Predator [2023] #1 - Marvel Comics

PREDATOR No. 1, May 2023

Described by “Marvel Worldwide” in their solicitation synopsis as “an explosive new series”, Ed Brisson’s storyline for Issue One of “Predator” certainly lives up to the New York City-based publisher's promise. In fact, fans of Twentieth Century Studios’ science-fiction franchise will probably have to wrack their brains to recall a comic book set upon “a planet far from Earth” which portrays quite so many Yautja-flavoured detonations, decapitations and disembowelments; “Looked like the jungle came alive and gutted another soldier right in front of me.”

Much of these mutilating massacres are due in large to the thirty-page-periodical’s plot replicating the insane action shown upon the silver screen in Nimród Antal’s 2010 film “Predators”. But unlike the $127 million worldwide grossing movie, “The Preserve” doesn’t allow any time for its audience to build-up much of a connection with its opening cast of eight strangers, preferring instead to repeatedly surprise the reader by having each and every one of them pitilessly obliterated by the Predators whenever the script suggests a character is actually going to become the central protagonist.

This literal meat-grinder, which is repeatedly fed fresh victims whenever the group’s number starts to dwindle, can potentially become a bit tiresome after the umpteenth evisceration. However, the pace of the slaughter taking place within the tropical game park is so intense that most bibliophiles probably won’t have time to be phased by the narrative’s somewhat repetitive nature, and instead just hope that their favourite survivor will actually make it through their first day in the extra-terrestrial jungle without being carved into pieces by their insanely deadly abductors or the odd, multi-tentacled monstrosity which they just happen to inadvertently blunder into.

Disconcertingly helping the Joe Shuster Award-nominee depict such utter slaughter is Netho Diaz, who truly helps establish an incredibly intense and terrifying atmosphere straight from the comic’s opening sequence. Able to pencil as many human internal organs spilling out across a flora-filled floor as a panel will allow, the Brazilian illustrator is as merciless with his no-holds barred artwork as the publication’s titular characters are at remorselessly gutting their hapless prey whenever one is foolish enough to try to make a futile last stand.

Writer: Ed Brisson, Penciler: Netho Diaz, and Inkers: Belardino Bradbo with Victor Nava