Agents of Law vs. Predator: Plot & Characters
Agents of Law #6 is a 1995 Dark Horse Comics one-shot crossover written by Lovern Kindzierski and pencilled by Matt Clark, in which a lone Predator hunted Law, the ruthless new master of Golden City. It was part of the Hunting the Heroes: The Predators Attack! event, which sent the hunters after the heroes of Dark Horse's Comics' Greatest World line in Ghost #5, Motorhead #1, X #18 and this issue. Unlike most Predator crossovers, the story ended with the hunter claiming its prey, and it closed the Agents of Law series for good.
Plot Summary
The Predator Attacks Citadel Tower
The story opened with a quote from Sir Walter Scott about warriors who feel a stern joy in foemen worthy of their steel, before moving to the dining room of the private living quarters atop the Citadel Tower. Law sat at dinner with his nervous aide Phillip and the red-skinned healer Ruby, who assured Phillip that Law had considered every possibility. Phillip answered that he would never imply anything to the contrary, only that these things could be rather explosive, and at that moment a blast tore through the window and set the big table on fire.
Guests choked on the smoke while one of them shouted that some kind of blast had come through the window, and Phillip screamed for security. Three red laser dots settled on his chest, Ruby called out that she could barely make him out through the smoke, and a second shot ripped into Phillip and left him bleeding on the floor. Ruby cried out to Law that Phil was hit, as the hunter came through the burning room with its dreadlocks swinging and seized Law by the collar.
The Hunt Through The Citadel
Law told Ruby to attend to Phillip while he attended to their uninvited guest, broke free and promised the others that he would not be far. He launched himself straight up the glass atrium of the tower, past the GC emblem on its doors, and the creature followed him across the ironwork high above. A laser sight from its shoulder cannon found Law's face as he grinned back at it, and the following blast hurled him through the glass roof in a shower of shards.
Law crashed through a skylight onto the floor of a corridor in front of his own Citadel security guards, who could not see what had put him there. He asked if they were blind, since the thing was right over there, and the cloaked hunter dropped among them and cut them apart while they sprayed bullets at the walls. One guard yelled at the others to stop firing wild because the attacker was invisible, and then died himself, while Law escaped through a door and the creature smashed after him, repeating his own words about attending to the uninvited guest.
The Chase To The Sixth Floor
Law ran out onto the face of the tower, where he turned a submachine gun on the climbing hunter and shouted to ask who was hunting whom now. The Predator answered from a ledge below with a plasma bolt that blew out the glass around him and sent him falling down the side of the building. He caught a steel cable with his bare hands and tore them bloody, warning the creature to measure its shots because they provided opportunities for both of them, while another blast burst against the window frame at his feet.
Back inside, he sprinted past startled staff to put some distance and time between them, calling back that it was the creature's game and its rules, and asking whether it would choose the right way on the stairs in time. The hunter followed him down a checkered corridor, and Law burst into an office on the sixth floor and grabbed a telephone. He managed only to say that this was Law on the sixth floor before a plasma blast destroyed the office around him, and the Predator crouched in the smoke and snapped out its wristblades with a metallic sh-jink.
Law Fights Back And Captures The Predator
Law opened fire at close range and announced that he would destroy the creature's weapons, tearing up the gear on its arm in a hail of sparks. He then tackled it through the window and told it they would see who was on top after a six-story fall. They plunged together, still shooting, and hit the water of a reflection pool at the foot of the building, where the soaking shorted out the Predator's cloaking and left it in plain sight for the first time.
Law noted that the reflection pool did nothing for the creature or its cloaking abilities, and then beat the Predator down with his fists while chanting that it had been its game and rules, but now it was his advantage and its loss. Pinning the half-drowned hunter, he told his alien friend that it was now his game and his rules, as his armed guards finally arrived and Law greeted them as the cavalry, just in the nick of time. He ordered them to take the creature to the lab and keep it alive, saying that he and his guest needed a little private time to get better acquainted.
The Predator Escapes
Two guards dragged the stunned hunter out under the trees, and one of them said that the guy creeped him out and that they had better get a gurney. The Predator rose behind them with its mandibles flared and killed the smoker, whose cigarette fell into a splash of blood as he screamed. In the Citadel Tower Infirmary, the bleeding Law sat on an examination table with his shirt open, deciding to see to himself before another doctor poked his nose in, while the hunter hid in the branches of a tree and worked the controls on its wrist gauntlet.
Law found a surgical stapler that he judged more than adequate and drove staples into the gashes across his face, while the Predator treated its own wounds with tools from its gauntlet and howled in pain. Law then went to the vault of confiscated toys, sure he could find something to share with his guest, and chose a long barbed hook that would do very nicely. In the woods at the top of the Citadel, he followed the creature's trail, complaining that it had played hell with the servants and taken off without so much as a by your leave.
The Fall From The Citadel Cliff
Law climbed the sheer cliff face, guessing that things had become too hot for his alien visitor and that it was seeking privacy to reform a strategy and lick its wounds, most probably at the craft it had journeyed in. At the top he looked up to find the Predator waiting above him on a rope, and said, speak of the devil. Shouting that the charade had grown old and that the show was over, he went for the creature on its precarious perch, and the force of his attack knocked them both off the edge of the cliff.
They fell hundreds of feet, crashed through the dense foliage at the foot of the Citadel and slammed into the ground. The alien hunter rose first on trembling legs, inhaling great burning gasps of the oxygen-rich air as its mandibles hung open, and it stared at Law as a being unlike any other it had met on Earth. Law rose just as quickly as though fully recovered, and the Predator, streaked with its own glowing green blood, wondered whether any single opponent had ever pushed it so far past its limits, deciding that this was a worthy foe and a truly glorious battle.
The Final Duel
The two battered fighters were so wrapped up in their contest that they did not notice they had moved from the Citadel to the outskirts of the university grounds. A growing crowd of onlookers gathered on the steps around them, and Law ordered everyone to keep back as the Predator advanced with its blades extended. With blood running down his stapled forehead, Law swore that the alien had started this and that he was going to finish it. Some students in campus jackets stared openly, and a young woman covered her mouth as the fight swept past her.
The students watched in horror as the pair traded flying kicks and blade strikes, the hunter slashing across Law's chest while Law caved in its face with a heel that left it reeling. The Predator answered in a recorded imitation of Law's own voice that the show was over. The two paused for a moment, Law smiling over a fist dripping with green blood and the hunter glaring through its tangled dreadlocks beside its bloodied blades, before the fight resumed even more fiercely.
Law's Death And The Fate Of Golden City
When the storm passed, the Predator stood under the full moon holding Law's severed head aloft with the spine still hanging beneath it. The narration declared that nothing could be left standing in the wake of such ferocity, making this Predator one of the few in the Hunting the Heroes event to take its main target as a trophy. Law's death ended his rule over Golden City, and the hunter showed no interest in the city once it had its trophy.
Moments later Grace, the founder of the Catalyst team that Law had driven from power, arrived with a group of costumed allies as the hunter leaped away over a wrecked car with its prize. Looking over the remains, Grace remarked that somebody had done the dirty work for them. Standing before the ruined base of the Citadel with her companions, she said that they now had only the hard part left, putting Golden City back together, and the narration closed the series with the promise that this was a story for the future.
Key Characters
- Law was the nearly invulnerable ruler of Golden City, who survived plasma blasts and a fall of hundreds of feet and briefly captured the Predator before it killed him and took his head and spine.
- The Predator attacked Law's dinner at the Citadel Tower, lost its cloak in the reflection pool, escaped from custody and won the final duel on the university grounds.
- Phillip was Law's bespectacled aide, who was shot during the dinner after warning that the situation could turn explosive.
- Ruby was the red-skinned healer of Law's circle, left to attend to the wounded Phillip.
- Grace was the founder of Catalyst and former leader of Golden City, who arrived with a group of costumed allies after Law's death and vowed to rebuild the city.
Behind The Scenes
The credits name Lovern Kindzierski as writer, Matt Clark as penciller, Chad Hunt and Jim Royal as inkers, Perry McNamee as colorist, Clem Robins as letterer and M. Hord as editor, with a cover by Doug Wheatley and Mark Farmer colored by Stuart Hiner. The series was based on characters and concepts from Catalyst: Agents of Change, created by Barbara Kesel, and the issue is dated September 1995. Dark Horse never collected the Agents of Law series, and the 2008 Dark Horse Heroes Omnibus left it out, so, like Motorhead #1, it is one of the event's Predator comics that has never been reprinted.
The letters column closed with a sketch titled The Story That Never Was, showing pencils and inks from the original script, in which Law held up the Predator's head instead. The editors explained that the market had changed, and so had the story, so the published version let the hunter win and closed Law's series. The comic never names its Predator, but it seemed to be an experienced hunter, picking off armed guards while cloaked, slipping out of custody and closing its own wounds before tracking Law to the woods atop the Citadel.
Conclusion
Agents of Law #6 turned a superhero cancellation into a Predator hunt, pitting one cloaked hunter against the nearly unkillable ruler of Golden City across the Citadel Tower, a reflection pool, a cliff and the university grounds. Law captured the creature, stapled his own face shut and nearly won, but the hunter took his head and spine as a trophy and left Grace to rebuild the city. It is the only issue in the Hunting the Heroes event in which the Predator takes the head of its main target.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Predator Comics | Alien And Predator Crossovers | Hunting The Heroes Predators Attack
