Alien vs. Predator: Civilized Beasts
Alien vs. Predator: Civilized Beasts is a Dark Horse Books graphic novel written by Mike Kennedy and drawn by Roger Robinson. The first edition is March 2008. It continues Alien vs. Predator: Thrill of the Hunt, eight months after Yautja hunters destroyed the colonists' ship and left the survivors on the planet. Supplies had run out. A clan the humans nicknamed around Smiley hunted in the woods, a rescue from Steed Corona arrived with illegal synthetics, and a Xenomorph Queen came out of a temple before the hunters' warship returned.
Plot Summary
The Stranded Colony
Smiley was in the tall grass around the camp, in silver armor with skulls across the chest. The colonists beside that hunt had been on the ground for eight months. Supplies had run out weeks before, and Glenda wanted the tilling finished before dark. The trip from offworld was supposed to take six months, and the colony had cost sixty billion dollars, so a ship should have reached them long before this watch.
A Facehugger had caught a colonist in that same grass. Shane Burroughs had to be woken for the watch, and Charles, called Chuck in the camp, was with him. Smiley's clan had wrecked the colonists' ship. The orbital platform was debris on the long-range scans, and a stepped temple stood in the jungle with a shuttle's blue lights under the trees. Smiley watched the camp from that jungle.
Most of the camp expected to die on the colony. The woods were full of Xenomorphs, eight months had passed, and no ship had come. Glenda was the loudest about it, and the others told her that anger would not call a rescue. The camp had followed Charles offworld on the promise that the colony would bring them a future, and Glenda wanted the work finished before dark anyway.
Smiley
The camp named him Smiley. A clan member set a hand on his shoulder while the others stood over dead Xenomorphs. He carried a spear and a shoulder cannon, with a gold mesh under the silver plates. This was the third hunt he had shown them. The camp wounded the Xenomorph, and Smiley killed it. It was the first time he helped, and the first time they needed him.
Smiley sprayed a green mist that worked on the colonists like a drug, and they were grateful for it. He left them their weapons after his clan had wrecked their ship. Someone in the camp thanked him, and he repeated the insult back in that person's own words. The rest of the clan stayed on the Xenomorphs in the grass.
The Steed Corona
Steed Corona reached the colony in a ship that could leave the planet. Shane introduced Tyler Templeton to Chuck as a business partner he had known for years, and Templeton greeted Mr. Burroughs. Les Burroughs was president of Exponential LLC, the company behind the colony. After eleven weeks without a signal, Templeton's people contacted Lambda Exponential. Shane asked Mac, Mr. MacArthur, why the Steed Corona mark was on the hull. Mac had put purchase orders in before he left, in case the colony made them partners, and he had not told the camp about a rescue they could count on.
The rescue ship had spent three weeks behind the far moon, waiting to slip past a Yautja warship. Scans showed debris where the orbital platform had been. The warship had been sending cargo lifters down to the colony, and the last lifter had gone back up the day before. Templeton gave them about three hours before the warship's orbit would show a launch. Shane was set to burn backup copies of the colony data, and Glenda told the camp they were going home.
The Cage
Smiley's clan held an adult Xenomorph in a cage under an energy field, and the hunters had been killing smaller creatures on the ground around it. When the cage broke, Xenomorphs swarmed the hunters, and Xenomorph acid burned through armor. Many of the clan died in that swarm. Other hunters fought on, seized the colonists, and took them into the temple.
Someone in the camp called for Charles to do something. Shane refused to get down. Afterward the colonists turned on Charles. They had stored their old lives and followed him because he was the businessman who was going to bring them the future, and he had not covered the danger they were in. Templeton knew parts of the temple. The glyphs were partly terrestrial, and he had read files about a place like it before the Big Deletion.
Templeton and the synthetic crew had launched from Earth before the wipe, about a hundred years earlier, and they had been offworld since. Humans had built a virus to hunt synthetics, and that virus wiped computer systems. Fear of the synthetics produced the virus. After the Deletion, building new ones was illegal. Mac had set up a plant anyway. The new models bled red so they would pass as human, and he treated that blood as a small change. Shane put the work at about a hundred broken laws. Glenda treated the synthetics as killer robots and feared another civil war.
The Temple
Facehuggers stood on pedestals in the rebuilt temple. Shane recognized them as the cargo the warship had been sending down while Smiley's clan rebuilt the place. He told the others to wait outside, with the synthetics going in ahead. Glenda would not go in. Acid burned a colonist at the entrance. A Xenomorph Queen came out of the temple, larger than the warriors and crested along the head, and the hunters fought adult Xenomorphs with spears and wristblades.
Glenda called the synthetics killer robots and treated a rescue by them as the start of another civil war. Templeton had not known the crew were synthetics when they landed, and once he did he counted the rescue ahead of what they were. The synthetics could track one another. Templeton followed Shane's signal and Charles's when the group split inside the temple.
Shane had the group back out when the Queen filled the doorway, and Smiley met her deeper in the temple. The Queen was torn apart in that fight, and Smiley came out of it wounded, with blood across his armor. In the same run of fighting, a synthetic shot a hunter from the clan and then took that hunter's spear through the body.
Escape
Mac wanted the synthetic plant to stay hidden. A federal inquiry would take the story apart, and he did not think Glenda would lie under oath. If she talked to the inquiry or to the press, Mac and the new synthetics were finished. He was ready to leave the colonists on the planet and save himself and the new synthetics. He told Chuck he was sorry. Charles was supposed to ride home without learning what the plant was. An automated order was supposed to send another dropship back to the last known position if communications failed, and the synthetics knew that order. They had lost Tyree units getting out of the camp, and an exposed plant on Earth would mean capital charges.
The warship was due to break the horizon in twenty minutes, and a third dropship would be seen if it came in. Shane told Mac to get aboard if he was leaving, and that Mac was not the man Shane had thought. Mac was bleeding from the throat in that scramble. Templeton called another dropship to those coordinates at full speed and was grabbed while he was giving the order. A ship left the colony as the warship closed.
Key Characters
- Shane Burroughs was one of the colonists on the ground for those eight months. He went into the temple behind the synthetics, refused to abandon the camp for Mac, and was with the others when Templeton called the last dropship.
- Charles, called Chuck in the camp, was the businessman the colonists had followed offworld. They blamed him when the hunters took the camp, and Mac had meant for him to leave without learning about the synthetic plant.
- Glenda was pushing the camp to finish its work before dark. She treated the synthetics as killer robots, and Mac did not believe she would lie to a federal inquiry.
- Smiley was the humans' name for a silver-armored hunter who showed them hunts, sprayed a green mist, and let armed people live. He fought the Queen in the temple and came out wounded.
- Smiley's clan hunted Xenomorphs around the colony and held one adult Xenomorph in a cage. The swarm killed many of them. Other hunters fought on in the temple.
- Tyler Templeton arrived with the Steed Corona rescue. His crew were synthetics who had been offworld since before the Big Deletion. He called another dropship as the warship closed, and he was grabbed while giving that order.
- Mac (Mr. MacArthur) ran an illegal synthetic plant and had not told the camp about a rescue. He was ready to leave the colonists behind so Glenda could not expose him.
- Les Burroughs was president of Exponential LLC, the company behind the colony.
Continuity
Few AvP comics carry an earlier story forward. Civilized Beasts continues Thrill of the Hunt eight months later, and both books are set in the late future of Alien Resurrection, with the novel Aliens: Original Sin. The graphic novel does not print a year. Roger Robinson drew the scientists in the same style of clothes as the film, and those clothes are the visual tie to that period. Alien: Sea of Sorrows and the novels after it are set further ahead.
Thrill of the Hunt named the Big Deletion, and this book is where that wipe drives the split between the colonists and the synthetics. Humans had built a virus to destroy synthetics, and the virus took the computer records with it. New synthetics were illegal after the wipe. In the earlier comics, humans met Xenomorphs again after Alien 3, and in Aliens: Earth Hive the creatures overran Earth. Resurrection treats those outbreaks as forgotten. The deletion is how these two graphic novels account for that gap, and the ban on synthetics here is the same ban the film uses.
Editions
Dark Horse Books published Alien vs. Predator: Civilized Beasts as an original graphic novel. The copyright page marks the first edition March 2008. The publisher's listing puts the book on sale on April 23, 2008. It runs 96 pages. Roger Robinson drew the cover as well as the interiors. The book is the sequel to Alien vs. Predator: Thrill of the Hunt, the 2004 graphic novel by the same writer and artist.
Behind The Scenes
Mike Kennedy wrote the book. Roger Robinson pencilled the pages and the cover, and Charlie Kirchoff colored them. Michael David Thomas lettered the book. Chris Warner edited it, and Stephen Reichert handled publication design. Mike Richardson was publisher. The indicia thanks Debbie Olshan at Twentieth Century Fox Licensing. An opening page prints the line "Whoever wins... we lose." Kennedy also framed the story with an essay on civilization, and that essay returns on the last pages over a ship leaving the colony.
Dark Horse had planned the book for December 2007, beside the film Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, and the first edition slipped to the March 2008 copyright. The story picks up the survivors of Thrill of the Hunt, and with them the Big Deletion, the computer wipe from that earlier book. No further volume followed the sequel.
Conclusion
Alien vs. Predator: Civilized Beasts is Mike Kennedy and Roger Robinson's 2008 Dark Horse graphic novel, the sequel to Thrill of the Hunt. The colonists are eight months on the planet beside Smiley and his clan when Mac brings illegal synthetics in on the Steed Corona rescue. The comic ends with the clan's cage broken, the Queen torn apart in the temple, Smiley missing an eye, the warship minutes from the horizon, and a ship leaving the colony.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Avp Comics
