Unpacking a lot of information.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Abnett
Art: Andrea Mutti
Colors: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Michael Heisler
What They Say:
The Colonial Marines join forces with the survivors of the Fire and Stone story cycle and make a fateful decision to steal the Engineer’s ship. But a second Engineer has awakened, and he’s on the hunt for humans!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Prometheus segment of Life and Death has brought a couple of different teams together and I loved the kind of surreal feeling that some of them had upon seeing the Predator that Galgo and the others had with him. With this being part seven of seventeen, Abnett is in a bit of an information dump mode here, though part of it is just catching us up with a lot of things from across both overall arcs that have brought us to this place. Which gives Andrea Mutti the hard job of making scenes with people standing around talking engaging for the reader since there’s a lot of dialogue. Thankfully, he does just that and gets to mix in some fun with Engineers and xenomorphs alike.
The basic introductions we get here are solid enough and the fun of Roth and his team trying to figure out what’s going on is welcome. That his team are all wary to say the least of the Predator named Ahab is definitely fun, but it’s well balanced by seeing how Galgo and the others are all pretty much on the side of working with Ahab because he’s definitely highly skilled at dealing with the xenomorphs. Seeing how this team of survivors from the Fire and Stone cycle have found a place to exist and built up defenses is definitely nicely done as it has a real survivalist feeling about it with few creature comforts and the understanding of how tenuous their existence is. This isn’t an area where we get to know these characters as that was all established in the previous cycle, but it works because this kind of property is one where deep knowledge of character is more a hindrance than a help.
Where this installment works very well for me is in how it deals with two things. First, seeing the Engineer and his wordless segments as he awakens another of his kind and prepares more containers is definitely chilling because two of them means something big is coming. And even the human side of this realizes that quickly as it changes their plans. The other is that we get the humans talking about their place in the universe because of what they’ve learned about the Engineers. That they do begin to wonder if they’re just creations of the Engineers and then trying to suss out why they’re being dealt with as they are opens up a lot of good questions that we’ll only get answers within the movies about. That the characters here talk about it for a bit is definitely fun since for some it’s certainly a shock to the system and a change of worldviews and in its own way it puts a lot of them on the same level playing field, especially if Predators are a creation as well. If they’re all children of the Engineers in a sense, you can see some interesting paths forward in storytelling.
In Summary:
This installment of the Prometheus arc of Life and Death is about some stage setting and getting the right pieces into place. When you look at this as part of a seventeen part story that comes after the same amount from the Fire and Stone cycle, there’s a lot to like about it as it’s building and weaving some interesting things. And sometimes you have to take the time to just stop and connect the characters and their stories as Abnett and Mutti do here. I like these particular survivors so far and I like that we get to see a bit of what’s going on with those that have fallen on the way on this world just to remind us that there have been losses. It’ll be interesting to see how it works with Ahab in the mix with the new arrivals as we’ve definitely got some balance and understanding with Galgo and his group and that’s something that comes with time. I’m definitely excited to see where this cycle is going to go – and already hoping there’s another coming after it.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: August 10th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
