1990: ALIEN NATION: THE SPARTANS LIMITED COLLECTOR'S EDITION (ADVENTURE COMICS)

From 1990: The premium ALIEN NATION: THE SPARTANS LIMITED COLLECTOR'S EDITION, published by Adventure Comics.

As posted previously, Adventure snapped up the rights to the about-to-be-cancelled Ken Johnson TV series (based on the earlier film) in 1990 and published a run of black & white mini-series which dug deeper into the (near) future Earth established on the screen. This creative route seemed to be governed by a limited licence which - with one exception - didn't allow them to use the characters from the film or TV versions.

The Spartans was the first four-parter to go into print and the launch was marked by this premium edition version with alternative cover art and foil logo. Those were the days...

Follow the ALIEN NATION link below for more...

1990: PLANET OF THE APES Issue 1 (Adventure Comics)

From 1990: the first issue of Adventure Comics' PLANET OF THE APES run.

This black-and-whiter, which marked the first time the Apes had appeared in comics since Marvel had let the license go in the 1970s, launched a lengthy run of Apes comics... many of which I've never read (copies are surprisingly AWOL from the back issue and bargain bins) but I recall looking pretty crappy at the time.  

Adventure (a pre-Ultraverse Malibu imprint) also dabbled with reprints of some of Marvel's POTA stuff.  I recall trade paperback reprints of the first two movies (that never seem to resurface today) and a four-part TERROR ON THE PLANET OF THE APES run (which I posted here).  

They were also responsible for the bonkers APE NATION (see here) crossover with ALIEN NATION (BTW: The first issue of the APES/ STAR TREK crossover is now on sale... and great fun).  

This first outing came semi-wrapped with an outer printed on pink paper.  For some reason, my scanner can't fathom that colour and so they've reproduced differently than the originals.  

The first image above is the front cover without flap.

The second is with flap in situ.

The third is the back-of-the-flap with a nice piece of Apes art. 

1990: ALIEN NATION/ PLANET OF THE APES House Ad (Adventure Comics)

From 1990... an Adventure Comics House Ad for their two properties licensed from 20th Century Fox: the equally defunct screen franchises (although both subsequently saw revivals) ALIEN NATION and PLANET OF THE APES. 

1991: ALIEN NATION: PUBLIC ENEMY (Adventure Comics)

ALIEN NATION: PUBLIC ENEMY was the sixth (and final) limited series (including the colour APE NATION series), based on the film/ TV show combo, published by Adventure Comics.  It appeared between December 1991 and March 1992.

By that time, the show had been off the air for almost two years and, with no obvious sign of a revival (five TV movies, from Ken Johnson and the original creative team, did go into production several years later) Adventure (a subsidiary of Malibu) obviously felt interest and sales had dropped to a level where further excursions were deemed a non-starter.

1990: ALIEN NATION: A BREED APART (Adventure Comics)

Back to the early nineties and a cover gallery for ALIEN NATION: A BREED APART, the second four-parter from Adventure Comics spun-off from the film and TV franchise.  

1990: ALIEN NATION: THE SPARTANS (Adventure Comics)

Issue 1 without flap.

Issue 1 with flap

Issue 1 back cover

Issue 2

Issue 3

Issue 4

The complete cover gallery for Adventure Comic's ALIEN NATION: THE SPARTANS, the inaugural limited series to emerge out of their licensing deal with 20th Century Fox.  

The first issue came with the colour-paper "outer" seen above.  Low budget variants included blue paper and pink paper.  

The full Adventure Comics run, published between 1990 and 1992, consisted of:

THE SPARTANS (4 issues)

A BREED APART (4 issues)

THE SKIN TRADE (4 issues)

THE FIRSTCOMERS (4 issues)

PUBLIC ENEMY (4 issues)

THE LOST TV EPISODE (one-shot)

and the bonkers:

APE NATION (4 issues)

Only the latter was published in colour.

1990: ALIEN NATION: THE SPARTANS Limited Edition (Adventure Comics)

 

ALIEN NATION: THE SPARTANS was the first of the overlapping limited series, based on the film and TV show, published by Adventure Comics in the early 1990s.

To kick things off, they teamed with Diamond Distributors to published this limited edition version, limited to 5000 copies.  The logo is finished in foil.  

1991: ALIEN NATION: THE FIRSTCOMERS (Adventure Comics)

ALIEN NATION: THE FIRSTCOMERS was the next four-issue story arc published by Adventure Comics cover-dated May-August 1991.

Once again, the black & white series was based on the premise of the movie/ TV show but featured a storyline entirely unrelated to the characters featured in both screen incarnations.  

It was never collected into trade paperback form and has never been reprinted.  

1991: ALIEN NATION: THE SKIN TRADE (Adventure Comics)

ALIEN NATION: THE SKIN TRADE (cover-dated between March and June 1991) was the third of Adventure Comic's ALIEN NATION limited series, based on the 1988 movie and the 1989-90 TV series.

Published in black & white, it borrowed the premise (a ship of alien slaves crashes in the desert outside Los Angeles and, upon release, the 'Newcomers' must integrate into a society they find equally alien) from the screen incarnations but none of the characters, giving the creative teams free reign to explore new ideas without (necessarily) having to frame them in a police procedural plot device.  

The first four-parter was THE SPARTANS followed by A BREED APART (neither of which I have to hand to scan).

1992: ALIEN NATION TELEVISION SPECIAL (Malibu/ Adventure)

 

The ALIEN NATION TELEVISION SPECIAL was an Adventure Comics/ Malibu Comics black-and-white bookshelf-format (card covers!) one-shot from 1982 that adapted the unshot resolution to AN's solitary season on the small screen.

The episode, Soul Train, had been written to open the second TV years and wrap-up the numerous dangling plot lines and associated jeopardy from the season one wrap-up.  Unfortunately for Kenneth ("V") Johnson and the show's team, FOX decided to forsake one-hour drama shows in favour of comedy and factual and AN was dumped.

Years later, FOX revisited the would-be franchise with a series of five new TV movies which reunited the cast and behind-the-scenes creative team.  Elements from this script were worked into those movies.  

1991: APE NATION (adventure Comics)

The 1990s became a decade jam-packed with crossovers (the most notorious was surely the Punisher/ Archie combo which must have been concocted during a particularly heavy Crack Den sesh) as publishers looked for more and more outrageous ways of shifting mass quantities of copies.

This February 1991 effort from Adventure Comics was one of the first… but no less bonkers: The publisher already had a bunch of reasonably successful ALIEN NATION and PLANET OF THE APES mini-series so, as both screen properties were owned by the same studio, a crossover was relatively easy and too tempting to resist. Voila: APE NATION.

Of course, the fact that the two franchises exist is two obviously entirely different continuities was no hindrance to a "good" idea so in this four-parter, Adventure's first colour series, a Newcomer vessel arrives on the Ape-Earth of the distant future.  

I believe this was slated for a trade paperback collection at the time but I'm not sure whether it ever happened.  It's certainly not been reprinted since (something it has in common with all the other Adventure books from both franchises) which, despite its wonky premise, is a shame.