Written by: Dan Abnett
Art by: Brian Albert Thies and Rain Beredo
Publisher: Dark Horse
When Dark Horse released their Fire and Stone series last year, they rotated the comics every month, meaning that Prometheus came first, Aliens second, Aliens vs. Predator third, and Predator fourth. This was cool at first, but it quickly became a little hard to remember what was going on in previous stories since the wait between installments was four months or more.
It looks like they’ve done away with that. This month is Predator: Life and Death #2, continuing right where we left off from the first issue.
In my last review, I said that I was pretty well fine with the Predator side of this series not breaking many molds. Give me hunters, prey, and some machismo. Well, after some thought, I’m thinking I need to revoke that. Yeah fun is fun, but I’m also kind of sick of the standard Predator story. In this case, the marine are going to fight the big creatures at some point, but right now we have to go through a bunch of setup and politics. How fun!
There’s an Engineer ship! Cool. The Weyland-Yutani guy says it belongs to him; the Marines say they have the right to revoke it because military rules, though it sounds like that’s not so true. WT has some big pull or something. The actual reasoning is less important than the threat: The WT civilian who is in way over his head also has way more pull than he rightfully should.
Well that’s not good. Though it also isn’t that new. Burke served this role in Aliens pretty well, though he was a bit more slimy on the surface whereas Lorimer is just clueless to the dangers going on around him.
But like I said, this issue is mostly setup, with the first big chunk devoted to a now-rescued illegal prospector. He’s scared and in shock, and given that he’s in a Predator comic, he has good reason to be. The bad news is the conversation is—plotwise—pretty standard; the good news is that it’s really well written.
Mr. Goode establishes himself and what’s going on very well, and I appreciate that. I feel for him. I hope he doesn’t die (though I won’t lose any sleep if he does).
It honestly isn’t until the last handful of pages, after a nice battle, that the comic starts to maybe venture into a new direction. I really, really hope it does too, because while I love the franchise and am perfectly fine with retelling a few choice stories over and over, I’d like something new. Though at this point, I don’t know how easy it is to do “new” with the Predator species and not come off as bad fanfiction.
I’m still hopeful for a turnaround though. The characters and dialogue are too well written for this to turn into a boring plotline.
