The impact of Francis’ mistakes continue to haunt him and many others.
Creative Staff:
Story: Chris Sebela
Art: Ariel Olivetti
What They Say:
A terminally ill scientist’s desperate experiment yields deadly results, and offers the Predators a chance to hunt an invincible new game!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Aliens Vs. Predator arc of the Fire and Stone event has been the weaker of the stories for me, partially because it came out too early compared to other books and spoiled parts of those that hadn’t finished yet. With events on board the Geryon moving at a quick pace, we’ve seen how badly things have gone for those aboard, particularly before as we saw Galgo do what he had to in order to survive. While they made it off of LV-223 in some form with a small crew of deserters looking just to survive, they’ve had worse and worse luck with each new movement now that there are Predators aboard as well. Connecting that with what Elden is up to just makes it all quite disastrous when you consider what he’s done with the Xenomorphs back on LV-223 already.
Elden is certainly enjoying watching what’s going on between the Xenomorphs and the Predators, though he’s aligned himself more with the Xenomorphs since his time on LV-223. So it’s no surprise that he takes a few whacks at the Predator’s that he comes across. What he really wants to do though is just deal with Francis, who is doing his royal best to hide as much as he can in the ducts and other areas in the ship to try and avoid him, but that can go on for only so long. And that’s frustrating Elden a bit on top of the other fights going on, which in turn has him getting involved with those just to put these distractions down once and for all. There’s an expansive fight between the three species that goes on here, each side doing their best, but Elden continues to come out on top, though one Predator holds his own and even marks Elden in a ritual while providing for trophies as well.
Where things get weird is in a couple of areas. For Francis he’s trying to figure out how to use the accelerant to stop Elden and understand what he’s become.That’s useful enough in itself to be sure and provides for someone other than Elden to talk. The other area is a bit weirder as we see how one of the Predators got infected with the accelerant himself, and is now gurgling and bubbling into some kind of larger and more twisted Predator. It’s a different look to be sure and it’s certainly intriguing, especially when he confronts another of his kind and we see the difference in size there, and that he’s not exactly on the same side as the rest of his kind anymore. It’s not exactly an Engineer-Predator hybrid, or at least it doesn’t look that way, but what it is definitely is more frightening than your traditional Predator.
In Summary:
Having Francis as our only human contact here isn’t exactly the best thing as it’s hard to like him and I’m not actively rooting for him to survive considering some of the actions he took back on LV-223. With this issue, it’s more about Elden and the Predators for the most part as Francis tries to survive and find a way to push back against them to ensure his survival. Elden’s just as bad as Francis in a lot of ways as he talks a whole lot and is just generally unlikable for different reasons, but he at least has a reason to be ticked about everything. Yet with what he’s become, you’d hope that he’d find a more constructive way of moving forward beyond something so base as revenge itself.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: November 5th, 2014
MSRP: $3.50
