Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Dan Abnett
Artist: Brian Albert Thies
Editor: Randy Stradley
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Price: $3.99

In Predator Life and Death #1 colonial Marines battle extra-terrestrials for possession of a mysterious spaceship in this continuing movie tie-in featuring those titanic space nasties Predators and Aliens. We are told that this new story cycle begins approximately forty-three years after the events in Aliens and just over a year after the events in Fire and Stone. How geeky is that?

Predator Life and Death #1 is written by Britain’s own Dan Abnett, whose CV reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary comic books: 2000 AD, Punisher, X-Men, Doctor Who and Legion of Super Heroes to name but a few. So Predator Life and Death #1 should be a slam-dunk, sure-fire, straight in at number one hit. So why is it mainly a yawn fest of lengthy conversations, dingy space marine combat fatigues and hardware; with little or no action until the last couple of pages? Partly, I suppose, because Predator Life and Death #1 sticks with the spirit of its movie origins, this is the sort of thing that would take up about five minutes of screen time max but takes a whole lot longer to read.

Brian Albert Thies’s artwork for Predator Life and Death #1 fails to be dynamic enough to hold any interest by itself. The other problem with Predator Life and Death #1 stems from making the title character a bad guy, who just kills things, which means the heroes in Predator Life and Death #1 need to be super interesting to make it a realistic contest. However, those heroes end up looking like cannon fodder. I found myself rooting for the Predators from the start.

Predator Life and Death #1 offers the full monty but delivers something stuck and moribund in its own original source material. Predator Life and Death #1 needs to breakaway and be it’s own thing.

Reviewer: Gary Orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker