The Pig Iron Predator was a male Yautja Young Blood, the son of Hook and the brother of Splitter, in the Dark Horse comic Alien vs. Predator: Thicker Than Blood. While his father and brother hunted the passengers of the USSC Double Down, he stayed aboard the family ship with a captive adult Xenomorph hung in chains. He died when the creature was freed from its restraints and bit through his face, the first of the three hunters to fall.
Biography
The Hunting Party
Pig Iron hunted with his father and his brother in an uncharted system that the Double Down crossed during its luxury cruise. The three were on a training hunt led by their disgraced father, and they had brought a single captive Xenomorph for the purpose. When the family's ship closed on the liner and parked over the boarding ramp of its tender, Hook and Splitter went into the passenger decks. Pig Iron took no part in the slaughter of the crew and the bathers on the lido, and stayed behind aboard the hunter ship.
The Captive Xenomorph
The hunters had brought an adult Xenomorph with them, bound in a web of chains and hung over a glowing pit inside their ship. While the rest of his family hunted, Pig Iron kept watch over the creature and burned it for sport with the flamethrower on his wrist as it screamed in its restraints. He regarded no one aboard the liner as a threat or worth hunting, and the absence of his father and brother left him free to torment the captive.
The Intruders
After Hook lost an arm and a leg in the closing doors of a lift, Maria and her android brother Tyler reached the airlock of the tender and found it blocked by the boarding ramp of the hunter ship. They slipped aboard to unhook the ship from the tender, and from hiding they watched Pig Iron turn his flames on the chained Xenomorph. Tyler then plugged into the controls and fought off the handprint failsafes of the ship, which shocked him as he worked. In doing so he unlocked the restraints that held the Xenomorph, and the noise drew Pig Iron away from the creature while he still held its chain.
Death
With his back turned, the Xenomorph threw Pig Iron against the wall of the chamber, pinned him and drove its inner jaws through his face. It then tore itself free of the last of its chains, leaving his body burning in a pool of green blood, and escaped into the liner. Tyler realized that the ship would answer only to the hand of a hunter, and with Pig Iron's body ruined the siblings went back for their unconscious father instead.
The same creature soon found Splitter standing over Hook and tore off his head, leaving their father as the last of the hunting party. Hook later killed it with his son's whip after making a bargain with Maria.
Weapons And Equipment
Pig Iron went unmasked aboard the ship, with long dreadlocks, silver plates over his shoulders and arms and a heavy gauntlet on his right wrist. Unmasked, he showed a right eye sealed under scar tissue, which places him among the one-eyed Predators. His weapon was a flamethrower mounted on that gauntlet, which he turned on the chained Xenomorph rather than on the passengers of the Double Down. Unlike his brother, who cut down the bathers on the lido with a whip, he never turned the weapon on the passengers or crew of the liner.
Behind The Scenes
The Pig Iron Predator was created by writer Jeremy Barlow and artist Doug Wheatley, with colors by Rain Beredo, letters by Michael Heisler and covers by Chun Lo. He is never named inside the comic, and his name comes from the script, where Barlow called the elder Hook, the whip-wielder Splitter and the flamethrower-armed son Pig Iron.
In an interview with AvP Galaxy, Barlow explained that the two sons were not Bad Bloods but troublesome Young Bloods on their first hunt, led by a disgraced father, which is why they carried a Xenomorph with them. He added that Pig Iron stayed behind only to torment the creature, since he saw no one on the liner as a threat or worth hunting.
Conclusion
The Pig Iron Predator left the hunting of the Double Down to his family and stayed behind to torture the captive they had brought aboard. That cruelty and his carelessness cost him his life when the creature was freed, as it struck the moment he turned away. The Xenomorph went on to kill his brother and nearly finish his father, making Pig Iron the first of the three hunters to fall.
Appearances
- Alien vs. Predator: Thicker Than Blood #2 (2020)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Comics | Predator Deaths | Predator Lore
