The Ozarks Hunter was the unnamed Predator that hunted Confederate and Union soldiers in the Ozark Mountains in September 1863 in Predator: Hell Come a Walkin', the 1998 Dark Horse two-issue miniseries by Nancy A. Collins and Dean Ormston. Survivors called it devil, spirit, critter, or damned Yankee. The comic never gives it a clan name. It massacred a Confederate camp waiting for teenage bushwhacker Jesse James, forced a truce between Jesse's party and a Union cannon detail, killed Standing Bear and Nebediah, survived the blast that erased Lieutenant Hendricks, and died on Jesse's spear under a Union flag and a pistol shot to the head.
Biography
Massacre In The Rain
In September 1863 the Ozarks Hunter struck a small Confederate camp in the Ozark hills during heavy rain. A sentry's The Yellow Rose of Texas ended in muzzle flashes and screams as it came through the downpour with wristblades wet and the three red dots of its plasmacaster painted across its own reaching fist. By the time Jesse James, Nebediah, and Standing Bear rode in, it had left the camp a slaughterhouse of gray-clad bodies.
The hunter did not pick a side. A Union platoon under Captain Riggs was hauling a stationary cannon through the same wet hills, and the two human sides found each other before they found the killer. Neb shot Riggs, which left Lieutenant Hendricks, Corporal Brubaker (Dutch), and a Black Union soldier who called himself Spartacus with the gun and no answer for the bodies in gray.
Devil And Cannibal Spirit
The Ozarks Hunter left men in pieces with no Yankee boot print, and the Confederates gave it names from their own stories. Standing Bear called it a Cannibal Spirit that climbed from the bowels of the earth when the moon had no face, a beast that walked like a man and drank human blood, and Neb answered with a mountain tale of the Devil. When Jesse slipped away to check on the Union cannon, he saw its silhouette and came back saying he had seen hell come a-walkin'. It wore a battered bronze bio-mask and bone and skull trophies on its straps. The comic treats the Devil and Cannibal Spirit tales as human labels for a real Yautja already at work in the mountains.
Truce And Standing Bear
Jesse, Neb, and Standing Bear approached the Union camp under a white flag to propose a truce, with the cannon as the only heavy weapon either side had left, and the hunter's presence pushed both sides toward one of the temporary Predator-human team-ups. The Ozarks Hunter struck as the truce formed. Its blue-white plasmacaster bolt punched through Standing Bear's chest and lit his ribs through cloth, and he died before either army could raise rifles. Through its heat vision the survivors glowed orange, and it slipped away from the answering volley.
Flush And Nebediah
The hunter then showed itself among misted trunks with fist clenched, caster on the shoulder, and a skull trophy on the chest strap, and mimicked Brubaker's German back at the men: "Was ist los?" Energy from its wrist tore a rifle apart in a soldier's hands, and open fire did not break it. When Jesse, Spartacus, and Neb pushed into the timber to flush it, it used its cloak and the forest cover to vanish between shots.
In the dark trees a grizzly rose at Spartacus's back, and Neb shot the grizzly off him. Moments later the hunter took Neb's head with a wet sslch, then threw Neb's own line back at the survivors in his voice: they were in a "World O' Hurt." Jesse and Spartacus answered with gunfire and fell back toward the clearing.
Wounded By Cannon
The men could not put the hunter cleanly on the gun, so Lieutenant Hendricks walked into the open with a saber, drew it into melee, and ordered Brubaker to fire while both of them stood in the blast line. The cannon erased Hendricks. When the smoke thinned the Ozarks Hunter was still standing, armor scorched, red eyes in a black silhouette, steam curling off its plates.
Death
A pistol shot green-blooded its shoulder and did not put it down, so the hunter was still on its feet after both the cannon and the bullet. Jesse James came at it from behind and drove a spear through its midsection, pinning it beneath a tattered United States flag. Green Yautja blood ran down the shaft as it roared and clawed at its mask, and Jesse kept the pressure on until it went down. Brubaker and Spartacus closed in around the spear and the flag, and the survivors finished what the cannon had started.
Its mask came away in a dying thrash, showing the mandibles and mottled face behind the Devil and Cannibal Spirit stories. The hunter taunted the men with "damn yankees." Jesse put a pistol to its head, asked who it was calling a Yankee, and fired. Its bio-mask ended up wired to a grave stake with a cavalry saber as a crosspiece against an Ozark sunset.
Appearance And Traits
Dean Ormston draws the Ozarks Hunter with a weathered bronze bio-mask, bone and skull trophies on its straps, plate armor over mesh, and red eye-glow in smoke and rain. It massacres without choosing a side in the Civil War and treats both armies as prey. It mimics human speech, throwing Brubaker's German and Nebediah's joke back at the survivors in the manner of other voice-copying hunts. Three-toed prints in the mud and heat vision of orange prey mark it as a standard Yautja stalker rather than a special clan type named in the script.
Weapons And Armor
In the Ozarks fight the hunter used wristblades, a working plasmacaster with the three-dot targeting mark, a wrist-mounted speargun or energy burst that wrecked a rifle in a soldier's hands, and a cloaking device. It wore plate armor and a battered bronze bio-mask with bone trophies. A Union cannon that erased Hendricks only scorched it. A pistol green-blooded its shoulder and still left it on its feet until Jesse's spear and head shot finished the kill. Xenopedia lists bio-helmet, cloak, wristblades, plasmacaster, and wrist-mounted speargun as its kit for this hunt.
Behind The Scenes
Nancy A. Collins wrote and Dean Ormston drew, inked, and colored the hunter for Dark Horse's February and March 1998 miniseries Predator: Hell Come a Walkin', with letters by Ellie De Ville and edits by Scott Allie and David Land. The comic never gives the Yautja a true name. AvP Central and Xenopedia use Ozarks Hunter for the unnamed Predator of that story. Collins puts a historical Jesse James, still a bushwhacker and not yet the outlaw of ballads, into a hunt during the American Civil War. The same war returned later in Stonewall's Last Stand inside Predator: If It Bleeds, where Union cannon fire again ends a Yautja hunt beside a famous Confederate name.
Dark Horse collected the miniseries in Predator Omnibus Vol. 4 in September 2008. After Marvel took the Predator comics license, the story was pulled from the planned Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 lineup, so the Dark Horse omnibus remains the standard collected printing. The Predator Civil War hub lists this Ozarks hunt beside the Stonewall story among Civil War Yautja encounters.
Conclusion
The Ozarks Hunter was the unnamed Yautja that turned a Civil War Ozarks hollow into prey ground in Predator: Hell Come a Walkin'. It butchered both armies, killed Standing Bear and Nebediah, walked out of Hendricks's cannon blast, and still died on Jesse James's spear under a Union flag and a pistol shot to the head. The comic left it without a clan name. Its mask on a sunset grave stake is what the survivors had left of the devil in the timber.
Appearances
- Predator: Hell Come a Walkin' (Dark Horse, February-March 1998)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Comics | Predator Lore
