I fondly remembered comic book one-shot,  Aliens: Pig, so when I realised I could read it on my phone or computer, direct from my internet browser (thanks to it being in my digital Dark Horse Comics library), I revisited it straight away.

I wish I hadn’t bothered.

The story of a group of space pirates looking to loot a crashed ship before the rightful owners turn up, Aliens: Pig sees the crew thwarted by the xenomorphs in the remains of the wrecked vessel. Having scanned the ship prior to going in, they’re aware of the aliens all over it, and send the titular porker, covered in explosives, to clear the way for them. What they don’t count on is the pig’s survival, which leads to all sorts of carnage unfolding for the pirates.

The problem is, the story focuses on the incredibly unlikeable space pirates, none of whom are in any way redeemable characters. Every single one is an asshole, so you genuinely don’t care what happens to them. The pig is gone for most of the page count, when really the whole thing would have been much more riveting had we followed the plucky little piggy’s escape. The punchline is reasonably amusing, but that aside, it’s just not a very good story at all.

The art, by Flint Henry, is fantastic though; it’s cartoony but also very detailed, in a Geof Darrow-esque way. The bright, bold colouring also sets it apart from other Aliens comics, which usually, and understandably, rely on a much darker palette.

It’s hard to see what I enjoyed so much about Aliens: Pig when I first read it; I seemed to misremember that it was genuinely about the pig’s fight for survival against the xenomorphs, as Chris Scalf’s gorgeous painted cover seems to suggest. That not being the case, and Chuck Dixon’s script focusing on such a bunch of awful backstabbing bastards means that I didn’t have as much fun with Aliens: Pig as I was expecting.

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