There is no shortage cosmic horror associated with Alien’s Xenomorphs from their terrifying reproductive process to the deadly nature of the beasts themselves–though there is one aspect of the Xenomorphs that has presented itself in non-canon Alien media that may be on its way to becoming officially canon in Alien lore: Royal Jelly.

Royal Jelly is a drug synthesized from the raw ‘jelly’ that is produced by an Ovomorph, or Facehugger egg. Humans first started producing drugs derived from the deadly alien species in the aftermath of Xenomorphs’ infestation Earth as shown in Aliens: Genocide. In that Dark Horse series, the military used the Ovomorph jelly to create a drug called Xeno-Zip which actually gave the soldiers who took it superhuman abilities. They did this to use the aliens’ abilities against them and finish eradicating Xenomorphs from the planet, but in the end, the Xeno-Zip was too dangerous to keep producing. In a subsequent comic, Aliens: Music of the Spears, Royal Jelly is much more of a mind-trip hallucinogen than a super soldier accelerant. Unfortunately, this version of Royal Jelly ties the user’s mind to the Xenomorph hive mind, but rather than having access to the aliens’ thoughts in a coherent manner, it just slowly drives the human insane. Drugs created from the Xenomorphs themselves is a fascinating addition to the lore, but it only happened in Alien’s Dark Horse universe and therefore isn’t strictly canon–however, it seems like Royal Jelly may have already arrived in the main Alien universe.

In Alien #1 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Julius Ohta, a group of Synthetics has taken up refuge on a planet that is uninhabitable for humans, though that didn’t stop a human military strike force from attacking them anyway. After the Synthetics–collectively referred to as Steel Team–track down the general in charge of this mission, the general tells them that his team didn’t mean any harm–in fact, they needed their help. Steel Team was originally a squad of androids formed by humanity’s government, but they abandoned their duty after the government betrayed them and essentially threw them to the proverbial wolves. However, even though they were wronged in the past, Steel Team became humanity’s last hope at retrieving a substance of great importance after a horde of Xenomorphs completely took over a Weyland-Yutani lab containing a drug that is basically described as humanity’s salvation–a drug refined from Ovomorphs.


The drug described in this Alien issue is one that is said to give people significant resistance to radiation levels, which would make humanity’s expansion across the galaxy that much more efficient as they could terraform different planets no matter how inhospitable without worry of dying of exposure to radiation. While the effects of this drug don't sound similar to those associated with taking Xeno-Zip or Royal Jelly, they all share the same starting point: the Ovomorph. If Weyland-Yutani can synthesize a life-saving drug from the Ovomorph, then it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that they can also replicate the substances seen in Dark Horse’s Alien universe.

The current Alien series is published by Marvel Comics which is owned by Disney which recently acquired 20th Century Fox and all of that company’s properties, including Alien. This means that anything that happens within this comic series is Alien canon, but real-world business dealing isn’t the only reason that’s true. Throughout the ongoing series, the events of Alien and Aliens are promptly featured in this storyline’s past, meaning what happened in those films had an impact on the wider world of this comic. With the establishment of Marvel Comics’ new Alien series, the forgotten lore of Dark Horse’s Royal Jelly was lost forever in a sea of non-canonical content–but this latest issue could bring this absolutely terrifying aspect of the Xenomorph into the official Alien canon.