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Publisher: Dark Horse
Writer: Randy Stradley
Artist: Rick Leonardi
Cover: Raymond Swanland

Spoilers!

“Three World War pt 3”: The phrase “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is no truer than with this series, as Machiko and her crew, along with Colonial Marines, are seeking help from Predators on the planet Ryushi where she first met the hunter species ten years prior.  The last issue she established that she’s worthy of an audience with them; now to see if they will assist against the Killer Predators that have attacked a human colony.  Well, after their talk the Hunters do decide to help because of their deep hatred for the Killer clans and their violation of their code.  And to seal the deal, fate has decided to throw in a rampaging Queen Alien struggling to escape her Predator captors while her “children” assist, which forces the Predators and humans to work together to control the situation.  Lives are lost on both sides, but the goal is accomplished, and seven weeks later both groups are on their way to annihilate the Killer clans and their Alien slaves.

So now we get a little more momentum going in this issue, as its been a slow build so far; but as much as I wanted to see violent, bloody action from the beginning, it was tempered with the knowledge that this needs to be a good story to make everything relevant and worth buying.  Stradley is making this one of the better AvP stories to come out in a while, and my reservations have pretty much been put to rest in regards of if he’d be able to deliver a good story after his lengthy hiatus from the series. One thing that stands out in this series is the great character moments, and Stradley has managed to make even the most overly used character traits seem interesting within this human cast…which will most likely be whittled down to but a few by the end of the story.

The artwork provided by Leonardi still holds up in this issue, but is not up to the level of detail and crispness of the previous two issues.  This takes away from what could have been even better work from him, though I am so glad he has opted not to use the fishnets the Predators seem to wear.  I’ve always hated those and it just doesn’t seem right for one of the galaxy’s most vicious aliens to wear a fishnet bodysuit under their armor.  I was a little confused as to why he decided to show emotion with the eyes of the Predator masks, which just doesn’t seem right since it’s an inanimate object that can’t emote.  Showing the emotion in Machiko’s eyes behind the mask is just fine, but the shape of the eye slits shouldn’t change.  For the rest of the series I would just like Leonardi to get back to the artistic level of the previous issues and some of his better work I’ve seen in the past.

Overall this was a good issue and a much needed setup to establish a certain amount of credibility as to how these two groups are actually going to work together.  Though I’m not sure it’s going to remain a smooth alliance between them, it’s gonna be an interesting one.  There are still several questions to be answered in this series, so I’m glad that even with all of the action on the horizon that there is still an actual story to be told.  With Stradley writing this I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait.

Check out our reviews of AvP: Three World War #1 and #2, as well as our interview with series writer, Randy Stradley!

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