Green Lantern vs. Alien’s Xenomorphs: Who Won The Epic Fight

The Green Lantern Corps has fought a pretty wide array of threats, everything from the fascist Sinestro Corps to the physical embodiment of fear, but what happened when they faced down the scariest extraterrestrial in the history of cinema? Through the late 90s and early 2000s, DC Comics had several crossovers with Dark Horse Comics to bring about showdowns between DC superheroes and creatures from beloved sci-fi franchises like Alien and Predator. Batman fought a Predator, and in Ron Marz and Rick Leonardi’s Green Lantern Versus Aliens mini-series, the dreaded Xenomorph hunts Green Lantern across generations.

The series begins in the days before Hal Jordan is possessed by the fear-entity Parallax. After receiving a call from the Guardians of the Universe, he forms up with a group of other Lanterns including Killowog, Salaak, and Tomar-Re. The group heads to look for a missing member of the Corps, and along with his dead body, they find a horde of Xenomorphs. Reasoning that the creatures are no different than wild animals, the ever-reckless Hal Jordan suggests that they capture the monsters and take them to live on the Green Lantern planet of Mogo, where they foolishly believe that they will do no harm. Cut to 10 years later, and Green Lantern Kyle Rayner finds himself on a mission alongside Salaak and several other retired and ringless Corps members to rescue a ship that has crashed on a Xenomorph-infested Mogo.

From there, the classic Alien setup collides with a Green Lantern book as Kyle, Salaak, and the other retired Lanterns team up with the downed ship’s resident short-short clad android Crowe to extract any other survivors from a slimy Xenomorph nest. While Kyle Rayner would go on to be a heavy hitter in later comics, here the Xenomorphs prove to be a formidable foe. They push the pacifist Rayner into using guns and eventually outright breaking his no-kill code. That’s right, Green Lantern Versus Aliens features Kyle conjuring up a mini-gun and slaughtering several Xenomorphs drones before speaking the Green Lantern oath and vaporizing the entire nest of creatures in a shockwave of burning green energy.

In a fairly surprising move, the crossover comic actually features some solid development for Kyle. The definitive White Lantern has some enlightening interactions with Salaak discussing his place as the only active Green Lantern in the universe (this was in the days after Hal got possessed by Parallax and wiped out the entire Corps). While Kyle is a vastly different kind of Lantern than his forbearers, he learns to embrace some of their traditions. This is especially apparent when he recites that iconic oath before killing the Xenomorphs at the end of the series. He also learns the much darker lesson that some enemies, like the cunning and parasitic Xenomorphs, just can’t be contained or reasoned with.

Above all else, Green Lantern Versus Alien is an incredibly fun love letter to both franchises. The image from the first issue of an Alien chestburster erupting out the middle of the Green Lantern symbol is as grisly as it is endearingly goofy and the rest of the mini-series maintains that same tone. And any story that gives Kyle, the most underrated member of the Corps, any love is always worth reading.

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