We already knew the world of Alien was returning both on TV and at the movies. But now, it’s returning to the world of comics too, in a very unexpected way. Marvel just announced that Aliens, James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, is getting a five-issue “What If…?” spin-off focusing on Carter Burke, the evil company man played by Paul Reiser. The question: what if Carter Burke survived?
Reiser himself returns as one of the series’ writers, along with his son Leon Reiser, as well as Adam F. Goldberg (The Goldbergs, Muppets Mayhem), Brian Volk-Weiss (The Toys/Movies That Made Us), and Hans Rodionoff (Damage Control). “For years, people have asked me about Burke,” Reiser said to Marvel. “What it was like to play such a ‘bad guy,’ to which my response was always ‘You say ‘bad,’ I say ‘misunderstood.’ Now the world will find out!”
In the film, we never see Burke actually be killed. We only see that he encounters an alien and, we assume, he’s murdered off-screen. Then, on top of that, Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley blows up the entire outpost. Here though, Burke not only survives somehow, he gets off the LV-426. This story picks up 35 years later as he’s “eeking out a cursed existence on a backwater asteroid.” Apparently, Burke’s daughter finds out about his whereabouts and that sets the main thrust of the story in motion.
Any excuse to dive a bit deeper into James Cameron’s Aliens gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from us. It happened a few years back when Vasquez got her very own origin story book. Here’s hoping, if this is a success, maybe we’ll see more.
Featuring art by Guiu Vilanova, and covers by Phil Noto (you can see the first two below), Aliens What If…? #1 will be out March 6. Read more at Marvel.com.
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