Aliens Fire and Stone #1 (2014)

It can be a dangerous game trying to make things fit together that never had to before. (Putting every character ever in Batman on 'Gotham' kills any chance the show had at working.) It's that level of difficulty that had me concerned about Aliens:Fire and Stone, because its set during a movie (we're on LV-426 during the events of 'Aliens'), and we end up in Prometheus territory (we land on LV-223). Luckily this is from Dark Horse, so instead of being overstuffed, we get a pretty strong book on most levels. Chris Roberson (I,Zombie and How To Fight With DC) scripts a tale set during Hadley's Hope being overrun by aliens. While Newt is hiding in air shafts, some enterprising engineers are trying to find a way off planet. They do. Cowardice and an unwillingness to self sacrifice find these survivors in the same mess w/ different geography. The artwork by Patric Reynolds would look at home in BPRD, full of rich blacks done in a painterly style. The only thing that feels out of place is the coloring by Dave Stewart, which is crazy, because he's Dave Stewart. We know what Hadley's Hope looked like, so the action set there should look like what we've seen before. Overall though, it's an impressive start to some shared universe shoe-horning.