Aliens: Mondo Pest (1995)
Writer:Â Henry Gilroy
Artist:Â Ronnie del Carmen
Colorist:Â Matthew Hollingsworth
Aliens: Mondo Pest was originally serialized in Dark Horse Comics (hereafter to be shortened to DHC) the 1992-1994 full color anthology meant to effectively silo off the licensed properties from flagship anthology Dark Horse Presents (popularly known as DHP). Previous to that, your Aliens or Predator comic serials would by necessity sit with fully creator-owned properties like Concrete or Bacchus, creating a frisson from the juxtaposition that defined early Dark Horse Comics (the company) releases—a charming sort of "I've got a barn, let's put on a show" energy defined them from the very beginning and up to this point. But as the harsh comics industry landscape 90's began, the need for line-go-up style growth meant more licensed properties and attempts at home-grown superhero universes.
So, Dark Horse Comics (the anthology) was born. This is a time when DHP was particularly fertile though—the first Sin City serial, Bacchus, Paleolove, Madwoman Of The Sacred Heart, An Accidental Death, and Hellboy: The Wolves of Saint August all ran in DHP during this period, among other things—so I for one am glad they had the more corporate venue of DHC to off-gas Comics Greatest World tie-ins and Robocop serials.
Eventually, the licensed comics would return to DHP and you'd have to endure Buffy tie-ins next to creator owned comics, but by that point the creator owned comics were less personal as well. DHP's content kind of reached a grim homogeny of "product" in those last couple years—for every NEVERMEN there was IP slop and self-dealing problematic editors pushing their attempts at superheroes into the mix.
DHC only lasted two years, and Dark Horse Presents managed to hobble into the year 2000, so apparently the market wasn't clambering for the type of material that DHC was focused on. That isn't to say that there was nothing of value published under that banner—far from it, many excellent creators did work there. Case in point, Aliens: Mondo Pest was originally a serial that ran in issues 22-24. It was well enough regarded that they then repackaged it to feed the hunger for Aliens comics in 1995.
Written and drawn by two animation industry stalwarts who weren't big names at the time but would go on to much success in their field—Gilroy is a co-author of the Clone Wars series and Del Carmen wrote and co-directed the hit Pixar film Inside Out, among many other credits of note. But at the time they were jobbers working on stuff like Where's Waldo and 2 Stupid Dogs and who shared credits on Batman: The Animated Series. Mondo Pest has an economy of story that suggests TV experience. It gets in, gets out and signposts everything that you need to know with visual storytelling and the occasional bit of chicken fat.
Mondo Pest (the character) is a LOBO-type—big shoulder pads, cigar chomping and backwards baseball cap all working like neon signposts to communicate a shorthand about the type of story you're reading. It's a bit of 90's comics fluff, but effectively told. The real reason to pick it up is to soak in Del Carmen's art and panel to panel storytelling. Pest himself may be an exercise in stereotype, but the other characters are all appealingly and smartly designed. His inks appear to be built mostly from luxurious brushstrokes but will occasionally scrawl into a sparser pen stroke. Hollingsworth's colors are effective but like most comics in this early 90s era of computer coloring, there's an almost oppressive level of saturation here...ironically causing me to wish they'd commissioned the comic for DHP, where it would have run in glorious black and white.
-z
5/12/26
