Despite her wishes, Dr. Kimble, is persuaded to allow the press to accompany her as Lexcorp heads off to intercept an approaching alien vessel.

“I didn’t want reporters tagging along on this trip! But there are those in the corporation who feel it’s best to take the lid off our triumphs.”

Dr. Kimble plans to use whatever advanced technology she discovers to further propel Lexcorp’s status as . . . well the leader at whatever it is Lexcorp does. But the vessel is coming in at a bad trajectory and if Superman can’t slow its descent, it’ll explode on impact. They crash into the ocean and as he sinks with the object, he notices markings on it that are familiar--Kryptonian markings.

“The probe strikes an instant telepathic link. Garbled messages and fragmented images bombard my mind . . . I glimpse a planet. Krypton? People . . . scientists discussing the planet’s impending doom! They have an idea--a way to survive! They build a dome over a city and plant explosive charges at key geographic points beneath it! When the planet explodes . . . it stays intact and is pushed into space! The city is still out there!”

Hoping to find more Kryptonians--and with Dr. Kimble still hoping to gain alien technology--Superman takes off in a Lexcorp shuttle for the forgotten city.

But when he arrives he discovers a barren city. While searching he comes across four wounded humanoids. Superman loads them into the Lexcorp shuttle and sends them back to earth for medical attention, leaving instructions for the shuttle to be sent back so he can return to Earth; being in the middle of space and with no sun in sight, Superman’s powers are dwindling.

Searching one of the empty buildings, he comes across a strange liquid, like blood, but with acidic qualities. Before he can investigate further, he’s attacked.

Back in the mid-90s there was a HUGE wave of crossover comics, most of these centering around the Predator and Alien properties which Dark Horse Comics owned at the time. There were two Batman Vs. Predator stories, a Tarzan Vs. Predator, and this one, Superman Vs. Aliens. Far as I can remember they were all pretty good. At first glance you’d think Superman Vs. Aliens would be a no-brainer--I mean he’s friggin’ Superman, right? The acid blood, the razor sharp teeth, they can’t touch him. It was a brilliant stroke putting him so far from the sun that, by the end he was almost as powerless as a normal human.

And for me, making the location ARGO CITY, and his partner in the whole adventure a girl named Kara . . . that was awesome. (for those who don’t know, the original Supergirl was Kal-El’s cousin Kara. She’d grown up in Argo City, the last remaining Kryptonian city, which had survived the planet’s explosion inside a protective dome. She was killed off in the CRISIS storyline and the wiped out of DC History, so in effect there never was a Supergirl, a Kara, or an Argo City. This is NOT the same Argo City, nor the same Kara, but I didn’t know that at first, so I read the story with hope of a Supergirl reintroduction. No such luck, though)

While Superman and Kara battle the Aliens in Argo City, one of the wounded he sent back to Earth was carrying an embryo in his chest and the little thing burst out on the trip. When the shuttle lands on the Lexcorp satellite, it does so with a full-grown Alien onboard. And that means everyone on the satellite, including Lois Lane who’s there for . . . something, I can’t really recall but I know it was a pretty lame reason, so she would be put in danger and we’d feel for her . . . anyway, everyone on board the satellite is in danger. Dr. Kimble wants to capture and utilize the creature for the benefit of Lexcorp, while everyone else just wants to stay alive. Hmm . . . wants to utilize the creature for their own purposes . . . where have I heard that before . . . I’m thinking . . . oh, right, it was in EVERY SINGLE ALIEN MOVIE EVER MADE. Get over it, people, you cannot reason with this thing, you can’t tame it, you can barely even stop it. It’s like a Terminator, only . . . not a robot and that means you can’t reprogram it and it can’t talk so it won’t be picking up any witty colloquialisms and giving a thumbs up while it lowers itself into the slag. Anyway.

It all works out in the end, except Superman isn’t able to bring Kara to Earth with him, and it’s revealed she was never Kryptonian anyway. Apparently there’s some rule that Kryptonians are genetically bonded to their planet and when the original Argo City was launched, everyone died, and THIS Argo City only BASED its language and lifestyle on the Kryptonian ways. I’m not sure how that works, being bonded to your planet like that, but it IS DC Comics and, come on, they’re not known for their highly plausible stories.

Superman and Kara manage to escape the Aliens, however, and Superman does return to the Lexcorp satellite just in time to save Lois from having her head ripped off.

Superman Vs. Aliens was originally published in 3 trade paperback editions in 1995, written by Dan Jurgens, with art by Kevin Nowlan. Jurgens writes a pretty solid story. Well, his narrative is good, anyway; the story itself, we’ve already seen, was an equal balance of strong and weak points. Nowlan’s art has always been a strange thing to me. It’s almost like he’s channeling 5 different idols at once and you can pick out half a dozen different styles in half a dozen different pages. Sometimes his faces have an angular, grim look, while two pages later they’re round and soft. He’s hard to pin down. At least, he was in 1995. And the 3-page scene where Kara tells about how the Aliens came to Argo City was just weird. Three splash pages showing Kara in different sultry poses while she recounts the death of her society . . . it was a bit unsettling.

Now that I think about it, I’m wondering why Superman Vs. Aliens got the trader paperback original run treatment when the others I mentioned earlier, Batman Vs. Predator (I & II) and Tarzan Vs. Predator, were published as regular flimsy comics. Hmm. Curious, that.

Doesn’t matter, I guess.

In the end Superman Vs. Aliens was a decent story with some good, albeit sometimes inappropriate for the moment, art. Not a must-have by any means, but definitely one you can enjoy in a relaxing moment when you have nothing else to do.


Recommended: Yes