Alien: Paradiso… In Brief
Xenomorphs on vacation!
Alien: Paradiso, a five-issue miniseries from Marvel Comics, written by Steve Foxe and with artwork by Peter Nguyen, is kinda fun in a pure fluff sort of way. Foxe nicely blends together his undercover cops vs gangsters vs aliens story, which is certainly preferable to the done-to-death colonial marines hoo-rah rah rahing, and even casts a sunshiny pall over it all thanks to its luxe tropical island setting. Beyond that, it's all strictly paint by numbers Alien stuff. Paradiso does little to disprove the conceit that if you’ve read one Alien comic book, you’ve read them all. Weyland-Yutani wants the alien eggs, people get infected, chestbursters lead to fully-grown killer aliens, and the body count rises and rises and rises. Nothing spectacular, and certainly nothing that hasn't been seen dozens upon dozens of times elsewhere already.
Nguyen’s art is pretty good overall, and he’s got a deft hand when going over the top with a bit of the old ultra-violence. It’s gory and spectacular, and certainly earns the Explicit Content warning. Paradiso’s graphic mayhem exists alongside that particularly American strain of puritanism where violence can be shown, indeed celebrated, in the most spectacular terms possible, with people's domes being lopped in half and intestines spilling all over the floor, all shown in the most grisly and vivid ways, while words like “fuck” have to be written in grawlix lest some softhearted soul be offended by such scary, naughty, not for kids words.
Paradiso makes for a nice change of scenery in the ALIEN landscape, forgoing the dreary, spartan, industrial look for the bright shinyness of a resort for the rich, and the xenomorph POV is pretty neatly represented as a form of sonar or echolocation. Beyond that, though, it's just your regular, plain old, standard, check all the boxes ALIEN story. I wish it’s characters were meatier and that Foxe mined deeper thematic depths given the nature of Wey-Yu’s profit at all costs concerns intersecting with an island full of rich people but, alas, it’s strictly a lightweight affair that doesn’t fully maximize on its eat the rich potential.
