Publisher: Dark Horse
Writer: John Arcudi
Artist: Javier Saltares
Cover: Raymond Swanland
“Prey To The Heavens pt 4”: Being hunted by one Predator will pretty much ruin anybody’s day. So add to that being caught in the middle of a Predator feud, it’s hot as hell, your high powered weapons have been disabled, communications have been cut off, and your only Predator ally is now dead. This is the situation that our group of diminishing private contractors find themselves in as everything hits the fan and gets torn to shreds.
Thorpe is running for his life back to base with a last ditch plan to try to at least get the remaining guys out of this fight alive. While on the way in, he orders a soldier to put his thermal goggles back on regardless of the headache they’re giving him; maybe if he left them on he would have seen the cloaked Predators running towards his position. As the Predators continue to use the soldiers for target practice, Thorpe puts his plan into effect, that hinges on him having the correct coordinates to the location of the scrambler device the Predators are using to make their weapons ineffective and block communications. After successfully pulling it off, the radios come back online and a rescue team will be there in an hour. Thorpe knows that’s way too long, and while urging for a faster pick up time he loses yet another man. He then radios his contact in the armory to get the weapons back online, but too bad for him a Predator is about to introduce his laser to that guy’s head. The Predator takes out the armory, forcing the remaining guys to fall back to sick bay where Thorpe has decided they will make their stand. Lucky for him a very inebriated Briggs is driving a tank, and has a thermal lock on the five remaining Predators which are on the sick bay roof.
It gets pretty wild at this point, and by the time rescue arrives they have more questions than answers. Problem was: so did I. I have no idea what happened to Thorpe after he curb stomped a Predator and Briggs rode off with two Predators still on top of his tank. There isn’t any type of explanation as we are treated to a Predator watching the rescue team from the shadows. Arcudi may be setting us up for another series which will answer my questions, but for now I’m disgruntled to say the least. However, I’m man enough to admit that it’s my fault; I went into the issue with the expectation that this would be your usual Predator mini-series with a nice little tidy ending. So, I really can’t be upset that Arcudi decided to throw a little twist at the end there! Saltares keeps his visuals looking great from start to finish with this series, and though I still don’t like some of the design elements, his work here is just great to look at.
I’m hoping now that Dark Horse will finally visit the Predator home planet instead of bringing all of this carnage and death to ours and further develop these guys. It’s been 20 years since the Predator debut, and we know next to nothing about them, only getting a glimpse here and there throughout the years. So how about it DH: can we get a day in the life of a Predator series?
Infinite Speech
infinitespeech@comicattack.net
Good review Speech! I’m really pumped about the video game coming out soon.
The trailers for the game look great Billy, hopefully game play will be just as fun!
The covers are phenomenal.
thanks for the kind words
javier saltares
you’re welcome Javier! Thanks for taking the time out to come by and take a look at the review!
Keep up the awesome work Javier!!
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It’s funny…from the thumbnail, it looks like a really well rendered, really mad hamster.
lol @ Ken now thats the only thing I see when I look at it lol
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