Predator: Hunters #1 Review
Written by Chris Warner
Art from Francisco Ruiz Velasco
Letters by Michael Heisler
Review by Jason Kahler
I won’t lie: I love me some Predator. I was too young to see the 1987 original film in theaters, but I don’t remember ever not knowing about that movie and the awesome monster that starred in it. He’d later go on to be governor of California.
The guy in the rubber suit was cool, too.
The movies that followed expanded on the universe of the Predators, but the real source of Predator-lore for the last several years has been Dark Horse Comics. They’ve kept the fires burning (it messes with a Predator’s infrared vision) across several mini-series and are available in assorted omnibuses. (Archie vs. Predator, for real, is worth a look!)
Predator: Hunters #1 is the start of a new mini-series, and it promises to “turn the tables” on the alien monsters. An editor’s note at the back of the book describes the familiar path of the Predator stories: something grisly happens and an unsuspecting protagonist eventually figures out Predators are aliens.
Hunters has a different premise. Here, some humans know all about the Predators, and they’ve formed a super elite Predator-killing ultra team to finally take the fight to the aliens.
The “hunters,” after all, but maybe not what we would have expected.
The first issue does a nice job of doing everything it needs to do. Establish the characters and their world. Move some story along. Teach us what we need to know.
(If you want to know how I think a first issue shouldn’t handle its business, I wrote about it here.)
The art is solid, a bit angular. Velasco does a nice job of depicting some varied locales. It’s a Predator story, so we get some blood and a severed head or two, but none of it feels gratuitous or cheap.
Warner’s dialogue is crisp. He handles some characters’ casual racism well. Without blinking, but without playing it for shocks. There are hooks into previous Dark Horse Predator books that deep fans will enjoy, but new readers don’t need too much history to understand the book.
I do think the book assumes you know what a Predator is, but I also think that’s the book’s audience.
Verdict: Buy, especially if you’re a Predator fan.
