Predator #5 - Marvel Comics

PREDATOR No. 5, February 2023

Exclusively focused upon Theta Nedra Berwick’s incarceration at the hands of Captain Ferrier on board the Astar Industries Recon Ship, the Turnstone, Ed Brisson’s script for Issue Five of “Predator” probably had its readers crying out in frustrated anger as much as the Sandpiper’s sole survivor does throughout the comic. Indeed, this incredibly word-heavy, twenty-page conversational piece seems to almost purposely go around and around in circles, simply so the book’s bibliophiles can wholly sympathise with its central protagonist’s repeated demands to be let free before another Yautja descends upon the frozen planet of Tusket.

Disappointingly however, whether intentional or not, British artist Kev Walker prodigiously pencilling an endless series of questions and piecemeal answers – all of which any longtime reader would already know – quickly bogs the publication’s plot down to a sedentary, snail-like pace, and is only momentarily broken when Paolo Silva somewhat unconvincingly decides to disobey his senior officer’s orders by bringing his space vessel’s prisoner a futuristic version of “Pot Noddle”. Lamentably though, even this ‘opportunity to escape’ is reduced to little more than a contrived cell break using an everyday eating utensil rather than the Chief Scientist using the new knowledge he has gained from Sandy’s databanks to deduce his crew’s sole hope of survival is to rearm Berwick; “If you don’t I swear I’ll drive this fork into your carotid artery, and you’ll be dead before they can get you to the Infirmary.”

Similarly as strange is arguably Ferrier’s apparent complete disinterest in the deadly Predators and Theta’s evident ability to both track and actually kill them. Admittedly, the Captain is understandably suspicious of a lone human single-handedly piloting one of his company’s missing space exploration vessels. But once he knows the truth, and that the mass-murdering extra-terrestrial species were responsible for both the massacre on Damara and at the local Astar Industries facility, it seems distinctly odd that the skipper would simply decide to return to Earth rather than ascertain whether there is now an opportunity for Humanity to stop the Yautja once and for all – or at least determine a defence which could prevent similar bloodbaths from occurring in the future.

Writer: Ed Brisson, Artist: Kev Walker, and Colorist: Frank D'Armata