Dark Horse preps two big launches for Alien Day 2017

Aliens: Dead Orbit and Aliens: The Original Comics Series Volume 2 are both en route for Alien Day.

Alien Day 2017- a day of biomechanical horror

Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Personally, I didn’t even know there was an ‘Alien Day’ till this year’s edition. If you were equally unaware, the day of note is April the 26th, or 4/26. If you’re a fan of the franchise, then you’ll immediately notice the significance of those numbers. LV-426 being the designation of the colonized planet where the infestation occurred in Aliens, the second (and some would say best) film in the series.

So with that magical date in mind, Dark Horse has a duo of books that you’re probably going to want to check out. Both Aliens: Dead Orbit and Aliens: The Original Comics Series Volume 2 will be in stores.

Dead Orbit

Aliens: Dead Orbit sounds a lot like 2015’s Alien video game, Alien: Isolation. That’s a good thing by the way. Here’s the rundown on the plot:

Aliens: Dead Orbit finds Wascylewsk, an engineering officer, trapped in a space station after a horrific accident. Wascylewsk is forced to use all available tools—a timer, a utility kit, and his wits—to survive an attack from the deadliest creature known to man. James Stokoe (Wonton Soup, Orc Stain) writes and illustrates the series. Geof Darrow (The Shaolin Cowboy, The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot) will provide a variant cover for the first issue.

As for the second volume of Aliens: The Original Comic Series, that’s a little larger in scale, and a while lot more apocalyptic. This run of Dark Horse’s series isn’t in canon with latter volumes either, which Dead Orbit is a part, and it’s a lot more extreme than you might be used to.

A xenomorphic apocalypse

In Volume 2, Earth is almost completely overrun with xenomorphs. Humanity has all but lost their homeworld to the blight of the killer bug, and there’s only one chance left to save everything. If you guessed that chance was Ripley, you get the gold star.

Her plan? Bring a “Queen Mother” to Earth. That’s a kind of super-Queen Alien by the way, and it’s not as crazy a plan as it sounds. A Queen Mother rules over several hives at once, and can call all the hives on Earth together in some kind of general assembly. The plan is to nuke ’em when they all get in one place. See, not completely crazy.

Both the first issue of Dead Orbit and Aliens: The Original Comics Series Volume 2 will be on the shelves/racks for 4/26. If you’re a big Alien fan, then you’ll probably want to check both of them out.