Written By: Chris Warner
Art By: Francisco Ruiz Velasco
Published By: Dark Horse
I’m a huge fan of the Predator franchise, but I will in no way claim the series to be smart (or in some cases good). The first movie, while fun, quotable, and iconic as hell, is also straight machismo cheese and violence. It knows what it is, and what it is is stupid 80’s action. The rest of the series is only marginally better, and even so, it’s still not smart. It’s fun though.
Because that’s the thing of it. I can forgive a lot if I’m having fun and the writing is good.
Predator: Hunters #1 is not well written. It’s also not very fun.
Let’s forget about the really contrived, poorly written dialogue for a second and start with a basic rule of storytelling: You have to earn your exposition dumps. A first issue that’s more telling than showing is a bad first issue. (Hell, any issue with more telling than showing is a bad issue, but if you’re four or five deep and the facts are interesting, I’ll give you a pass.)
There are around eight pages of telling in Predator: Hunters #1.
And you know what the biggest problem is? It’s that the information so cavalierly vomited onto the page is halfway interesting and the premise behind it could be fun. We have a bunch of mercenaries who were attacked by Predators banding together to kill them, but I only need a sentence of that. A montage of backstory doesn’t make me like any of them because there’s no character there. It’s just telling me facts. It’s boring.
A Predator thrashing a drug cartel or destroying a platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan should not be boring.
To Chris Warner’s defense, he only has five issues to tell this story. In an ideal world, each of these characters would get at least half a comic devoted to them, but this, this isn’t fun. I’d rather not know this information and have half the cast remain mysterious than spend eight pages reading facts about them.
I suppose we could round back to the dialogue, but a character unironically saying, “Not even God can help him now” should give you a good picture of what we’re working with.
Also, the main character puts his sunglasses on and then says a cool thing like he was ripped out of CSI: Miami.
Now, to Francisco Ruiz Velasco’s credit, the artwork here is really pretty great. I love the bright colors, and the backstory vomit at least gives us a lot of cool scenery to look at. And his Predator designs are top-notch. They’re maybe a bit bulky or busy, but they look cool as hell, the kind of Predators I’d want Neca figures of to stand next my army of other Predators.
I am hoping that Hunters #1 just has a bad case of first-issue blues and the mini will really take off next time. I’m not entirely sure it’s capable of that, but I’ll be around for the next issue just in case.
