Alien is a 2023 comic book series published by the 20th Century Studios imprint of Marvel Comics, part of an Expanded Universe centered around the Alien films.
Set in the year 2195, it's essentially an interquel - set after the films, but before Marvel's previous Alien (2021) and Alien: Icarus comics.
A small team from Talbot Engineering Inc. is stationed at Glacier Base VI (aka "The Keg") on the icy world of LV-695. Their mission is to look at water retrieval options, to aid terraforming elsewhere.
There's something else frozen into LV-695's ice, though. And when images of their discovery - a Xenomorph facehugger - are sent back to HQ, the amoral mega-corporation Weyland-Yutani starts to take an interest...
The first issue was released April 26, 2023.
Alien (2023) contains examples of the following tropes:
- Interquel: The "Thaw" arc is set after the initial Alien films, but before almost all of Marvel's previous Alien comic stories.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Annual sees a ship full of Xenomorphs crash land on an ice planet that later provides the setting for issue #1-5. The creatures' usual need to breed and spread sees them come into conflict with the local predators, and winds up creating an entirely new breed of Xenomorph (the white, tusked variant from the main series) that is as hostile to the original type as it is to everything else, leading to a Xenomorph civil war. Even the Queen ends up facing off with its white doppelganger.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: As the first issue makes clear, the facehugger isn't the only thing sealed in LV-695's ice. There are a lot of fully grown Xenomorphs in there, too. As well as Xenomorphs of a completely different subspecies. And, according to the Annual's last page, a truly gargantuan example of the local predators they're spawned from that's gestating a new queen.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Weyland-Yutani are far from innocent, but their arrival also unintentionally frees the Xenomorphs. When the huge USCSS Boreas lands next to the base, its weight and/or heat is implied to weaken the ice, allowing the frozen Xenomorphs to escape. And when the Boreas' troops blast their way into the base, the ice sample containing the facehugger seems to be knocked from its shelf and starts melting...
