Aliens: Colonial Marines #2

Part two of this twelve-issue Dark Horse series opens with a quietly unsettling image: a young Colonial Marine — her dog tag reading "Vasquez" — lying in what appears to be a hypersleep chamber, eyes closed, one arm raised across her forehead in uneasy rest. The cool, clinical lighting and the faint suggestion of xenomorph shapes ghosted across her body give the cover a dreamlike, foreboding atmosphere, rendered with real painterly skill by cover artist Robert Mentor. With a creative team of Chris Warner, Tony Akins, Paul Guinan, and Matt Hollingsworth driving the interior, this 1993 series was already showing it had something thoughtful to say about life — and vulnerability — in the Aliens universe.