Ant’s Rant: Predators – The Prequel and Sequel Comics

If you’ve been reading my reviews, you may have caught my review for Predators. You can see that I loved Predators. I also happen to love comics, go figure. Boy was I ever shocked to discover the two have been married and now there’s a comic adaptation of the movie, as well as a prequel series and a sequel one-shot by Dark Horse. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

I bought the prequel comics when they were released, before the  movie was released. It basically exists to give a back story to some of the characters (namely Noland and Royce) as well as explain the man that set the traps we see in the movie and detail his death (his name’s Drake). It was a decent series to complement the movie. Not the greatest, since it’s really not that good if you have no intention of seeing the movie or reading it’s adaptation. Then again, this is Dark Horse. They’re really not known for the world’s finest comics. I mean, these guys made Batman Vs Predator and Predator Vs Superman and ALIENS VS PREDATORS VS TERMINATORS!

First I’ll get into the prequel. Each issue (there’s 4) is broken into two stories, one for Drake and one for Royce (Adrian Brody’s character). Drake’s story is  basically that of a Navy SEAL stationed in Afghanistan finding himself on another world being hunted by Predators. Drake meets Noland (played by Lawrence Fishburne in the movie) who’s been surviving on the hunter planet basically as a veteran for a long time. They have their differences so Drake parts ways with Noland shortly after to hunt the Predators himself, using some Predator technology he stole from Noland on his way out. He sets a bunch of traps using the jungle as his tools and weaponry, but eventually the Predators get the best of him and we find his dead body and all of his traps later in the movie. The other story is Royce’s, but we already know what happens to him on the hunter’s planet if we’ve seen the movie. The rest is just his back story.

What I like about the prequel comic is that we do get some more story out of this movie, and we get to see some Predator technology from Predator 2 that was totally left out of the film (Smart Disc and Combi-Stick Spear). What I don’t like is that there are some contradictions with the film, as though the artists and writers didn’t fully comprehend the film before making this series. They did a good job with this, but it just doesn’t stand up as a stand-alone series. Then again, I don’t think it’s supposed to.

See that beauty? That’s Mr. Black (yes that’s his official name), aka The Berserker Predator from the film. He’s not in the comic, since he doesn’t really survive the film, and this is the sequel to said film in comic form. That is the first thing I dislike about this comic.

The story of this one-shot is that Royce and Isabelle survived in the movie, and they have to find some way to get off the planet and go home. It offers some nice character development between the two as the only human survivors. It has some decent action sequences as well. However, that’s about all I can say is good about it. Aside from Mr. Black on the cover, there’s another thing that just irked me about this. It appears that Goro from Mortal Kombat is now a Predator in this book! That’s right, they have to kill a 4-armed Super-Predator! I have no objections to there being two different twos of Predators in the series (big guys and little guys), but when you start giving them extra limbs, that is just downright stretching and farfetched!

Another thing that bothered me about this book is the ending. The film’s ending was a letdown, understandably since nobody made it back to Earth. The same goes for this book. The characters find themselves in the same situation in the end as they did in the beginning. The story itself really had no development, it was just the characters themselves that did.

Finally, there’s a huge contradiction in the story that is a deal breaker for me. In the end of the film, the Predators are dropping more boxes and more humans. In the beginning of this book, there’s no humans being dropped off. What happened to those people? Did all of their parachutes get stuck like the one man in the film? Were they all wiped out in seconds upon landing? Where were they and why was there no mention of them?

Here’s the verdict on these comics: the prequels are worth reading if you have seen or plan to see the movie or read the adaptation. The sequel isn’t worth reading. I LOVED the movie and I can’t even say I’m happy to have read this sequel. I’d rather just wait for the sequel film to release and take that as my continuation of the story, rather than accept this. This was just made for people who really needed more from the film’s unsatisfying ending, and only left you even more unsatisfied.