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Aliens / Predator / Prometheus Universe
Aliens: Female War
Billie only wanted what all children want -- the warmth and security of family, the human connectedness that comes from belonging. What she got was a nightmare without end. Dark Horse is proud to present the third volume in the remastered Aliens series, Aliens: Female War. Written by The Mask screenplay writer Mark Verheiden and illustrated by The Maxx artist/creator Sam Kieth, Female War is a revised edition of what was previously titled Aliens: Earth War.
112 pages, Paperback
Published December 2, 1997
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120 people want to read
About the author
Mark Verheiden
272 books34 followersMark Verheiden is an American television, movie, and comic book writer. He was a co-executive producer for the television series Falling Skies for DreamWorks Television and the TNT Network.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 9, 2017
This is an unfortunately disappointing end to the Aliens trilogy of comics from Dark Horse.
It's biggest problem is its reintroduction of Ripley. Yes, she's an important character from the Aliens movies, but her appearance forces the retreading of a lot of ground, and Verheiden unfortunately decides to complicate things even more by filling in the gaps in her history between Aliens and now. This gets even more problematic with the decision of these comics to rename Newt and Hicks in the reprints, so now suddenly we get her history with the real characters and her present-day with the renamed characters, which wouldn't make a lot of sense if you didn't know what was up.
As for the rest of the story? We get a bunch of nameless marines who have none of the character of the Aliens crew or even the marines from the first volume of this series. Then we get what should be a dramatic visit to the the Aliens home planet that has none of its grandeur, and finally an ending which is pretty much a deus ex machina that's hard to care about.
Basically, Verheiden jammed the plot to the deficit of everything else.
And the art feels really inappropriate. It's sketchy and unrealistic.
It's biggest problem is its reintroduction of Ripley. Yes, she's an important character from the Aliens movies, but her appearance forces the retreading of a lot of ground, and Verheiden unfortunately decides to complicate things even more by filling in the gaps in her history between Aliens and now. This gets even more problematic with the decision of these comics to rename Newt and Hicks in the reprints, so now suddenly we get her history with the real characters and her present-day with the renamed characters, which wouldn't make a lot of sense if you didn't know what was up.
As for the rest of the story? We get a bunch of nameless marines who have none of the character of the Aliens crew or even the marines from the first volume of this series. Then we get what should be a dramatic visit to the the Aliens home planet that has none of its grandeur, and finally an ending which is pretty much a deus ex machina that's hard to care about.
Basically, Verheiden jammed the plot to the deficit of everything else.
And the art feels really inappropriate. It's sketchy and unrealistic.
June 19, 2021
This is finally the last thing to read in my re-reading journey of the original Aliens trilogy that started in the late 80's. Female War is supposed to be the graphic novel tied to the novel Aliens: The Female War, but what it really is is a re-publishing of Aliens: Earth War, but with the names changed to match the novel.
It was no secret that I was disappointed in the re-working of Aliens: Nightmare Asylum and with the Female War novel overhauling the original Earth War story quite a bit, I was hoping they might revisit this a bit more than just changing the names of Hicks and Newt... alas, this was not so. As with Nightmare Asylum this graphic novel just changes the names around. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, it was probably too tall of an order for Sam Kieth to step back in and re-draw stuff. A lot of fans were not too enthused with his art in the first place, so even if he was asked, I can see him saying no anyway.
This version does start with a pretty interesting interview with cover artist John Bolton, who everyone truly enjoyed. Bolton's covers were so well done, I found myself, and quite a few others in the letters section, saying they wished he had done the interior. Bolton was even asked to come back and draw the covers for this re-release series and he has, once again, done an amazing job.
If you want to see my review of the original story content, then look at what I wrote for the Earth War series linked above. Either way, like Nightmare Asylum, this came off like a lazy re-work in an attempt to account for Alien 3 being out. It seems like they should have just left these alone and given up on trying to fix the Dark Horse time line to match the movies.
It was no secret that I was disappointed in the re-working of Aliens: Nightmare Asylum and with the Female War novel overhauling the original Earth War story quite a bit, I was hoping they might revisit this a bit more than just changing the names of Hicks and Newt... alas, this was not so. As with Nightmare Asylum this graphic novel just changes the names around. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, it was probably too tall of an order for Sam Kieth to step back in and re-draw stuff. A lot of fans were not too enthused with his art in the first place, so even if he was asked, I can see him saying no anyway.
This version does start with a pretty interesting interview with cover artist John Bolton, who everyone truly enjoyed. Bolton's covers were so well done, I found myself, and quite a few others in the letters section, saying they wished he had done the interior. Bolton was even asked to come back and draw the covers for this re-release series and he has, once again, done an amazing job.
If you want to see my review of the original story content, then look at what I wrote for the Earth War series linked above. Either way, like Nightmare Asylum, this came off like a lazy re-work in an attempt to account for Alien 3 being out. It seems like they should have just left these alone and given up on trying to fix the Dark Horse time line to match the movies.
May 9, 2011
Third and last part of the original Dark Horse trilogy that begun with "Outbreak" and was followed by "Nightmare Asylum", and this is unfortunately where everything falls apart. The author is attempting to wrap up a complex and difficult storyline deus-ex-machina style.
Civilization is all but lost to a xenomorph running rampant on Earth, other alien species are putting pressure on humanity and the last remaining powerhouses are vying for control of what little is left to fight over. Yet by the end of this book, everything will have been taken care of, courtesy of a band of noble yet platitude-spouting misfits.
The artwork is laughably bad, even the colouring is shoddy. Apart from hideous deformed people looking like they were ported from X-Men, the Colonial Marines no longer bother wearing helmets or armor in battle, while civilian women actually prefer cat suits and don't have any problems sticking one rifle in each hand. Spaceships have steering wheels and you can just tell the artist doesn't have a clue how to come up with any plausible imagery to match the awful writing.
Save for all the tough talk and rambling melodrama the worst idea of them all is that you can kill off the entire alien species by taking out their master hive mind. This is a storyline fit for John Rambo perhaps; here it only serves to anger the reader. Avoid this tripe like the plague.
Civilization is all but lost to a xenomorph running rampant on Earth, other alien species are putting pressure on humanity and the last remaining powerhouses are vying for control of what little is left to fight over. Yet by the end of this book, everything will have been taken care of, courtesy of a band of noble yet platitude-spouting misfits.
The artwork is laughably bad, even the colouring is shoddy. Apart from hideous deformed people looking like they were ported from X-Men, the Colonial Marines no longer bother wearing helmets or armor in battle, while civilian women actually prefer cat suits and don't have any problems sticking one rifle in each hand. Spaceships have steering wheels and you can just tell the artist doesn't have a clue how to come up with any plausible imagery to match the awful writing.
Save for all the tough talk and rambling melodrama the worst idea of them all is that you can kill off the entire alien species by taking out their master hive mind. This is a storyline fit for John Rambo perhaps; here it only serves to anger the reader. Avoid this tripe like the plague.
September 20, 2025
This was a pretty solid story. The first half was kind of dull but it had great build up. It was nice to see Ellen Ripley back in action. There was a plot twist that allowed for the movies to make sense. There was also a parallel with Billie and Ripley’s past relationship with Newt. I wish they focused more on the queen but she felt more like an after thought. Hopefully the next installments talk more about the xenomorphs and less about war and combat.
July 13, 2016
This a "remastered" version of the earlier Aliens: Earth War comic, part of Dak Horse's effort to revamp their old comics to fit with the Alien³ continuity (namely that Newt, Hicks and Ripley die in the movie and they were the main characters in the comic.) It is also the least successful at the attempt.
Aside from the fact that the editor(s) did a bad job revising the names of the characters (Billie is named Newt at least three times), the character of Ripley and her regret at abandoning Newt after the events of ALIENS is such an intrinsic part of the original story that to revise it completely is nigh impossible. Steve Perry and daughter Stephani could do it successfully in their novelization where Ripley was made into an android. But in this "revised" comic, the only way to "fix" it would have been to redraw entire panels to show that Ripley is not the same that died on Fury 161. As it reads now, this version still co-starts the same Ripley who survived the Sulaco, and it makes her relationship issues very complicated when the flashbacks on LV-426 talk about Newt, and in the present it's Billie. This defeats the whole purpose of trying to "re-align" this story with new continuity. Better to read the original version and pretend it's a better sequel to ALIENS.
As for the story itself, it is a pretty nice conclusion to the saga begun in "Aliens: Outbreak/Earth Hive", but I have always thought (ever since I got the comics in 1990) the art by Sam Kieth was horrible and miscast for this title. The artist himself admits it was not his best work*
So if you're interested in this trilogy by Mark Verheiden, do yourself a favor and read the original "unrevised" adventures of Hicks, Newt and Ripley. Or read the masterful Bantam novelizations by Steve Perry. They are much more enjoyable than these lame attempts at ret-conning them.
*SAM KIETH: "The first time i drew aliens many years ago, it was a mixed bag. Other than the first Aliens issue i drew which i liked, the last three issues were very rushed and pretty bad work on my part. Trust me, the color hid tons of rushed lame art."
Aside from the fact that the editor(s) did a bad job revising the names of the characters (Billie is named Newt at least three times), the character of Ripley and her regret at abandoning Newt after the events of ALIENS is such an intrinsic part of the original story that to revise it completely is nigh impossible. Steve Perry and daughter Stephani could do it successfully in their novelization where Ripley was made into an android. But in this "revised" comic, the only way to "fix" it would have been to redraw entire panels to show that Ripley is not the same that died on Fury 161. As it reads now, this version still co-starts the same Ripley who survived the Sulaco, and it makes her relationship issues very complicated when the flashbacks on LV-426 talk about Newt, and in the present it's Billie. This defeats the whole purpose of trying to "re-align" this story with new continuity. Better to read the original version and pretend it's a better sequel to ALIENS.
As for the story itself, it is a pretty nice conclusion to the saga begun in "Aliens: Outbreak/Earth Hive", but I have always thought (ever since I got the comics in 1990) the art by Sam Kieth was horrible and miscast for this title. The artist himself admits it was not his best work*
So if you're interested in this trilogy by Mark Verheiden, do yourself a favor and read the original "unrevised" adventures of Hicks, Newt and Ripley. Or read the masterful Bantam novelizations by Steve Perry. They are much more enjoyable than these lame attempts at ret-conning them.
*SAM KIETH: "The first time i drew aliens many years ago, it was a mixed bag. Other than the first Aliens issue i drew which i liked, the last three issues were very rushed and pretty bad work on my part. Trust me, the color hid tons of rushed lame art."
June 17, 2018
OK, now this is ridiculous. You see, the re-releases of two previous comics were bad. They've changed the names of Newt and Hicks to make it co-exist with Alien 3 movie, and it ruined the entire meaning. But this... this is just stupid. I mean, yeah, it was bad in previous re-releases. But here, the entire story revolves around Newt being Newt. There's even some flashbacks from Aliens movie with Newt as the main thing. Flashbacks that are part of the story! But guess what? They kept those flashbacks intact, but still re-named adult Newt into Billie. Ba dum chhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... This re-release isn't just stupid. It's mind blowing how stupid it is. And since the original story sucked too (bring the queen to Earth, blah, blah, blah...), I just... *Sugh* I don't know, there are some things in this world you really want to unsee.
January 2, 2020
Another good installment. The closer to the core characters, the better.
March 20, 2024
I said I didn’t care for the illustrations in the first entry in the series but these ones are downright ugly; like if the artist who did Marmaduke made an aliens comic. The story has many frustrating illogical hiccups, I’d say reading the novelizations is probably a better way to spend your time.
December 19, 2021
Really not very good. I’m actually more impressed with the Perry novel in retrospect, which at least attempts some interesting things with the characters that the comic does not contain.
June 30, 2022
Great finish to the Aliens saga. A little bit on the nose in that it reminded of a stunt from Tamil star Vijay's Beast
February 4, 2021
Having read the novelisation before this, I found that the two were quite different in a lot of ways, though they both do hit the same plot points. The story was okay, a little meandering and jarring on occasional but what really let it down was the terrible artwork. Inconsistent from panel to panel and just really messy so that it was difficult to identify who was whom. Also this is the third story the pretends that Billie and Wilks aren't actually Newt and Hicks from Aliens despite having the exact same back-story and Ripley refers to Billie as Newt on three separate occasions. Stop lying badly and just give us the further adventures of Newt and Hicks which is what these stories are.
I preferred the novelisation by a long shot.
I preferred the novelisation by a long shot.
July 1, 2012
Aliens are bad. Aliens can eat you...they can eat your dog too...well if they do not eat you, they will introduce to the cute little darling aka meat cute Facehugger.
Little girl Billie wanted nice family and happy childhood...instead she got nice gore and her family had meeting with black slick...yes you guess right Aliens. Billie started to change and she grew up in to nice lady who teamed up with iconic Ripley. Lot of talks about childhood terrors and lot of acidic blood flying around.
Seriously, I got bunch of old Aliens comics and I am devouring them.
Little girl Billie wanted nice family and happy childhood...instead she got nice gore and her family had meeting with black slick...yes you guess right Aliens. Billie started to change and she grew up in to nice lady who teamed up with iconic Ripley. Lot of talks about childhood terrors and lot of acidic blood flying around.
Seriously, I got bunch of old Aliens comics and I am devouring them.
March 2, 2011
Stupid. Don't waste your time!
November 25, 2018
Nuts
What a great end to a 3 part story, made sense in every way, I love this franchise, long live ripley
What a great end to a 3 part story, made sense in every way, I love this franchise, long live ripley
November 3, 2020
Whether you accept the retcon nonsense or not, these Dark Horse continuations of ALIENS are horrible. At least this one has art by Sam Keith though.
February 21, 2021
Art is good, like the first volume though, story is garbage.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews