Aliens: Genocide

Aliens / Predator / Prometheus Universe

by John Arcudi, Mike Richardson, Damon Willis (Illustrator)

After a generation of rebuilding in the wake of Alien infestation, athletes from every corner of earth are flocking to the Goodwill Games. But some come with a dangerous new a drug called Fire, distilled from the very essence of the Aliens' body chemistry. The military wants it. The pharmaceutical conglomerates want it. And the only place the essential ingredient can be found is on a world convulsed by Alien holocaust . . . Genocide is the fourth of the remastered Aliens trade paperbacks! This remastered edition boasts full-color art, an updated script, a new John Bolton cover, and a gallery of Alien art. Your Dark Horse Aliens library awaits this fourth fantastic volume!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Aliens, Horror, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

112 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 1992

About the author

John Arcudi has made a name for himself by scripting comics that manage to combine long-running subplots with impeccable characterization and action sequences, making for some of the most exciting and consistently good comics out today.

Reviews

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe not as good as I used to remember and artworks aged not much well too, but this tense, thriling, and sometimes brutal Dark Horse Aliens tale from John Arcudi, Mike Richardson, and artist Damon Willis, is still a fan favourite of mine, with its cast of despicable characters, ultra-violence overload, and authors subtly hinting about the xenomorphs civil war being a consequence of their exposition to humans, a species far crueler, greedier, and worst.



And the scenes with the armoured marines battling overwhelming hordes of creatures is just an awesome and wonderful Space Hulk tabletop game from Games Workshop, which was in turn inspired by James Cameron's Aliens (1986), easter-egg.





Change my mind.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is somewhat hokey at times. A corporation has made a new drug called Xeno-Zip. It's PCP with Xenomorph royal jelly mixed in. The military wants more of the drug for its soldiers but they are all out of royal jelly so it's off to the Xemomorph home world to collect some more. The first half of this is boring until they get to the home world. The art and coloring look dated too.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice entry in the Aliens storyline. This sets up so much of the future plotlines for the comic mini series. Great Read Very recommended

[clumsyplankton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually pretty good

[Jean-Francois Boivin · Rating 3 out of 5]

2nd edition of the Trade Paperback collection of ALIENS: GENOCIDE #1-4 with a new cover by John Bolton (the original TPB from 1992 had a better cover by Dave Dorman!)

This new version is an excuse to re-release the pre-ALIEN 3 comic book series as part of a new "Aliens Library" collection of 8 volumes. This one follows 20 years after ALIENS: FEMALE WAR. I really wish they had included the short story "The Alien" from DHP #56, also by John Arcudi, which serves as a bridge to explain what happened to the Engineer Alien who appeared in ALIENS: OUTBREAK and as a prequel to GENOCIDE. It's a missed opportunity to have to complete story...

But this comic itself is pretty good, the art by relative-newcomer-at-the-time Damon Willis is simple and clean (reminds me of Dan Barry?) and the watercolor by Arthur Suydam gives the whole thing a weird tone. This is a must, but if you have to purchase it get the earlier version with the Dorman cover!

[Carolina Casas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good alien story

This is the kind of story that would make a good film or TV series. I would also like if they expanded on the xeno jelly. Not to mention the endless possibilities of the alien mutating and creating a new subspecies like the red Xenomorphs. The Xeno jelly is also similar to the spice melange from the Dune saga and other space operas where humans use alien narcotics to enhance themselves.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down

This is actually a pretty tremendously fun little alien tale with some WILD body horror bits but the character arc for the lead character definitely happens a bit TOO quickly.

Love the Saxophone and the dual Alien strains fighting it out.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another solid volume. This time we get a little extra detail on ecology on Alien-controlled worlds while the humans are occupied with the prospect of harvesting Xenomorphs for stimulant pharmaceuticals. It's a little something different with enough of the familiar to make it comfortable. Not a revelation, but an enjoyable read.

[Valentina · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5 estrellas

[Andy Parkes · Rating 3 out of 5]

picked this up ages ago on market stall selling old books.

Aliens is pretty standard geek fare and as a teenager I was obsessed with both Aliens and Predator. I haven’t read any Aliens fiction for ages so thought I’d change that since book has been sat on the shelf for a while.

The plot is focussed around a pharmaceutical company who make drugs from Alien “royal jelly” (gunk from the eggs). Their main product “Xeon Zip” is a little but like Red Bull but it starts to have weird effects on certain people, turning them overly aggressive and giving them superhuman strength and speed – they call this product offshoot “Fire” and naturally this gets the attention of the military and a mission is put together to visit the Alien “hiveworld” and collect some more of this royal jelly. The story follows two main characters, Daniel Grant – the owner of the pharmaceutical company who tags along on the mission to get away from his “business problems” on Earth and Colonel Alexandra Kozlowski who heads up the team of soldiers that are visit the planet.

They don’t actually get to the planet until the last third of the book which is a bit of a shame as it meant the action on the planet was actually quite short.

When they get to the planet they discover the Aliens have split into two different variations, the regular black Aliens and these new red Aliens and the ship lands right in the middle of a war between the two factions which gives them plenty more to contend with on what was already a seemingly impossible mission.

On the whole it was a good read but it would have been nice if the red/black Alien concept had been explored further.

If you’re a fan of the Aliens universe it’s worth a read.

[Grantcorp · Rating 3 out of 5]

The storyline of "Genocide" follows the events of the original Dark Horse trilogy which begins with "Outbreak". Humanity is trying to get back on its feet in the wake of the ordeal of facing the Aliens on Earth itself. Businesses compete to make money from the experience and the leader of one of the biggest companies sets out on an expedition to harvest biomatter from the Alien homeworld to revitalize his corporation.

Unlike the stark, brooding environs of the trilogy that preceded it, this story plays out more like an upfront adventure and offers a refreshing change of pace. The cast is highly stereotypical but likeable, and the story continues to build to the mythos of the series. An enjoyable diversion into the Aliens universe, if not essential.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

More Aliens than you can shake a stick at.

Not bad, but character personalisation is all over the place, the good guys are the bad guys, the bad guys are the good guys. All in all, not one character the reader can "link" to, just a bunch of cannon fodder and the stereotipical "survivors".

The art's OK, but could have been a whole lot better. The colors are pretty bland actually.

The covers! The covers are realy nice, and having read these in their "original" 4-issue comics form, they did a nice centerfold of the fourth issue cover without the text in the, you guessed it, fourth issue.

All-in-all a pretty forgettable story with a bunch of really forgettable characters.

[Nick Lege · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cannot stress enough how well written this plot was, however I just wish it went into a little more depth in the end. I am guessing that the next book (Aliens: Harvest) will dive a bit deeper into the later part of the plot like I was expecting. This also would have been a fantastic movie from any decade Aliens has been around, here's to hoping they do!

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a 3.5

My Aliens journey continues into the first series not written by Mark Verheiden and after Aliens: Earth War I was, frankly, ready for something different. I remember reading some of Arcudi's later Aliens series and quite liking them, but sometimes going back to these early works they just don't hold up over time. I remember really liking this series when I was in middle school, but I think it's overall cheesy-ness has worn off a bit.

Genocide picks up the thread after Earth War and many people will be shocked to see that Earth looks relatively normal and life is coming back to the planet. It starts off with a major public event, the Goodwill Games, similar to the Olympics. So, when first reading this it almost feels like it really doesn't pick up where Earth War starts and at the time I read this years ago it felt like they completely abandoned what Verheiden had written into the Aliens time line. However, if you want to fill a bit of the gap between the two stories you need to track down Dark Horse Presents, luckily it was later collected in Dark Horse Presents: Aliens - Platinum Edition. It's a relatively short almost one issue comic story, but it does close up some threads, such as why Earth is still around and what happened with the Space Jockey.

For the most part Arcuidi's story is pretty decent. It has a few things that I find to be a bit out of place in the setting, but we'll get to that. Genocide is the story of pharmaceutical companies needing to get their hands on Alien specimens to make some new drug types. This, to me, is an entirely plausible idea and I really liked this overall concept. What they were doing is making a new drug from the Royal Jelly, called Xeno Zip, which gave people enhanced abilities and such. However, when they tried to synthesize it there were some strange side effects where some people went berserk killing people and so forth. Naturally, the military sees all kinds of applications, but for the general population they needed a new influx of the real deal.

The developer of Xeno Zip, Daniel Grant, has a proposition for the military to trade them the synthesized version for a free ride to get some more Royal Jelly. What the mission entails is going back to the planet where they retrieved the Super Queen. However, a lots been going on for that planet since they took the original Super Queen. What has happened is two different strains of Aliens have appeared amidst the chaos of no Queen, so our operation is, effectively, heading into a total warzone.

On a side note, Daniel Grant is drawn in the early issues as a blond billionaire that is extremely sexist and has a very perverse idea of what the perfect male should be and that they should be in charge. It was fascinating to turn to the letters columns in the original issues to see a number of writers exclaim that they had made a perfect caricature of Donald Trump. Most writers were hoping for this guys demise, because he was so odious. Fast forward to modern times, I wonder if these writers could have ever conceived of the idea that Trump would be president and have a bunch of followers hanging on his every word! I wonder how many of the writers might have voted for him... but either way, I found it fascinating that even back then, when I was too young to know, the perception of Trump was that he was a scum bag billionaire, just like Grant.

In any event, as usual with Aliens, with the marines wading into a warzone things go awry. Even though they had lots of advanced technology, they were heavily ill equipped to deal with the situation. This was sort of a bit of my other gripes with the comic series, I felt like the technology was almost too advanced for the Aliens time line. I find it hard to believe that the shield technology presented in this fit within the world of Aliens, it was almost too Star Trek in style. However, they did develop special suits to combat the Aliens acid defense when killing them, and this I find far more believable within the universe. The only problem I see with this is our marines look more like Space Marines from the Warhammer 40k setting, rather than the marines from the movie Aliens.

Overall, I thought the story was pretty good. Damon Willis' art complemented it quite well, much closer to what I would expect from a comic compared to Earth War. We're almost approaching the major disruption to the time line when Alien 3 gets released, and after that the whole idea of the Super Queen and Alien homeworld started to be largely abandoned from the series altogether. I believe this is the last issue where that kind of content really appears. So, enjoy this curious thread in the Aliens time line, because, if I remember correctly, the series abruptly leaves any of these concepts behind.

[Lksreads · Rating 2 out of 5]

The jelly lore starts here, which ends up being a story beat oft riffed in the Alien franchise. That part is… okay. The world building of different classes of xeno’s is cool too. Theres no real classification or huge detail on it here, but it’s a start that later gets expanded upon. This book does a lot of set up, so I can applaud it for that.

Also kinda cool conceptually to see how the vacancy of the Mother Queen in the prior Female War results in a… civil war? Species war? That was fun but poorly executed overall.

Unlikable characters and an underwhelming story. The alien is a part of the backdrop which stinks. I’m not reading an Alien story for the generic bad businessman lead character.

Also sucks how non-standard the alien is treated. Kudos to authors for at least trying to do expand the mythos, but there’s gotta be a backbone to keep the story together. This book has red and green aliens that fight each other like boxers and walk bipedal. Marines tear through a million xeno’s like a hot knife through butter, where marines have been fodder for just a handful of xeno’s elsewhere. Inconsistencies make it hard to engage with these books.

[Gabby Lobby · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the weakest plot in the series so far. This is the fourth book. I liked the idea of a pharmaceutical company using Alien DNA to produce drugs. As well as experimenting with creating hybrids. Unfortunately, the science aspect of the story was overlooked by the combat and the mission. I think these books are relying too heavily on the combat and not enough on the capabilities of the xenomorph. When you read an Alien book you read it for the Xenos. I feel that these are getting further and further from that.

[Mr Chuck · Rating 2 out of 5]

80s art with 80s action.

The cover art is what drew me into this series. The story is subpar with humans dicking around with aliens wanting to use them to make a drug but someone backstabs the company while soldiers are killed left right and center.

Not much to this book but the cover art is what got me the series (the comics I mean not the paperback) the inside art is standard 80's color splatter.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the better stories of the Dark Horse Aliens stories in my opinion and has my favourite artwork. It's a pity Damon Willis pretty much disappeared from the face of the Earth not long after the publication of Genocide as I'd love to have seen him pencil some more Aliens stuff.

[Malcolm Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read the novel by David Bischoff first, this was a pretty good version of the story. It hit all the bits I remember from the book quite well. The art style was pretty well detailed, if a bit aged.

[aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Xeno zip

5 stars all around, xeno zip wtf, and how many years after female war does this story start would like to know, good book

[Arlomisty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is both a novel and also a graphic novel... now I've read both. I read the book years ago, but have since forgotten it. It's a pretty good story as far as Alien stories go....

[Brian Mulhall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite enjoyed this actually. The characters aren't terribly special but I just loved that it was a gung-ho story about retrieving xeno-samples for a performance enhancing over the counter drug.

[Jefferson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but very plot-driven and predictable.

[Andrew Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I prefer the novel. The comics medium just doesn’t allow for much character development beyond vague nods toward an arc. Still, this flows a lot better than Female War.

[Scott E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining. Seems a fresher take on that overdone plot of corporate greed trip to alien home world craic.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chekhov's saxophone?

[Kristoffer Abildgaard · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book isn't worth the time. The worst DH Aliens book I have read.

[Babar · Rating 1 out of 5]

One hell of a bad writing and story

[NerdyReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off okay, then the story just went kinda bland in the last 2 issues. Another victim of "4 issues is too short for a story to be told in a comic" syndrome.

[Jimmy Fingers · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the mess Earth War was and those short stories fiasco Genocide bring Aliens back on right track. Art is a bit strange at fist but easy to get into, action packed fun full of interesting ideas.