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Front cover of this Alien movie comic adaptation. Made from corrguated Cardboard, cut from a box. All held together with glue and sellotape. All of the artwork is in marker, directly onto the beige cardboard.
1. It shows the famous egg (from the promotional poster etc.). 2. Stuck below is a clipping from the cinema page of a newspaper of the time, with two (precious!) photos: The egg, and Dallas setting up a tripod in the derelict. 'Monday for 6 nights'. 3. Along the edge of the cover's spine is the text: 'Once aboard their vast and labyrinthine craft—it killed to live and lived to kill'. Taken from the Alan Dean Foster novelisation.
Commentary Below
Merry Christmas Day!
Da - daaaaa! The front cover of a new book - and webcomic! I must have been excited about this back in 1979, or 1980?
Art Notes: How it was crafted
I began making the comic around 1979 by simply folding some ruled foolscap paper in half. They mostly began that way (that sounds strangely ominous). The paper was always brought home from dad's work. On the Star Wars comic, most of it was old photocopies with dull worky stuff on one side. On ALIEN, I was going to work on both sides. Yeah baby!
But just like on that Star Wars age 9 comic; when this one sustained my interest and turned into a longer term project, I would have realised that a sturdier cover was needed. Et voila: the deluxe corrugated cardboard box book cover was conceived. Only the best would do.
Deluxe Cover: Sellotape & Cardboard
On Star Wars age 9 the paper covers were just replaced now and then as they either fell apart or no longer matched up to my evolving critical faculties, but this version was obviously meant to last. However, the sellotape has gone brittle and is falling off after 3 decades. Actually, it wouldn't be so bad if it all crackled off, then I could see what the original paper cover was like, that's hidden away, glued onto the cardboard. I can only dimly make it out.
Vague Recollections
The image at the bottom was cut from the cinema listings page of the Leinster Leader newspaper. Whether that was the first round of showings or not I don't know.
But until I got the novelisation of the film, that was probably the only visual reference I had - at all; apart from the weird remembrances of the Giger book that my uncle in Northern Ireland had brought back from the cinema, and which I got a brief look at.
On the way home to the Republic of Ireland that night my sister said that he'd offered her the book. She'd - gasp! - refused it.
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