Before Alien 3 changed the fate of Ripley, Hicks and Newt, the story of those characters continued in the pages of Dark Horse Comics. Mark Verheiden wrote the comics Aliens: Outbreak, Nightmare Asylum, and Female War, as well as the short stories Aliens: Theory of Alien Propagation and Aliens: Lucky.
Outbreak (originally titled Aliens: Book One) was originally released in 1988 and was a direct sequel to the 1986’s Aliens, continuing the stories of Hicks and Newt several years after the events at Hadley’s Hope. Verheiden followed it up with Nightmare Asylum (originally titled Aliens: Book Two) in 1989. This story followed Hicks and Newt as they escaped an infested Earth, only to end up at a remote military outpost overseen by the delusional General Spears. Spears attempted to breed and “train” an army of Xenomorphs to serve as biological soldiers to take back the planet.
Lastly, Aliens: Female War (originally titled Aliens: Earth War) was released in 1990 and featured the return of Ellen Ripley. Ripley leads a desperate mission to the Alien homeworld to capture a “Queen Mother.” The plan is to bring her back to Earth, using her to lure the millions of Xenomorphs occupying the planet into a single location for total annihilation.
We sat down with the writer Mark Verheiden to discuss his work. In this interview, we discuss the origins of the Dark Horse ‘Golden Age,’ the creative decision to leave Earth in ruins, and the ‘shock’ of seeing his continuity wiped out by the films. We also dig into his iconic additions to the lore—from the Church of Immaculate Incubation to the first appearance of the Praetorians. You can watch the interview below and read on for a transcription. Please note that the accompanying transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Origins and the Dark Horse Revolution
Aliens Outbreak
Aaron Percival: Could you tell us a little about Mark Verheiden outside of Aliens? In your own words, who are you, what do you do, and do you have any specific interests outside of Alien and Predator?
Mark Verheiden: I grew up loving comics, science fiction, movies, and horror. I always wanted to make that a career somehow, so I moved to Los Angeles in 1983 to try to break into those fields. I grew up in Portland, Oregon. As soon as I left Portland, a company called Dark Horse Comics started there. I started my writing career writing for Dark Horse, and that is how Aliens came about. I wrote about 100 or 120 comics for DC, Marvel, and Dark Horse over the years.
My main job has been working in television and film for the last 30 years. I have worked on all sorts of shows as a writer, producer, and now a showrunner, from Battlestar Galactica to Smallville to Heroes. Most recently, I worked on Daredevil, Ash vs Evil Dead, and then Swamp Thing, which came out last year. My interests are film, comics, and writing. Other interests have somewhat faded as time has gone on. I used to like shopping for books, but bookstores have all gone out of business. I used to like shopping for music, but now it is all online. The internet is fantastic, but things have constricted. That is what I have been doing.
Aaron Percival: Do you remember the first time you ever came across our favourite acid-blooded alien?
Mark Verheiden: I remember seeing the first film, the Ridley Scott film (Alien), when it came out in 1979. I really liked it, but I especially remember seeing Aliens. I remember going on the first day, during the afternoon of the first screening at a theatre in Pasadena, California, which is now closed. I remember the day and being totally blown away by it. I loved it and saw it several more times.
Aliens is my favourite. It just had everything. It was a great action movie, it had a lot of heart, and it had great creature designs. Obviously, they were from the first film, but I really liked the heart in it. You felt for those characters and wanted them to succeed. The scene with Ripley and the Alien Queen at the end was fantastic. It is still great. I saw it a couple of years ago and it still holds up. When I was doing the comics, I was watching it over and over again because that was my bible. I had to see what the characters looked like and figure out what the “Space Jockey” alien was, which I kind of got wrong. I wanted to absorb the gist of those characters, to understand Hicks especially, and Newt. I remember having it on laserdisc back in the eighties and watching it over and over again. It has been fun. I think I have seen almost all of them on the big screen. Some of the later ones just once, but I think I have seen them all. I may have missed the second Aliens vs. Predator, though.
Adam Zeller: Beyond just Alien 3, have you really followed the Alien films after your involvement with the comics ended? What did you think of both franchises that you have seen more specifically?
Mark Verheiden: Obviously, I saw Alien 3, which at the time was a bit of a shock. Not just because it negated what my comics had done, which is very selfish of me, but because it was just so bleak. The fact that Newt and Hicks are just killed in the credits was such a backhanded way to deal with those characters. In hindsight, I admire the creative courage behind that, and I understand why you would want to clear the decks and do your own film. I admire David Fincher on that level, but I still thought emotionally it was a shame. All the excitement and the caring that went into Aliens between Ripley and Newt just went out the window. My opinion of that one has always been coloured by that first experience, but I have come to admire it more for its craft and what it was trying to do. I have seen Alien Resurrection probably just once. It was fine.
After that was Aliens vs. Predator, which was fun because my name was in it. I am not sure why, as I did not write any of the Aliens vs. Predator books, but it is fun to hear your character scream for help and someone is shouting “Verheiden! Verheiden!” That was cool. I do not even remember Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. The Prometheus movies were just odd to me. A friend of mine worked on Alien: Covenant. I think they are trying to do interesting things, but Covenant felt like Aliens again to me. I have only seen it once. If it sounds like I have not followed it too closely since the beginning, it is true. I am interested in them, but I have not followed them religiously.
Adam Zeller: Could you tell our listeners how you came to be involved with the Alien series initially? Was it through your existing relationship with Dark Horse because of The American?
Mark Verheiden: I think that played a part in it. I was friends with the guys who started Dark Horse, Mike Richardson, the publisher, and Randy Stradley, the editor. They are still in those positions 35 years later. I was friends with them before I left for Los Angeles and I did The American for them. I remember the day I got a call from Mike saying that they thought they were getting the rights to do Aliens comics, and I just put my hand up. I said, “I am the person who needs to write that.” Luckily, they agreed. It was as simple as that. Sometimes it is just about being there and saying that you want to. I was a huge fan of the first two movies, so it was not a hard sell to get me to want to do it.
Aaron Percival: Take us back to before you actually began working on the series in proper earnest. What were those early conversations like?
Mark Verheiden: The initial discussions were that we knew we could not use Ripley for various rights reasons. We could not use the Ripley character for reasons that are a little bit beyond me. I am not sure I understand. There’s likeness issues you get with actors who do not want to be portrayed in books. So we could not use her, and I think there may have been likeness issues with everyone. So the natural thing to think about was how we could use some of the characters but not worry about their likenesses.
Hicks – Aliens: Outbreak
If Newt is 18, then we do not have to worry about that. If Hicks is scarred to the point where he is almost unrecognisable, we did not have to worry about that. Those were pragmatic reasons why they are who they are in the story, but I also just wanted to jump ahead. I remember a lot of conversations about wanting to bring it back to Earth. We really wanted to see the aliens on Earth. Then it became a question of what happens once we get them back.
The situation with the religious cult, the military, and Bionational all sprang from extrapolating on what was in the Aliens movie. Some of it was unique to what we were trying to do. It was me just thinking about what would be fun. A world where a cult would gather around this creature that was so much superior to man, at least in their minds, and they came to revere it and want to commune with it in this Doomsday cult.
I remember writing several outlines for breaking down the books and the series. Mark Nelson was going to draw it. Once I saw his art, I knew that I wanted to take this in a darker, more horrific direction, somewhere between the tone of Aliens and the first Alien. His moody art definitely lent itself toward grizzly but also unsettling moments. He also drew a great alien. The more we did of that, the better. It was about applying the things I had learned from working in film to this format, which I love. I wanted to make those stories dynamic, action-packed, and compelling, while really digging into the characters of Newt, Hicks, and Butler.
Aaron Percival: Something you can say about the first series is that it feels so cinematic. The scope is huge. You do so much in those six issues compared to pretty much every single series that has come since. Everything you managed to put in this still blows me away. It is so coherent. You did a fantastic job on that first series.
Mark Verheiden: Thanks. We did not know when we started if we would be doing more of these, so it was a case of just putting it all in there. I remember that I would get to the end of a story I was writing for one of the issues and I would feel that I could really use two more pages. I would call up Dark Horse and there would be a little bit of hesitation because of the expense, but they would agree. A couple of books went to 26 pages or a little bit more. There was just so much I wanted to get in there, while also giving Mark Nelson the room to do his amazing graphics. I did not want to clutter it up so much that he could not do his work. It was about finding that balance between a fairly dense story and giving Mark room to do those great alien action moments and the dark moments.