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Publisher: Dark Horse
Writer(s): Marc Andreyko & David Lapham
Artist(s): Guilherme Balbi & Gabriel Guzman
Cover: Paul Lee

“Welcome to the Jungle pt 1”: The attack begins here with Predators #1, which will be a four issue weekly release leading right into the movie Predators from Robert Rodriguez.  This is a prequel story which introduces us to Drake as he’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on.  The last thing he clearly remembers is that he and his team were fighting in Afghanistan, things went dark after an explosion, and then all of them were falling to the ground.  After landing, one of the team is immediately introduced to the wrong end of a laser, and it’s business as usual when being hunted by a Predator.  Over the course of a few days the ranks become smaller and smaller, but after burying his friend, Drake runs into someone who may or may not help him…but we’ll have to wait to find out.

Mark Andreyko’s story reads pretty quick with much of it relying on the action scenes provided by Guilherme Balbi to move it along.  There was the brief moment between Drake and his friend where we got a look into his character, but this part of the prequel is fast paced and it’s not the place for deep characterization.  Balbi’s work is good from scene to scene and he was able to get a close resemblance to Laurence Fishburne’s character later on in the story.  Balbi did however make several of the death scenes as visceral as possible as the team was killed off, and he did it without blurring all of his shots but making almost everything clear and clean.  At this time in the story it’s not clear if the team is being hunted by one or more of the creatures so hopefully we get that info next issue.

The back up story, A Predatory Life pt 1, is written by David Lapham, and is where we get a brief look at Royce (Adrien Brody’s character in Predators) as he’s hired to find and kill a man some might call a terrorist and others a freedom fighter.  To Royce though, it doesn’t matter what you call his target, because this guy and anyone with him is dead, and he will just collect his money and go.  It’s a pretty quick five pages, but still a pretty decent set up for what’s to come next week.  The visuals by Guzman are done well, and he was actually able to nail Brody’s likeness in the main story.  You can actually check out this back up in our preview of Predator #1.

Now, anyone who expects something other than what you’re getting here may want to look elsewhere, because it’s a formula that we’ve seen in Predator comics and movies alike- but that doesn’t make this a bad thing at all.  You shouldn’t expect anything more than for these books to set you up for the movie, and so far it’s doing a good job at keeping the interest there.  If you’re already a fan of the franchise, then you probably won’t be disappointed, and if you’re new to the Predator mythos, then I’d suggest giving this prequel series a try before seeing the movie, just to get a richer experience.  This particular story has already thrown several twists and changes (albeit minor) into what we’ve seen before, as the title may have a double meaning, not just singling out the creatures hunting the humans, but the prey themselves.

Infinite Speech
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