Predator #2 - Marvel Comics

PREDATOR No. 2, November 2022

Despite Ed Brisson’s narrative for Issue Two of “Predator” solely focusing upon Theta Berwick’s grim journey across the snow-packed tundra planet of Tusket, it’s highly doubtful that many of its readers were able to put it down until they’d perused the publication’s final pulse-pounding panel. Indeed, just as soon as the sole survivor’s “old, slow-as-molasses rust bucket” crash-lands upon the bone-chilling world, this comic firmly grabs the attention as its Canadian author pens its pilot desperately trying to save the artificial intelligence which she sentimentality sees as “the last thing I have left of my parents.”

Similarly as well-written though is the warrior’s slog through the depressingly white landscape which stands between her and the Astar Industries installation that houses the replacement spaceship parts she now needs. This oppressive, speechless sequence could so easily have become a boring carousel of lifeless monotony as the central character stoically trudges onwards without food for days on end. However, the human hunter’s fortunate encounter with a large horned boar, and then subsequent battle against a pair of out-of-their-depth extra-terrestrials, provides the audience with plenty of much-needed action (and even a little dialogue) to keep them wholly hooked throughout the journey.

Without a doubt however, it is this twenty-page periodical’s final third which really helps make this book so enthrallingly intense, as Theta finally arrives at her destination and discovers that a Predator has been there before her. This shocking revelation strongly suggests that Berwick quite possibly isn’t actually the one doing the hunting, especially when she spots the merciless Yautja who has slaughtered all the Astar Industries employees and hung their lifeless corpses from the ceiling is carrying her lost hand-axe. 

Genuinely helping any bibliophile physically shiver at both the comic’s cold climate and spine-tingling terror is Kev Walker’s artwork, which does a tremendous job in selling all of the varied adversities this publication’s protagonist has to face single-handedly. Foremost of the “Magic: The Gathering” illustrator’s triumphs has to be the sheer savagery and initial frustration felt by the daughter of interstellar surveyors when she is surprised by two bolt-gun firing aliens in the wilderness. Caught completely off-guard due to a nightmare-filled sleep, the ordinarily deadly killer is visibly furious at how slow she is to react to the danger she’s suddenly in; “That hoverbike -- I’m taking it -- That’s a given. That’s not a question. That bike belongs to Astar Industries. How do you have it?”

The regular cover art of "PREDATOR" #2 by Leinil Francis Yu & Sunny Gho