Would you like a side of Prometheus with your Aliens Vs Predator?
Creative Staff:
Story: Chris Sebela
Art: Ariel Olivetti
What They Say:
As the mercenary crew of the Perses leave the horror of LV-223 behind them, one passenger reveals a terrible new danger, and the crew soon find themselves in a deadly struggle between predator and prey!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having enjoyed the Aliens: Fire and Stone opening salvo, I figured I’d jump into another one of the runs here that’s coming out for this interconnected series of miniseries. While I have a lot of fond memories of those early Aliens books that Dark Horse put out, there’s also that affection for that ready to film first Aliens Vs. Predator book that was released oh so many years ago. I didn’t stick with other runs long for various reasons, but I always loved that these two films ended up going against each other to essentially enrich a universe in full to work with. Now tying things to the events of Prometheus as well, you get something that feels even more expansive that has you wanting a fully formed and cohesive world to be built to tell stories in. And that’s what we get here, albeit in a really complicated way.
Mostly because the events here take place after the Prometheus: Fire and Stone series ends, which has three more issues still to come out. That complication doesn’t help and feels like it tells you to wait until that ends before reading it. You basically feel like you’re coming in at an odd place, especially if you haven’t read it, since after seeing a spot of Predator fun with them hunting some dangerous beasts on some other world, we spend most of the issue dealing with the fallout from the Prometheus series arc. That has us on board the Geryon Armada ship, which has everyone now essentially going into a cold sleep in order to get back home so they can take the alien tech and bioweapons they found and sell those so they can retire in style. It’s a familiar thing across a lot of series in this shared universe and totally understandable in a lot of ways with human nature.
The arc here largely focuses on one of the guys on the ship named Galgo, who is ensuring everyone is in cold sleep and taken care of before he deals with the problem person of Francis in his special cell. Francis apparently let something loose before but wasn’t aware of it, so he’s going from a holding cell to a cold sleep cell to let things get dealt with on Earth. Unfortunately, something that they dealt with before has come back to haunt them. That something is Elden, which seems like it’s an artificial life form that ended up with an upgrade from whatever Francis let loose that has also now left him in control of a number of xenomorphs. They’re almost like pets and all Elden wants is to use them to get Elden. With everyone in cold sleep, and Galgo pleased as hell to get rid of Francis rather than have another fight, it seems like a welcome arrangement. Not that you’d trust someone like Elden all that much.
While they do make a deal, it’s interesting to see things go to hell pretty quick, though neither side is sure why. Elden has seeded his xenomorphs about to give him an advantage and Galgo has alien weaponry to give him a fighting chance, but the ship also has the invisible Predator’s now running about as they see some really good game to hunt. The resulting confusion and chaos definitely makes for a frantic time, particularly when you add in the other human survivors that are dealing with some of the wounded before they can go into any form of cold sleep, and there’s a slew of targets, hunters and guardian robots wandering around to make things an utter mess of violence.
In Summary:
After the enjoyment I got out of the Aliens: Fire and Stone series, I was definitely keen on checking out more. This series seems like it’s being released too soon though as it takes place after the events of the fourth Prometheus: Fire and Stone issue and that has me wondering how much this spoils that since I haven’t read that yet. The combination of multiple alien races here definitely provides for some good material and action, but there’s a disconnect for me since I have no real clue who Galgo and Francis are and there’s no real exposition to clue us in to it all with why they’re in the situation they’re in. Sebela keeps things moving pretty well with the story and we get basic enough motivations out of Galgo to connect with him and Olivetti definitely hits the right look for the book with the variety they have to deal with as well as handling the choreography in a solid way. I’m just more wary of this now as it feels like I’m dropped into the middle of something and am scrambling to figure it out and make sense of it.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: October 8th, 2014
MSRP: $3.50
