Ed Brisson is on a unique mission of being the only Marvel writer to deliver Predator tales while also developing a brand new character named Theta. She’s a human who seeks revenge on all Predators, killing them one by one. Now, in her third series, Predator: The Last Hunt, the story shifts towards freeing the human captives from the Predators’ game preserve. What she finds will surprise everyone, guaranteed.
As first issues go, this issue is quite strong. Brisson does enough to catch up with new readers, and Theta is well written. She’s getting older, tired, and maybe even better at working with people. The issue opens with a lengthier action scene, but for the most part, this is a mystery with sci-fi written all over it.
We open on an alien world in the year 2066. A crashed spaceship rendered beautifully by Francesco Manna suggests all is quiet, that is until a Predator lands nearby and starts slaughtering aliens. After a lengthy fight scene, our attention is brought to a single button. It’s this button that draws in Theta and her trusty sidekick. After shifting the story a few years later, we’re introduced to our heroes, who are investigating a bloody scene only to be attacked by aliens riding on the back of alien birds. These two scenes seem to juxtapose the types of Predators we’re dealing with, two of which are humans underneath the familiar suits.
These poor aliens stood no chance!
Credit: Marvel
The larger story is built on the general setup of Predators capturing aliens to hunt them on a planet devoted to hunts, which is quite compelling. Considering this story takes place only a few decades from our own, is in canon, and seems to be on a crash course with revealing more about the Predators, there are a lot of reasons to be invested in this story. The fact that Brisson makes Theta so unique in her obsession with killing Predators is another big draw.
The art by Manna is very cinematic, which suits this sort of story. Even though characters are simply talking for most of it, his choices keep you interested, be it a close-up on a character’s face or a new angle on something they’re doing. While I found the opening action scene unnecessarily long, Manna makes it fun to read as the Predator slices and dices.
If you like hard sci-fi, you’ll probably like Predator: The Last Hunt. There are interesting ideas at work here as Theta continues her quest to kill every last Predator, and she anchors the story with a character you can root for.
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