Written by: Dan Abnett
Art by: Brian Albert Thies and Rain Beredo
Publisher: Dark Horse
In my last review of Predator: Life and Death I worried about this comic series not breaking enough molds. To be sure, it does fall into some common Aliens vs. Predator tropes: The Predators hunt, Weyland-Yutani suck eggs, there’s some Engineer tech, and no one really knows what the hell is going on. However, I can say that molds have been broken, and it is pretty damn awesome.
In almost all media featuring Predators, a space marine battalion has never gone head-to-head with the technology-advanced hunters. This week, that changed.
The first seven pages of P:LaD #3 are a full-on war of hardened space marines and Predators, and now that age old question has been answered: Can humans beat Predators if they’ve got the skill and the gear? (Granted, the question isn’t that old if you’ve played any of the AvP games excluding the third one where the Predators were overpowered as hell.)
The battle is glorious in its writing, style, and execution. There are so many little clever details, and the Predators all look nothing short of badass. A few are maybe too colorful for my liking, but between the crazy dreadlocks and even crazier bladed-weapons, the creatures look better than ever. It’s nice to get some unique designs on them that aren’t cartoon-levels of nonsensical.
Sadly, the comic takes a bit of a dive after that as the WY henchman acts like a WY henchman. He exists to drive the plot and nothing more, but man does that show. At least Captain Paget handles him well.
Our other plot involving Rucker advances in some really nice ways too. Dan Abnett is giving us an example of space marine machismo backfiring in a very nasty, very sad way, and I’m really curious to see what Rucker will do as this series continues on. There’s so much potential here.
While P:LaD #3 has some slipups in the middle, it’s still a very solid comic with some very solid ideas and artwork. I like that it’s breaking some molds to the series, and I’m excited to see how it ends and what series comes next.
Well, we know how it will end: Xenomorphs!
