In one fell swoop, Walt Simonson reveals how the already-amazing Alien: The Illustrated Story could have been even… well, maybe not better, but definitely weirder:
John Workman from “Heavy Metal” called to see if I wanted to work on it. His original idea was to have Carmine Infantino pencil it and I would ink it.
When I first saw that, I couldn’t imagine Infantino – who, by that point, was turning out stuff like this for Marvel’s Star Wars monthly:
– illustrating Alien, especially inked by Simonson, whose solo work on the book looked like this:
Turns out, though, that the two had worked together in that combination before, for Warren’s horror mags. The results, from what I can find, are kind of wonderful:
It’s clearly Infantino’s work – Look at those faces – but the lushness of the finished line, and some of the textural shading? That’s definitely Simonson’s touch. Seeing these pages, I suddenly feel robbed of the chance to see the two collaborate on Alien, even though the book that actually exists is some of my favorite Simonson solo work… Add this to the “If Only” file, right up there beside the advertised-but-never-happened Roger Stern/Frank Miller Doctor Strange run…
