Originally published at a time when everyone and their cousin/ dog/ next-door neighbour in the Superhero comic book multiverse seemed to be facing off against somebody else outside their usual sphere of existence, Superman Verses Aliens is amongst some of the strangest to emerge around that time perhaps beaten only by Robocop Verses Terminator. However whilst many of these "show-downs" was intended to exist outside established canon, what sets this apart is that, although never referenced in later stories, Superman Verses Aliens actually contains mentions of many of Supermans most memorable encounters, amongst them his big showdown against Doomsday, as though it were actually a part of D.C's main established universe. And, for me, this is perhaps its biggest downfall because, as someone who never paticularly liked the Elseworld stories offering alternative takes of well-known characters, this just causes confusion. Is this part of D.C's official Superman universe or isn't it?

This is just a personal niggle however because what we get here is certainly better than I might have expected despite being woefully short-lived. A meteorite detected in deep, deep space purports to be from Krypton and so Superman is forced to utilise the space program of Lex Luthor in order to check it out. When what he encounters is a group of survivors from some big tragedy, he becomes detemined to find out exactly what happened especially when he begins to suspect that one of them could well be his lost cousin, Kara. But unfortunately what he discovers is something he could never have expected, the likes of which he has never heard of before ~ an infestation of deadly Aliens straight out of a twisted H.R.Geiger painting!

Far from our sun that gives him his powers and gradually getting weaker, Superman is forced to face off against what could well be his deadliest foe yet! All the best aspects of the Alien movies is present from Face-Huggers to Chest Bursters to fully fledged Queen Alien Embryos in a tight, tense storyline that ends up being something of a guilty pleasure once you get past the implausability of it all! There are probably a thousand and one reasons why you shouldn't like this (the one being that which I mentioned previously at the top of this review) and yet, y'know, I kinda loved this! Even if I didn't originally want to.

You ever read a story that you wanted desperately to hate but couldn't? Well, this is that story....

I got this out of the library again recently as I only read it previously a long time ago, soon after it was first published. And you know what? I STILL like it. For this to have that kind of longevity only makes it, in my eyes, an even stronger story than I originally thought.

And currently selling used from as little as £2.32 on Amazon, with the recent releae of Prometheus there has never been a better time to check it out....