Alien vs. Predator: Thicker Than Blood
Alien vs. Predator: Thicker Than Blood is a Dark Horse Comics series written by Jeremy Barlow, drawn by Doug Wheatley, and colored by Rain Beredo. Issues 1 and 2 came out in December 2019 and January 2020. Issues 3 and 4 were not published as single comics, and the story finished in a trade paperback in November 2020. On the luxury ship USSC Double Down, android Tyler Ward and his sister Maria were the last of their family after Yautja hunters boarded. A captive adult Xenomorph got loose, and the children bargained with the surviving elder to kill it and leave.
Plot Summary
Tyler And Maria
Tyler Ward played a cartoon called Chase Mercury in his bunk and cast himself as the sidekick Knox, the one who was supposed to get Cassandra to safety. Maria, his older sister, had outgrown those games and treated him as a toy that would not shut off. He was an android their parents had bought to raise her, and his memory was failing. Their mother, Lydia, had put him on the aftermarket rather than pay for a custom repair.
The USSC Double Down was a private luxury ship with 112 passengers and a crew of 16. Their father had changed the flight plan so the ship would pass through an uncharted system and pick up cartography data. That course crossed a hunting territory. Something had already come aboard when Lydia called Tyler and told him to find Maria on the lido deck, get her onto the tender, and then meet the parents in the forward lounge.
Attack On The Double Down
Three hunters came aboard. The elder hunter was Hook, and his Young Blood sons were Pig Iron and Splitter. Their ship closed on the Double Down and parked over the tender's boarding ramp, so the lifeboat the family wanted was sealed behind that hull. On the holographic lido deck, passengers in swimsuits were still treating the alarm as a drill. Maria was off duty there. She told Tyler she was not playing, until Splitter's whip cut through the crowd.
Tyler got Maria into a service lift. In the forward lounge they found Uncle Gavin skinned and hung as a trap, and Tyler stopped her from touching the body. Their parents were still alive in the dark with at least two hunters on the ship and one of them in the room. Their father wanted to send Tyler out as a distraction so the rest could run. Lydia refused to trade her daughter's life for his. She told the children to take the main entrance, run, and not look back.
A hunter pulled Lydia through a closing door while she was still telling them she loved them. Maria tried to override the lift with the voice code Maria nine-six-one-nine, and Tyler jammed it rather than ride back down into that room. She called him a piece of plastic and tried to go back for the people still aboard. His orders were to get her off the ship, conscious or not, so he carried her toward the tender.
Escape To The Predator Ship
The tender airlock was too narrow to squeeze past, and the hunter ship was parked on top of it. Maria and Tyler climbed into that ship to unhook it. They did not need to fly it. Inside, Pig Iron had an adult Xenomorph hung in chains and was burning it for sport while it screamed. The armory wall held whips, blades, and the gear that had killed their parents. Maria threw Tyler's goggles at him and told him he was going to get them both killed.
Tyler's hand was too small for the hunter scanner. He plugged into the controls anyway and tried to talk to the ship's basic functions. Something else was in the system. He shouted for Maria to disconnect him. The ship's failsafes came after his mind, and he started unlocking locks to get them off. When he came back to himself, his head was failing and he wanted the goggles because he could not keep his sight straight.
The Captive Xenomorph
The captive adult Xenomorph got out of the locks Tyler had opened and turned on Pig Iron while he was holding the chain. It bit through his face, and the acid from that fight tore the chain loose and ruined Hook's arm and leg. Splitter cut the burned limbs off with the whip so the acid would not finish their father.
Maria and Tyler found their father dead on a lower deck. Tyler told her not to look, because it was not him anymore, and they dragged Hook toward a service lift while the adult Xenomorph was in the room. The Xenomorph caught Splitter and tore his head off, mask and dreads still in one hand, a severed arm in the other. Splitter was the second son down. Hook was the only hunter left, and he was unconscious.
Lieutenant Denver, still alive with a bird named Juniper on his shoulder, wanted the explosives in the father's geology lab so he could blast a path to the tender. Maria and Tyler would not set bombs inside their own ship, so Denver went to the lab alone. The adult Xenomorph was there ahead of him. The crate he wanted was empty, and Denver did not come back.
Maria's Bargain With Hook
They hauled Hook onto the lido beach, among the dead passengers, and shocked him awake with a deck pole. Maria told him he had murdered her parents and that she would rather let the adult Xenomorph finish him. She also told him his ship was blocking their way out, and that they would help him kill the creature if he left as soon as it was dead. He could not work the scanner with the hand he had left. They went looking for a galley knife to cut that hand free, and he woke again while they were still holding each other on the sand.
On that beach Maria stopped treating Tyler as the broken toy her mother had meant to sell. She told him their parents had bought him to raise her, because they had never wanted to be parents themselves, and that she had been angry at them, not at him. She said that once they were home she would fix whatever was wrong with his memory. Hook took the bargain. They braced his ruined leg and wrapped the arm, and he could walk.
Escape
The three of them could not fight the adult Xenomorph in the open. Tyler offered to go into the geology lab, where the creature was shut in with Denver's body, and set off whatever charge he could find if the door had to close behind him. Maria refused. He went in anyway, because he was programmed to save her, and he told Hook to shut the door and get her out. She used the voice override to stop him. He told her she had forgotten what he was for, and he fired to hold the creature in the lab.
Maria would not leave him there. She went back through the ship and into the lido garden, where the adult Xenomorph had come through the glass ceiling. Hook threw her Splitter's whip and followed her into the trees. Acid came down through the leaves. The fight ended with Maria on the ground and Hook on his feet, and the creature down in that garden.
Hook carried Tyler out of the lab with the boy's face burned white from the acid, and Maria thanked him. Hook, wrapped and missing the limbs his son had cut away, told her to call it good. He had moved his ship off the tender and done what he promised. She told him he had been true to his word, and that he was not what she had expected.
Maria and Tyler left the Double Down in a small craft, about two weeks from the nearest safe harbor. Tyler was bandaged in the bunk and asked if they had gotten the creature. Maria said they had, the two of them together, and that he should sleep until she could have him repaired. The cartoon voice in his head was Knox telling Chase to get Cassandra clear. She had not believed it at the start of the voyage. By the time they left, he was her brother, and she loved him.
Key Characters
- Tyler Ward was the android boy bought to raise Maria. His memory was failing, his mother had planned to sell him, and he stayed in the geology lab so she could get clear. Hook carried him out with his face burned.
- Maria was Tyler's older sister, off duty on the lido when the hunters arrived. She made the bargain with Hook, went back for Tyler, and left the Double Down meaning to repair him.
- Lydia was their mother and a member of the crew. She would not send Tyler out as bait, and a hunter pulled her through a door while the children ran.
- Hook was the elder of the hunting family. Acid ruined his arm and leg, Splitter cut those limbs away, and Hook was the only hunter who lived. He fought the adult Xenomorph with Maria in the lido garden and brought Tyler back.
- Pig Iron was Hook's son. He had an adult Xenomorph chained in the hunter ship and was killing it for sport when it got loose and bit through his face.
- Splitter was Hook's other son. He used the whip on the lido passengers, cut his father's ruined limbs free, and then lost his head to the same adult Xenomorph.
- Lieutenant Denver survived the first attack with his bird Juniper and went to the geology lab for explosives. The crate was empty, and the adult Xenomorph killed him there.
Editions
Dark Horse published Alien vs. Predator: Thicker Than Blood #1 and #2 in December 2019 and January 2020. Randy Stradley edited the series, with Judy Khuu as assistant editor. Michael Heisler lettered the pages, and Chun Lo painted the covers. Issues #3 and #4 were not released as single comics. The copyright page calls them previously unpublished. Dark Horse Books finished the story in a trade paperback, first edition November 2020, and that paperback was the last AvP collection Dark Horse put out before the license moved.
Behind The Scenes
Jeremy Barlow wrote the series. Doug Wheatley drew the interiors, and Rain Beredo colored them. Anita Magana designed the collection, and Josie Christensen was the digital art technician. Mike Richardson was president and publisher. The indicia thanks Nicole Spiegel and Carol Roeder at Twentieth Century Fox. Barlow named the hunting family outside the captions. The elder is Hook, and the sons are Splitter and Pig Iron. Those names are not spoken in the comic.
Conclusion
Alien vs. Predator: Thicker Than Blood is Jeremy Barlow and Doug Wheatley's Dark Horse comic about the USSC Double Down. It runs from a cartoon in Tyler Ward's bunk, through the lido massacre and the deaths of Pig Iron and Splitter, to a bargain with Hook in the garden. The comic ends with the adult Xenomorph dead, Hook gone after he did what he promised, and Maria two weeks from a safe harbor with her brother asleep beside her.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Avp Comics
