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Saturday 24 September 2016

Batman/Aliens Review (Ron Marz, Bernie Wrightson)


Batman and Aliens, together at last! I read the Batman/Predator crossover last year and it was really, really bad so maybe it’s because my expectations for this one were so low but I found Batman/Aliens to be a surprisingly pretty decent! 

Bruce Wayne “sends” Batman to South America after a Wayne Enterprises employee goes missing in the jungle and then encounters an American special ops squad looking for a nearby hidden alien spaceship. The two join forces, head into an ominous ruined temple and… well, you know. 

Ron Marz is obviously a big Ahnuld fan because the special ops characters are ‘80s action movie clichés straight out of the original Predator and Commando – I wasn’t a fan of those movies so I didn’t enjoy them as much. 

We also have to tediously watch the characters figure out who the Aliens are and what they can do. I wish they’d skip parts like this for the audience’s sake - is there really anyone reading this who doesn’t know about the Xenomorphs already?!

The story, thin as it is, is also very predictable and plays out in standard Alien fashion, and, though we know why Batman and the commandos are there, we never find out the Aliens’ motivations which underlines the contrived nature of this book. 

But there were good parts too. There’s a twist I didn’t see coming at the end so it wasn’t entirely predictable. Bernie Wrightson draws some nice pages like the interiors of the temple and the design of the unusual Xenomorph Batman fights at the end. And, of course, seeing Batman fight the Aliens was very satisfying and as cool as it should’ve been.

Don’t expect a masterpiece with this one but Batman/Aliens wasn’t a bad crossover - it’s silly fun and that’s enough.

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