Predator: Fire and Stone TPB [Comic Review]

Thankfully, Predator: Fire and Stone is much better than the previous AVP: Fire and Stone trade paperback. There’s something about it that feels much more in line with the 1990’s Aliens and Predator comics and that’s not a bad thing at all. In fact, it just makes the comic feel more genuine. Of course, the comic is still made to tie in to the larger Fire and Stone event that connects Aliens, Predator and Prometheus together. Unlike the Aliens vs. Predator story, Predator: Fire and Stone actually manages to stand on its own at the same time. You don’t feel completely lost reading it and that’s a big plus.

The bulk of the graphic novel, which collects the four-issue miniseries, centers on one man—a character left over from the previous stories—being taken back to LV-223, the moon from Prometheus, where he is forced to work together with a Predator if they both want to survive.

The artwork by Chris Mooneyham is great. The likeness of the Predator is consistently dead-on and it provides a nice, gritty tone to the overall story. Mooneyham’s art is dynamic, for sure, but shares the more intimate coarseness of artists like Alex Maleev. Either way, it’s not an approach that would immediately come to mind for Predator but one that definitely works. There’s definitely a smaller sensibility to Fire and Stone that is its greatest strength. Predator has never been as epic as Aliens, it’s just a survival story at its core and this book nails that.

The central character is a decent enough protagonist, having made it through some of the other tie-in miniseries, but he’s still not a great guy. He’s just a guy who’s going to do whatever it takes to survive. Which makes him able to relate to the Predator somewhat, although that’s really where the relationship between the two begins and ends. They need each other. They never really take a moment to bond. And that’s probably for the best, all things considered.

Fire and Stone is an interesting event. It’s a neat experiment, to take these four properties and tie them together as a larger universe with one overreaching storyline. I don’t know how well it worked, ultimately, but I hope it doesn’t discourage them from trying again. I think that an interconnecting Aliens, Predator and Prometheus universe can work really well. I think they can tie together to tell one immersive tale, just as long as the individual books themselves manage to feel separate.

Predator: Fire and Stone does that last part better than any of the other miniseries in this event and even still it’s not entirely successful all the way through. There are moments you would definitely need to read one of the other books to understand, and that’s unfortunate considering how strong the quality is otherwise.

WICKED RATING: 6/10