No Aliens or Predators on the page

Of course the Alien and Predator films are absolute masterpieces, the first few, anyway. They're full of extreme tension and weird horror, with people pushed into ultra-survival mode. They're also disaster films masquerading as war movies that rely heavily on unspoken romance. Especially the first Predator - my god, the sexual chemistry between all those big and burly men still fucking sizzles.  

And the good vibes from watching the absolute perfection of Aliens or Predator at my mates' place on Friday nights in the 1980s still linger hard. I still watch any new entry in any series, no matter how shitty they get, hoping for one tiny bit of the original brilliance.

But I don't bother with hardly any of the comics, because while the comics medium can do everything, it doesn't mean they do them all very well.

One of the main reasons the Aliens and Predator comics - from multiple publishers - never really hit with me is that they're mainly boring, covering the same old cliches and beats, with usually lackluster artwork.

And even the best of them just felt too obvious. Each new miniseries has some new hook - this time the Predators are in the cold! this time it's a human who is the REAL predator! - and are always slightly clever in the most obvious way. Sometimes you get something fun, like a Batman taking on a Predator, or some nice art like the reliable Kev Walker on a recent Predator series, but most of the time it's strictly dullsville. 

Obviously, every now and then, you do get some idiosyncratic creator, who does something weird with the franchises. But these are always notable in their rarity.

I think the thing that puts me off the comic adaptions of these properties is the lack of movement, something unfortunately unavoidable in the medium. Both alien creatures move in distinctive, exact ways, and it's always missing. Some of the best parts of those original movies come from this unearthly movement, and it's just not there on the page.

Comics are words and pictures and you can do anything with words and pictures, except movement. It's the thrust of these things that is missing, and they ain't much without that thrust.