Many Hollywood movies have derived their story lines from comic books, but Mark A. Nelson, NIU Associate Professor of Art, recently illustrated a comic book version of the 20th Century Fox movie “Aliens.”

“Aliens” is the story of parasitic creatures that embody themselves inside humans only to later emerge through their victims stomachs as full grown aliens.

The comic book story takes place 10 years after the second Aliens movie, in which the young heroine, Nute, is now 18 years-old and fighting off the aliens with the other survivor, Corporal Hicks.

The comic book was published by Dark Horse Comics and is currently the number one black and white selling comic book in the United States. It sells for $1.95 per issue and the issues range from 24 to 26 pages. Nelson said issue number two alone sold over 120,000 copies throughout the United States, England and other areas of the foreign market.

Nelson was chosen to draw six issues in the first limited series after the publishers of Dark Horse Comics saw some of his previous illustration work in other comic books.

Nelson said the book’s success was due to the collaborated efforts of the other people who worked on it. The lettering, or as he also called it, word bubbles, were done by Willie Schubert and the script was written by Mark Verheiden.

Due to many setbacks, the July issue of the Aliens comic book, the last of this series, was finished almost three months behind schedule, Nelson said. “It was a lot of hard work and we were plagued with many problems, but we pulled it out of the fire in the end,” he said.

Nelson openly admits he may have gone overboard on the amount of detail in each drawing, “but that’s the kind of work I do,” he said. He added his wife Anita and two of his recent art student graduates “Bad” Bob Dvorak and Tom Baxa helped him with some of the filling in of black and white contrasts.

Nelson said the original series was only six issues because 20th Century Fox had to give approval for each issue. The project took more time and thought than expected to how the characters were portrayed because “we were dealing with characters that 20th Century Fox owns,” he said.

He added the facial features of the human characters had to be changed, in order that the actors could not collect compensation for their likenesses. Consequently, the character of Sigourney Weaver was not used in the book.

Nelson said he enjoyed working on the Aliens project and he liked the attention it got his art work. “People are looking at me differently. Aliens gave me the chance to do a lot of things I didn’t have the chance to do before,” he said.

The Aliens comic book has been renewed for a second four issue limited series, but Nelson declined the offer to illustrate because, “six issues has taken over a year of my life and I would like to do more with my life,” he said.

Nelson said some of his previous projects include illustration work in the comic books Godzilla and Silver Wing. He is currently working on a comic book by Jean-Marc titled “Empire of the Dinosaur.”

Nelson has been teaching at NIU since 1978. He started teaching print making but has now moved to advanced illustration due to the increase in students in that area.

e received his bachelor of fine arts in drawing at the Cleveland Institute of Art and his master of fine arts in print making at the University of Michigan. He said both of his parents were artists and he has always been interested in comic books and all kinds of art forms.

Nelson said he enjoys teaching, but as a practicing illustrator in the field he is able to bring his experiences into the classroom. He added due to his work experience in illustration he has been able to “open avenues” and help his students who are going into the art world.