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As any fan of the Alien franchise will tell you the real villain in the movies is not the xenomorph itself – hey, it's just doing its thing – it's the f**king company, man. Weyland-Yutani has been the hyper-capitalist thorn in the side of Ripley, Rain, and every other Alienverse hero since Ridley Scott's original 1979 movie.
The Weyland Corporation (rather than Weyland-Yutani) plays a major part in Marvel's Aliens vs. Avengers, which just released its second issue, written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Esad Ribić. The new issue shines some more light on what's going on with the company, while also making some wild connections to two of the more controversial installments in the film series...
Spoilers for Aliens vs. Avengers #2
The issue opens in "Another universe, another time" – and with a scene that will be familiar to anyone who has seen Alien: Covenant. Hanging above the homeworld of the Engineers – the mysterious race that seemingly created all life in the galaxy in Scott's latter-day lore – is the spaceship that android David and the late Elizabeth Shaw commandeered at the end of Prometheus.
There's a slight revision here: in this version of events there are three Davids watching on, something that remains unexplained by the end of the issue, but is presumably there to suggest that while this is very close to what happens in the films, it's not quite the same timeline. Regardless, the Davids follow the same path as in Covenant, detonating their stolen spaceship's payload of black goo pathogen and wiping out the Engineers.
The androids did actually appear briefly in the first issue, but you'd be forgiven if you hadn't quite realised it was meant to be David, as they were wearing hats (and in some cases wigs). Here, however, they play a much larger role. Basically, we learn that they discovered a way into the multiverse and set out to "cleanse" all of them of life using the xenomorphs.
Cut to Earth. Last issue we learned that the world has been overrun by the xenomorphs, but that "the old man of Weyland" planned for this eventuality and built a city to withstand their assault. It was previously unclear exactly who this old man was, but this issue answers that question: it's Tony Stark.
We then flash back to 20 years ago and the Weyland Corporation is setting out to buy Stark Industries (presumably with the intent of becoming Weyland-Stark). As it turns out, however, this meeting is a fake out on Tony's part. He has discovered that the Weyland Corporation is from another universe and that its founder is an android, like David. Tony gets the information he needs – that Earth has about 20 years left before extinction – and then tears the head off the Weyland synthetic.
After these lengthy flashbacks, the rest of the issue is on more familiar territory, continuing the story from last month. Stark thinks that the survivors of humanity must flee the Earth and has made the necessary preparations – his city is basically a colony ship that will take everyone to a new home. Just as they're about to launch, however, an older Captain America arrives bringing hundreds more survivors with him. They're too late to get to the ship, but Bruce Hulks out and goes to fight alongside Cap as Stark blasts off into space. Meanwhile, in a short epilogue, we see that there are still some living Engineers in the galaxy. They're on their way and probably in a very bad mood...
Aliens vs. Avengers #2 is out now from Marvel Comics.
Check out our guide to the best Avengers stories of all time.
