It’s time to blow this pop stand.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Abnett
Art: Brian Thies
Colors: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Michael Heisler
What They Say:
The battle between the Colonial Marines and the Predators opens on two fronts as the humans attempt to split the enemy’s force and take possession of the mysterious horseshoe-shaped alien spaceship! Getting their hands on the alien technology will be a huge victory for the humans . . . or will it?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Predator: Life and Death has worked fairly well in this arc for me so far in seeing how the various sides have interacted with each other and handled the situation. Even the fact that nobody has just outright shot Lorimer makes sense, though he’s like the Paul Reiser character in Aliens in that you know nothing he does will be good in the long run. Abnett has captured the right feeling for the characters working here and how they’d handle this compared to our usual corporate teams or space jockeys while Thies has definitely given this a great classic jungle feeling without being crazy over the top – aided by Beredo’s naturalistic color work that doesn’t go for expansive overly vibrant pop with its design.
With everything focused on securing the alien ship, rightly or wrongly, it’s exciting to see the team moving into this and holding their own for the most part. These are a team of bad motherfuckers as they’d say and they know what they’re doing and have learned from their losses so far in dealing with the Predators. That’s not to say problems aren’t going to happen, especially with a few civilians in the mix, but it’s largely hitting the right tone here. Balancing that team out with the other team and all the action going on there really hits a sweet spot because they’re able to just be right in the thick of it. It’s hell but you also get that sense that there’s some real excitement coming from some of them in dealing with creatures like this, a challenge unlike any other – plus the need for some payback as well with what happened to some of their comrades earlier.
The forward momentum of the book is fantastic, however, as we get events on the alien ship moving quickly. With the idea of getting this off the ground and to Ganymede station, a lot of work was done by the previous group here before the hunters showed up and Roth is surprisingly able to get things moving there, though it’s not without an intense and wonderfully chaotic fight from Thies that delivers in spades. Of course, there’s the nod toward what’s in the “sarcophagus” within there that we know will come to life in the next Prometheus series as part of Life and Death, but the visual of the ship heading off while Paget and her crew are dealing with the Predators down below and their need to get back to their ship is really well played. It’s a strong opening act to this storyline overall and has me curious to see where the remaining thirteen parts will take us.
In Summary:
Predator: Life and Death has a similar feeling to how the Fire and Stone event worked which means there’s good and bad here. The Predator arc is solid through and through with what it does as Abnett and Thies made for a great series of action events built upon some intriguing ideas that can move forward – all of which works off of events we saw in Fire and Stone. I like both sides of what we get here with Roth and Paget’s groups and where their stories can go. I do suspect that similar to Fire and Stone this will all work a lot tighter when read in full, but there’s a lot of fun to take in throughout the individual installments a well.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: June 1st, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
