Alien Worlds is an American science fiction anthology comic that was published by Pacific Comics and then Eclipse Comics between 1982 and 1985. It was edited by Bruce Jones and his partner April Campbell. It was a sister title to Jones' horror anthology Twisted Tales.

Publication history

Alien Worlds was published on a bi-monthly schedule by Pacific Comics from December 1982 to April 1984 for eight issues, with a single issue of spin-off Three Dimensional Alien Worlds published in July 1984. After Pacific went bankrupt, two final issues were published by Eclipse Comics in November 1984 and January 1985. Eclipse considered continuing the title but instead opted to create Alien Encounters with a variety of writers. Instead Jones took Alien Worlds to Blackthorne Publishing, who produced a one-shot featuring reprints of stories taken from earlier issues. In 1987 Eclipse struck a deal with Jones & Campbell's new packaging operation Bruce Jones Associates for new prestige format bi-annual versions of Alien World, cancelling Alien Encounters to make room. However, only a single issue of the new format was produced. Following Eclipse's bankruptcy in 1995, the company's assets were purchased by Todd McFarlane. Believing that the deal included the names of the Jones/Campbell anthologies, he teased a series called Todd McFarlane's Alien Worlds in the 1998 one-shot Total Eclipse; however, the comic would never appear.

Content

Nearly all of the stories in Alien Worlds were written by Jones, with only a few exceptions (notably Jan Strnad's "Stoney End" in issue #8 and Frank Brunner's "The Reading!" in issue #9). For the most part Alien Worlds avoided the more intensely gruesome subject matter of Twisted Tales, which was being published at the same time., though part of Eclipse's reason for starting Alien Encounters was to cut down on the amount of sexual content. Among the cover artists for the series were John Bolton, Dave Stevens, Frank Brunner, William Stout, and Joe Chiodo.

Features

1982 series

1987 series

Revival series

In 2010, Jones and actor Thomas Jane announced they were writing a revival series slated for release sometime in the future. no further news has emerged.