Predator: 1718: Comic Overview

Published: July 1996, in A Decade of Dark Horse #1
Collected: Decade: A Dark Horse Short Story Collection (1997), Predator Omnibus Vol. 2 (February 2008), Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 (December 2022)
Script: Henry Gilroy
Art: Igor Kordey (pencils, inks and colors)
Letters: Steve Dutro
Editor: Randy Stradley
Format: 9-page short story in an anthology issue
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Setting: The Guinea coast of West Africa, 1718

Predator: 1718 is a nine-page Predator comic written by Henry Gilroy and painted by Igor Kordey. Dark Horse Comics first published it in A Decade of Dark Horse #1 in July 1996. The story is set on the Guinea coast of West Africa in 1718, where a pirate captain refused to keep gold stolen from a church and fought his mutinous crew alongside a gold-masked Predator. It gives an origin for the engraved flintlock pistol that an elder Predator handed to Mike Harrigan at the end of Predator 2.

The Plot

Mutiny Off The Guinea Coast

An old pirate and a shipmate raise a musket against their captain on the Guinea coast, with a speech balloon declaring he is no longer their captain

In 1718 a pirate brigantine lay at anchor off a beach on the Guinea coast of West Africa. Its crew had come ashore with a chest of gold sacraments taken from a church, and they had killed a priest to get it. The ship's captain considered the murder far beyond the ship's code and intended to return the treasure to the church. The crew regarded the gold as ordinary plunder that belonged to them. An old pirate and several shipmates turned their muskets and blades on the captain and rejected his command.

Fight On The Beach

The confrontation turned into a fight on the sand, with the mutineers attacking the captain with cutlasses, a shovel and other tools. The captain killed two of the attackers, took the chest of gold and ran into the jungle. One surviving pirate followed him with a cutlass while another went back to the shore to gather the rest of the crew. None of the pirates noticed a cloaked, translucent figure at the edge of the trees that had watched the fight from the undergrowth.

The Predator In The Jungle

A cloaked Predator shimmering through the jungle as a pirate is thrown into the air above the fallen captain in his tricorn hat, with an inset of a pirate crying out

The first pirate to reach the captain found him among the trees with the chest. Before the pirate could strike, a cloaked Predator cut him down with a blade and threw his body into the air. The hunter then switched off its camouflage, revealing a gold, domed bio-mask. The captain did not know whether the creature had saved him or meant to kill him next, and he attacked it with his sword, taking it for a demon. The rest of the crew arrived during this fight, intending to take the chest from both of them.

Battle With The Crew

Two side-by-side panels of a figure crouching in the foreground as the Predator spears pirates behind it, and the gold-masked Predator standing with the captain over dead pirates beside the treasure chest

The pirates disagreed about what the creature was. Some took it for a golden angel and others for the devil, but they wanted the gold and attacked together. The Predator and the captain fought side by side, with the hunter killing most of the mutineers with its blades while the captain fought off the men who reached him. When the fighting ended, the clearing was covered with bodies, and the chest of church gold lay among them. The two survivors then faced each other, and the captain raised his sword to challenge the Predator to a duel.

The Last Mutineer

The gold-masked Predator catching the captain as a musket ball tears into his back against a yellow background

The duel did not take place. One mutineer had hidden in the undergrowth during the attack, and he shot the captain in the back with a musket. The Predator caught the wounded captain as he fell. The hidden pirate took the chest of gold and ran toward the beach to reach the ship's boat. The Predator caught him before he got there, and the pirate fired his musket at the hunter at close range without stopping it. The Predator killed him with its shoulder cannon, and the blast threw his body off the cliff above the shore.

The Captain's Pistol

The dying pirate captain lying in the grass and holding up his engraved flintlock pistol, with a speech balloon saying take it

The Predator went back to the dying captain, who lay face down in the grass holding his engraved flintlock pistol. He did not turn the weapon on the hunter but held it out and offered it as a gift. The Predator accepted the pistol and buried the captain, placing the recovered church gold and a crucifix in the grave with him and leaving its own sword standing over it. The Predator repeated the captain's last words in his voice, and its ship left the coast while the pirate ship lay wrecked and burning at sunset.

Characters

The pirate captain refused to profit from a murdered priest's church gold and his crew mutinied against him. He is usually identified as Raphael Adolini, the name on the pistol from Predator 2.
The Predator wore a gold, domed bio-mask, which led the pirates to call it a golden angel. Fans and later merchandise tie this hunter to a young Greyback.
The mutineers were the captain's crew, who turned on him over the chest of gold and the Predator killed most of them.
The last pirate hid from the fighting, shot the captain in the back and tried to escape with the treasure.

Behind The Scenes

Predator: 1718 was one of the short stories in A Decade of Dark Horse #1, the first issue of the four-part anthology Dark Horse published in 1996 to mark its tenth anniversary. Henry Gilroy wrote the script, Igor Kordey handled pencils, inks and colors, Steve Dutro lettered it and Randy Stradley edited it. The story did not have its own cover, and A Decade of Dark Horse #1 had a cover by Frank Miller.

It was reprinted in the Decade: A Dark Horse Short Story Collection trade paperback in 1997 and in Predator Omnibus Vol. 2 in February 2008. Marvel reprinted it in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 in December 2022, directly after Predator: Invaders from the Fourth Dimension. Each of these collections reprinted it as a standalone story.

Because 1718 had no cover of its own, the collections borrowed art from other Predator comics, which led to some confusion about what its cover looked like. Predator Omnibus Vol. 2 printed Kordey's painted cover for Predator: Kindred #4 from March 1997 on the page before the story. The painting showed a Predator in bronze armor among red jungle leaves and was not drawn for 1718. The Original Years Omnibus instead used Chris Warner's cover for Predator #1, in the version recolored for the 1996 Predator: Concrete Jungle trade paperback.

In 2018, NECA announced Ultimate Elder: The Golden Angel, a 7-inch scale figure it described as its first action figure from Predator: 1718. It shipped in January 2019 and was built on the base of NECA's Ultimate Jungle Hunter, with a sword, a flintlock pistol, a smart disc and a shoulder cannon. The figure came with three interchangeable heads. One wore the mask from Kordey's Kindred #4 painting, which also appeared on the front of the window box, and another wore the mask the Predator had in the 1718 story itself.

An Origin For The Predator 2 Pistol

At the end of Predator 2, an elder Predator gave Mike Harrigan an old flintlock pistol engraved with a name and the year 1715. Predator: 1718 shows how a Predator obtained that pistol from a pirate captain. Prey (2022) gave the pistol a different history, placing it on the Great Plains in 1719, so the two accounts conflict. The comic is one of several Predator pirate stories, and fans and later merchandise connect its gold-masked hunter to Greyback.

Final Thoughts

Predator: 1718 is a nine-page story by Henry Gilroy and Igor Kordey, first published by Dark Horse Comics in A Decade of Dark Horse #1 in 1996. It covers a mutiny on a pirate ship off the Guinea coast in 1718 and the fight between the crew, their captain and a gold-masked Predator. It ends with the captain giving the Predator the engraved flintlock pistol that later appeared in Predator 2, and with the Predator burying him alongside the church gold.