Read our review of What If…? Aliens #1 from Marvel Comics, written by Paul Reiser & Leon Reiser, Adam F. Goldberg, Hans Rodionoff and Brian Volk-Weiss, with art by Guiu Vilanova.
We reviewed the book on the Stack podcast. But in the interest of highlighting more about the title, here’s a summary of the conversation with our thoughts. And if you prefer the longer audio version, that’s below as well!
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What If…? Aliens #1 Review:
In the first of five issues of this new What If…? series, Paul Reiser and friends imagine what would have happened if his character from Aliens, Carter Burke, had survived. It’s a question nobody has really asked, other than perhaps of Paul Reiser at Comic-Cons — and now we have the answer!
“I just want to say this up front,” began host Alex Zalben. “I love that Marvel’s doing this. I love that Marvel is taking their relationship with Disney, which owns 20th century, formerly 20th Century Fox, being like, sure we could do a What If…? Aliens. I want to see What If…? Predators. I want to see a What If…? Planet of the Apes. I want to see a billion of these, go into the whole catalog.”
Added Justin Tyler, “This comic has big Back to the Future fan movie energy, like, what if he went this way instead of that way? To your point, Alex, it’s a question No one asked. And, and it was sort of goofy for a lot of it.”
More generously, while Zalben would have preferred five one-shots exploring different What If…? scenarios in the Aliens universe, he added, “I had fun reading this because of course Paul Reiser was involved, his son was involved… It channels his voice very well throughout the comic book. But yes, I don’t need to see how annoying it is to live the corporate life of Weyland/Yutani in a goofy way for most of a comic book through an old Paul Reiser… I’ll read the second issue of this just because I’m like, where is this going? What is possibly going to happen with this?”
What If…? Aliens #1 Official Synopsis:
WHAT IF…CARTER BURKE HAD LIVED? For years, fans of James Cameron’s legendary Aliens questioned whether Carter Burke, a company man more hateable than the Xenos themselves, had actually survived the traumatic events on the terraforming colony Hadley’s Hope. Now the actor behind the beloved villain, Paul Reiser, joins his son Leon and the star-studded team of writers and producers Adam F. Goldberg, Brian Volk-Weiss and Hans Rodionoff for a journey back to Hadley’s Hope and the twisted escape of a man who should have died.
