Predator [2023] #2 - Marvel Comics

PREDATOR No. 2, June 2023

It’s difficult to determine just how many of this comic’s readers were all that delighted with Ed Brisson’s decision to bring Theta Nedra Berwick back for this mini-series’ second instalment, as the technologically-advanced Yautja hunter’s presence alone completely changes the dynamic of the twenty-page periodical’s plot. For whilst the book’s considerable cast of “trained soldiers” are still penned desperately tearing through the tall trees on the Predator’s preserve planet. They’re no longer doing so out of sheer terror as to what is hunting them, but rather in a determined push to reach their saviour’s spacecraft and escape the nightmare world which they’ve found themselves trapped on.

Of course that doesn’t mean for a moment that the author isn’t still able to pack his narrative with some genuinely tense action sequences, or completely stun his audience by having “the daughter of botanists Hugo and Francesca Berwick” shockingly wounded in a duel when her attention is momentarily caught by the Sandpiper surprisingly blasting off-planet. However, much of the focus upon just how the original, outmatched humans were somehow going to avoid adding to the Yautja’s kill count whilst distrusting one another, is somewhat disappointingly replaced by the likes of Doctor Paolo Silva providing plenty of background exposition as to Theta’s plans and prowess; “We’ll bring you to a nearby Astar outpost and drop you off a few miles away so you can hike in.”

Quite possibly this publication’s most interesting character is therefore Kiyoshi Yaksubo, who after constantly complaining about how unfair everything is, cowardly rushes aboard Sandy and steals the vessel when he thinks the “motley crew” are about to die at the hands of a Predator. This utterly spineless act by the Japanese Self-Defence Forces officer will surely have caused many a bibliophile to almost wring the comic in sheer frustration, particularly when the man’s selfish behaviour costs his would-be-rescuer so much.

Managing to imbue all these sense-shattering shenanigans with plenty of pulse-pounding dynamism and pace is Netho Diaz, who does a terrific job of creating the illusion of action, even when a scene is simply showing a large, bald-headed bouncer protesting that he shouldn’t have been ‘time-snatched’ by the Yautja because all he does is deal with “a bunch ‘a slobberin’ drunks swingin’ on one ‘nother.”  The “mainstay at Marvel Comics” is also particularly good at sketching a sudden moment in time, such as poor Ernesto being horrifying fried just as safety was in sight for the Filipino soldier, or Berwick’s aforementioned debilitating injury.

Writer: Ed Brisson, Pencilier: Netho Diaz, and Inkers: Belardino Brabo & Roberto Poggi