiering in 2025, dropped its first teaser showing the Earth from orbit reflected in a Xenomorph's head. Since the series is a prequel, though, the outbreak feels contained before it's even begun.

If you want a look at what a Xeno-invasion of our homeworld would look like, have no fear, "Aliens Vs Avengers" is here. This comic, which published its first issue on August 28, is way better than a franchise crossover needs to be. But I expect nothing less from writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Esad Ribic (the pair previously killed the Marvel universe, then resurrected it, in 2015's "Secret Wars").

"Aliens Vs Avengers" takes place in an alternate timeline, so no fretting about canon. The Shi'ar, one of the foremost alien empires in the Marvel Universe, are experimenting with Xenomorphs as weapons and soon drop payloads of them across Earth. The world, even Marvel's mightiest figures like Apocalypse, fall to the horde.

Years later, what remains of humanity lives in one city. Some of the only heroes left are Carol Danvers, Bruce Banner, Miles Morales (now partnered with the Venom symbiote), and Valeria Richards (daughter of Sue and Reed).

The comic's final sequence features a facehugger attacking Miles. When the Hulk and Captain Marvel declare him a lost cause like the others, the Venom symbiote bonds with the parasite to remove it from Miles' face. "Parasite co-opts parasite. Symbiote seemingly trumps Xenomorph." Do the heroes have a new weapon? Maybe not, because once Miles and Venom are rejoined, the Spider-Man still says, "We've gotta get the hell off this planet." Cue the "To be continued..."

"If we can't protect the Earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it," declared Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in the 2012 "The Avengers" film. "Aliens Vs Avengers" puts Marvel's heroes in that exact situation. It's a story that Hickman likes to tell; make these invincible icons face the end and test how they react.

His run on "Avengers" and "New Avengers," capped off by "Secret Wars," was all about the multiverse dying one world at a time in "Incursion" events. The only way to prevent a world's destruction was to destroy another before the two universes collide. Hickman's story is about different factions, from the Illuminati to Thanos' Cabal, testing competing ways to solve this problem; even the "good" guys cross lines that make it impossible for them to be "heroes" anymore.

His one-shot "Doom" #1 from earlier this year (admittedly mostly the work of artist Sanford Greene) was about a world where Galactus destroyed Earth and all its heroes. Valeria resurrected her "Uncle Victor" as existence's last hope. The series ends with the reborn Doom about to battle Galactus, the outcome uncertain and meaningless; what matters is that Doom stands tall and faces the end. The same sentiment bleeds through in Hickman's "New Avengers" #32, where Thor and Hyperion charge into a final battle together.

Marvel Comics

"House of X"/"Powers of X" — Hickman's "X-Men" relaunch with artists Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva — takes his doomsday storytelling and combines it with the X-Men's tangled time travel adventures. Moira McTaggert, the X-Men's old human scientist ally, was revealed to be a mutant with the gift of reincarnation. Across her 10 lives, she's led her people down different ideological paths and each one ended in mutants' annihilation.

These themes are not only found in Hickman's superhero comics at Marvel. His creator-owned series "East of West" (drawn by Nick Dragotta, published by Image Comics) takes place in an alternate timeline where the United States broke into seven different nations after the Civil War. These seven warring states are doomed, a prophecy declares, and the comic highlights that by turning the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse into gunslingers out of a Western. 

Financial crashes are the closest experience we in the first world have to real apocalypses; Hickman and Tomm Coker's "The Black Monday Murders" depicts such recessions as billionaires making sacrifices to their god, Mammon and his church of holy capital. (In "The Black Monday Murders, a skull-faced demon lives under the Federal Reserve, and I don't mean Jerome Powell!)

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' "Watchmen," the defining comic of the superhero genre, took place in a world about to end in a nuclear war — because in 1986, that's what a lot of people felt was going to happen. We still fantasize about the apocalypse that way, as a glorious blaze, when it will be nothing so dramatic. Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice" suggests a path with two split ends, one quick and hot, one slow and cold. We've chosen both, a slow-boiling doom so the rich can pick the last meat on our bones.

In an interview on the "Cerebro" podcast, Hickman summed up our zeitgeist as: "Everybody is lying and nothing works." His comics reflect what the end of the world is looking like now; everything is slowly falling apart and the people with power to stop it are failing or complicit.

Hickman is a realist, not a cynic, though. His ongoing series "Ultimate Spider-Man" features a Peter Parker who gets his powers 20 years too late thanks to some mucking in the timeline. The book has been described as being about reclaiming a stolen future, echoing how many younger people feel about the world right now.

By the end of "Aliens Vs Avengers," I won't be surprised If these horrible aliens can't ultimately win the fight against Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

"Aliens Vs Avengers" #1 is currently on sale at physical and digital retailers. Issue #2 is set to be released on November 6, 2024.