The Djinn was a lone Yautja hunter in eastern Afghanistan, named after the spirit that the villagers of the Hindu Kush believed was protecting them from the insurgents in the mountains. It first appeared in Predator: Hunters, in Tyler Swain's memory of the day it wiped out his convoy, and it was the main hunter of Predator: Hunters II, published by Dark Horse Comics in 2018 and 2019. From a cave lair filled with trophies, it killed insurgents and American soldiers alike, until Jaya Soames's team of hunters came for it and Swain lured it onto a land mine.
Biography
The Kandahar Convoy
Years before the events in the Hindu Kush, Taliban fighters ambushed a supply convoy bound for a forward base in Kandahar, and the Djinn appeared in the middle of the slaughter. It killed everyone in the convoy but one, then walked among the dead taking trophies, carrying a long staff hung with the severed heads of its victims. Tyler Swain, a private contractor with the convoy, was the only survivor. He later claimed that a mortar round had knocked him out, but he eventually admitted to Jaya Soames that he had hidden behind a truck wheel while the creature killed everyone else.
The Kidnapped Agent
In a village in eastern Afghanistan, masked insurgents seized a blindfolded man they claimed was Robert Fournette, a CIA agent from Burlington, Vermont, and set up a camera to record his beheading. Before the blade fell, the unseen Djinn began killing the insurgents one after another. It then stepped into view and held up the severed head of one of them, its mask glowing with bright blue eyes. The camera kept recording through the massacre, and the footage later reached a secure CIA server, where Jaya Soames obtained it and recognized the work of a Predator.
The Djinn Of The Mountains
The Djinn hunted the insurgents who used the old caves of the Hindu Kush, and in one cave it cornered a lone fighter whose comrades already lay dead. When the man charged into the darkness with a knife, it was waiting for him with its wristblades extended and a human skull in its hand. On another night it attacked a column of armed fighters on the slopes, its cloak shimmering among the rocks as they died around it. Wreathed in flames, the Predator rose out of the fire and roared.
The insurgents had avoided the area for some time, and the villagers came to believe that a djinn sent by God had driven them into the mountains. Their headman, the Malik, told visitors that the insurgents no longer worried his people. A village boy named Atal disagreed, because the creature had not protected the villagers who worked with the Americans, nor his own parents when they were murdered. He had been to the mountain and seen what it did, and he was convinced that it killed simply because it wanted to, and that it would one day turn on the village too.
The Cave Lair
The Djinn made its home in an old Taliban cave in the mountains, a few kilometers from the cave complex the insurgents still used. The entrance was hung with skulls, and inside it kept racks of rifles and crates of ammunition beside its ship. Deeper in the mountain lay a vast trophy room of skulls, wrecked vehicles and a motorbike. Among the trophies, Tyler Swain found equipment from his old outfit and realized that this was the same hunter that had killed his men on the convoy road, years earlier.
The Stargazer Massacre
An American black ops team code-named Stargazer came to Afghanistan to harvest the Djinn's technology, and it raided the insurgent cave complex in daylight, believing that the hunter's thermal vision would be useless in the heat. Inside, the soldiers found nothing but piles of dead insurgents, a sure sign that their target had already paid the complex a visit, so they set charges to destroy it and pulled out. As they withdrew from the mountain, a plasma bolt blew apart one of their helicopters, and the Predator came for them through the smoke.
The Djinn cut through the Stargazer soldiers in the snow as they tried to cover one another, and it stood among the dead with the trophies it had taken. Unwilling to leave their dead behind, the survivors called in an airstrike, and an aircraft bombed the creature's position on the mountain. The hunter survived the bombing and returned to its lair before nightfall. The surviving soldiers were last seen trudging along a road on foot, while Jaya Soames's team used the fight to reach the Djinn's cave first, guided most of the way by Atal.
The Ambush At The Cave
Soames's hunters wired the lair with explosives and waited above it as the sun went down, planning to bring the cave down on the Djinn when it returned. The hunter arrived as the temperature dropped and opened fire on their position with its plasma weapon. Pinned down and short on ammunition, the team blew the cave, and the lair and its trophies vanished in a huge explosion. Atal, who had come back for his friend, offered to lead the hunters out through a valley of old Russian land mines that he had marked himself, and the enraged Djinn leapt after them.
Death In The Minefield
Swain taunted the Djinn to draw it away from Atal, and when his ammunition ran out he drew his knife and stood his ground in the middle of the minefield. The hunter struck him down with its wristblades, and as it closed in for the kill, one of the old mines exploded beneath them both. When the smoke cleared, the Djinn lay dead, its body burning in green fire, while the mortally wounded Tyler Swain died on a ledge nearby.
Weapons And Equipment
The Djinn wore a smooth, rounded Bio-Mask with narrow eye lenses that glowed bright blue, heavy armor on its shoulders and forearms, and long dark dreadlocks that hung below the mask. It used its cloak to stalk insurgents unseen, and it fought at close range with its wristblades, which it used on the cave insurgent and on Tyler Swain. For longer range it carried a plasma weapon powerful enough to destroy a Stargazer helicopter, and it later turned the same weapon on Soames's hunters when they ambushed it at the cave.
The Stargazer soldiers and Soames's team both expected the Djinn to rely on Predator thermal vision, which is why the soldiers attacked in the heat of the day and the hunters waited for the temperature to fall. The hunter kept its ship hidden inside the cave lair, along with the rifles and ammunition it had taken from its victims. In Swain's memory of the Kandahar ambush it looked quite different, wearing heavy plated armor and a spiked mask with a row of teeth, and carrying a staff hung with severed heads as it walked among the dead.
Behind The Scenes
Chris Warner wrote both appearances of the Djinn for Dark Horse Comics. Francisco Ruiz Velasco drew its first appearance in Predator: Hunters, a five-issue series published in 2017, where it appeared only in Swain's account of the convoy ambush. Agustin Padilla drew Predator: Hunters II, a four-issue series published from August 2018 to January 2019 with colors by Neeraj Menon, letters by Michael Heisler and editing by Randy Stradley. Its look changed between the two series, from a spiked, toothed mask to a more classic mask with glowing blue eyes, but it was the same hunter, since Swain found his outfit's gear in its cave.
The hunter was never given a Yautja name, and the name Djinn came from the villagers' belief about the spirit in their mountains. Both series were collected by Dark Horse in trade paperback, Predator: Hunters in January 2018 and Predator: Hunters II in June 2019. After the Predator comics license moved to Marvel, both stories were reprinted in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2, a hardcover released in May 2024 that also collected the third Predator: Hunters series and several older Dark Horse series.
Conclusion
The Djinn was the lone Yautja hunter of eastern Afghanistan in Chris Warner's Predator: Hunters and Predator: Hunters II. It wiped out Tyler Swain's convoy near Kandahar, hunted insurgents so ruthlessly that the villagers of the Hindu Kush took it for a protecting spirit, and slaughtered the Stargazer soldiers sent to take its technology. Jaya Soames's hunters destroyed its trophy-filled cave, and Swain, the man who had once hidden from it, lured it onto an old Russian land mine. The explosion killed the hunter and fatally wounded Swain, ending the hunt where his war had begun.
Appearances
- Predator: Hunters (Dark Horse Comics, 2017), in a flashback to the convoy ambush
- Predator: Hunters II #1–4 (Dark Horse Comics, August 2018 to January 2019)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Comics | Predator Lore
