For this weekend’s escapist superhero post Balladeer’s Blog will take a look at the way the Marvel Comics writers became so enamored of the alien menace in the first Alien movie that they did their own imitation/ homage of it in the form of an insectoid alien race called the Brood.
The Brood could implant embryos inside captives and as those embryos matured, they would transform the host into another Brood creature. The X-Men eventually fought bunches of the Brood all at once but remember – as derivative as the Brood were that X-Men serial came BEFORE the movie Aliens in 1986.
First up, however, comes the earlier story in which the writers “paid homage” to Alien by way of a member of the Lovecraftian race of demons called the N’Garai (Marvel’s imitation of Cthulhu & company). They made this N’Garai resemble the xenormorph in Alien and used the single word title Demon. Kitty Pryde even made subtle references to Alien during the story.
X-MEN Vol 1 143 (March 1981)
Title: Demon
Villain: An unnamed demon of the N’Garai race
Synopsis: This odd Christmas story opened up with a flashback to the end of the X-Men’s very first encounter with the N’Garai back in X-Men #96 (December 1975). It skipped over Iron Fist’s clash with the N’Garai as well as Satana’s battle with them.
Somehow another N’Garai demon has gotten loose in upstate New York and is roaming the forest on Christmas Eve. A romantic couple show up to chop down a Christmas tree for themselves but fall victim to the demon.
Cut to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, where Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Angel go off on dates with Mariko Yashida, Amanda Sefton and Candy Southern, respectively. Storm, Colossus and Professor X leave in the professor’s Rolls Royce to pursue their plans for the evening and this leaves the newest member of the team – Sprite (Kitty Pryde) – alone for a few hours.
Sprite winds up being attacked by the nameless N’Garai demon. It pursues her throughout the mansion and the creature’s resemblance to the menace in Alien reminds Sprite that the crew in that movie used flamethrowers against the monster. Continue reading
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