On this week’s Stack podcast:

Alien #1

Marvel

Written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson

Art by Salvador Larroca

Harley Quinn #1

DC Comics

Written by Stephanie Phillips

Art by Riley Rossmo

Firefly: Brand New ‘Verse #1

BOOM! Studios

Written by Josh Lee Gordon

Art by Fabiana Mascolo

Teen Titans Academy #1

DC Comics

Written by Tim Sheridan

Art by Rafa Sandoval

Once & Future #17

BOOM! Studios

Written by Kieron Gillen

Art by Dan Mora

Action Comics #1029

DC Comics

Written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad

Art by Phil Hester, Michael Avon Oeming

HAHA #3

Image Comics

Written by W. Maxwell Prince

Art and Cover by Roger Langridge

Batman/Superman #16

DC Comics

Written by Gene Luen Yang

Art by Ivan Reis

Crimson Flower #3

Dark Horse Comics

Written by Matt Kindt

Art by Matt Lesniewski

Detective Comics #1034

DC Comics

Written by Mariko Tamaki, Joshua Williamson

Art by Dan Mora, Gleb Melnikov

The Scumbag #6

Image Comics

Written by Rick Remender

Art by Bengal

Barbalien: Red Planet #5

Dark Horse Comics

Script by Tate Brombal

Story by Jeff Lemire and Tate Brombal

Art by Gabriel Hernandez Walta

Stray Dogs #2

Image Comics

Written by Tony Fleecs

Art by Trish Forstner

Post Americana #4

Image Comics

Story and Art by Steve Skroce

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Full Episode Transcript

Alex:                 What is up, y’all? Welcome to The Stack. I’m Alex.

Justin:              I’m Justin.

Pete:                I’m Pete.

Alex:                 On The Stack, we talk about a bunch of books that have come out this week, kicking it off with a very scary book called Alien #1 from Marvel, written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, art by Salvador Larroca. This is a big deal because this is the first of the Fox properties that is coming to Marvel. We have Predator coming down the pike. Alien is here now, and we had Phillip Kennedy Johnson on the live show talking about this book a couple of months back now when he first got on it. So he teased that, if you want to go and listen to it, but all of the teasing aside, what’d you think of this one?

Justin:              I thought this was great. Really captures the vibe of the Alien movies while being a compelling new story where you really feel alongside the characters. Mistakes are made. Classic Alien thing where somebody really fucks up with these things. You don’t get a lot of mistakes with the alien people.

Alex:                 The thing that I thought was really fascinating about this as a fan of the Alien franchise, and to get into spoilers for the book a little bit … It’s about a military guy. He ended up getting captured by aliens, escaped. We don’t know exactly how yet, but this is years later. He’s retiring, trying to reconnect with his son. Definitely a theme Phillip Kennedy Johnson is playing with with his books right now with fathers and sons and connecting through this and through Superman.

Alex:                 So that’s interesting, I think, just from a reading perspective, but here, the son is a civilian, and for fans of the Alien movies, it’s such a big deal when they go to Earth in this book. When they go to Earth, you see very little of it, but you see people on Earth. You see what’s going on with society. You see civilians involved, and just from that fan perspective, I kind of geeked out about that beyond the fact that it seems like they’re doing really interesting, weird stuff with the mythology in this comic book. Salvador Larroca’s aliens in particular are terrifying. The pacing of it is alarming and upsetting in the right way. I really dug this book a lot as well. Pete, what did you think?

Pete:                Yeah. I agree with you. I thought the aliens looks amazing. There’s a lot of great kind of splash page shots that are really powerful. The Bishop. I’m always creeped out by Bishop, and so it