Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Old School Science Fiction Influences - Alien and The Heavy Metal Alien Graphic Novel

Recently I've been re watching the original 1979 classic Alien and the 1985 Aliens sequel. The other half recently came back from the U.K. and brought me a treasure. The Heavy Metal magazine version of the first Alien movie. 
This film was a huge influence back in 1979 when I was a kid. I ate up everything about the movie including seeing it when I was a kid at a drive in Ct. and then New York State. I even knew a kid who had one of the Kenner action figures. 


Fast forward when I started collecting comic books and I find out that there's a graphic novel from Walter Simonson and Archie Goodwin from the folks who were doing Heavy Metal Magazine.
I got my hands on it and well it was interesting more then slightly cool.
Well my copy bit the dust back in the days of the 90's and well my better half has an instinct when it comes to knowing what I want. She found me a copy that her friend had and she brought it over. Since she's just as interested in the film as I'm she included it for presents.
 
Want to see more from this graphic novel that made the New York Best Seller's list?
Well I stumbled onto this video on You Tube.


I've used this movie numerous times for old school adventures in retroclones, new school games, and many other campaigns. The graphic novel holds up quite well and has a few elements that the film really didn't touch on. 

The First Time I actually saw the Alien in an  OD&D Style game book was the 'Neila' from 1979's Booty and The Beasts from Fantasy Art Enterprises by Erol Otus.

2 comments:

  1. For even more inspiration, check out sithfire30's Alien action figure sculpts. They are insane in detail and at only 1/18th scale! http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/sithfire30/ Was curious if you have done any heavy mythos related campaigns and added the xenomorph in with it? I never hard of Booty and The Beasts. I definitely have to look that up.

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  2. That's some great stuff Maedar Antocus!
    Where do I begin with the Xenomorph, let's see it was in the very first Bloody Arduin campaign I was in.
    It appeared in recently in a Carcosa campaign I ran about two months ago. A Stars Without Number game.
    Numerous Call of Cthulhu games including Delta Green and a Cyperpunk 2020 cross over with Call of Cthulhu. I have crossed the Xenomorph more times than I can count over into my games way too many times.

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