Predator 2 Comic: Plot, Characters & Differences

Predator 2 is a two-issue Predator comic from Dark Horse Comics that adapted the 1990 film Predator 2, written by Franz Henkel and published in 1991. Dan Barry penciled the first issue and Mark Bright the second. Narrated in the first person by Mike Harrigan, it followed the LAPD lieutenant through a 1997 heat wave in Los Angeles as drug gangs died at the hands of an invisible killer. A federal task force blocked his investigation, and the hunt claimed two of his own detectives before he tracked the alien to its ship beneath the city.

Plot Summary

Los Angeles, 1997

The story opened over Los Angeles in the summer of 1997, on the fifty-ninth day of a heat wave that kept temperatures at 109 degrees. Lieutenant Mike Harrigan narrated the events himself, and he explained that the drug trade had turned the city into a battlefield where cocaine was the prime commodity. Driving through the heat toward a gunfight that had begun half an hour earlier, he complained about the weather. What started as a routine traffic citation had become a full-scale battle between police officers and a heavily armed Colombian gang.

His partner, Detective Danny Archuleta, briefed him at the scene. A motorcycle officer had stumbled into a narcotics stakeout and run straight into the El Scorpios, who were armed with automatic weapons. Officer Johnson lay wounded in the open, bleeding where the gang could finish him, and the SWAT team was tied up on another call in San Pedro. Harrigan decided that someone had to reach Johnson before it was too late. He told Danny and the other officers to give him cover while he went to have a word with the gang himself.

Into The Crossfire

Harrigan admitted that he could have waited for an armored vehicle, but he had no intention of doing so. He aimed his sedan at the gang's position, ducked below the dashboard and sent the car rolling through the gunfire with nobody visible behind the wheel. The Colombians could not believe that a crazy American had sent a driverless car at them. Harrigan later credited the stunt to eye-hand coordination and Yankee ingenuity, and the distraction gave him the opening he needed to reach the wounded officer lying in the street.

With bullets striking the car, Harrigan dragged Johnson to safety and told him to hang on. He then called for covering fire and came up with a combat shotgun, surprising the gunmen who had been shooting at the empty car. Several of the El Scorpios went down, and the survivors retreated into a nearby building to make a stand. Unknown to anyone on either side, something else was watching the fight. Through its thermal vision, a hunter followed the glowing shapes of the gunmen and settled its targeting triangle on one of them.

The Sweatshop

The hunter crashed into the building while still cloaked. Outside, Harrigan felt a strange sensation in his gut that he could not explain, and Detective Leona Cantrell asked whether he was all right. A uniformed officer then passed on an order from Deputy Chief Heinemann to secure the perimeter and wait for a special federal team. Harrigan refused to wait while the gang held the building. He took Leona and Danny inside with him, leaving the order and his superior's instructions with the officers at the perimeter.

The detectives burst into a sweatshop, only to find frightened workers rather than gunmen, and the real shooting came from further down the hall. A gang member opened fire with an automatic weapon, and a round struck Leona in the chest. Her body armor stopped the bullet, and she shot back as the gunman reloaded. Harrigan told his team to take the room and went after the shooter himself. The man was high on cocaine and fled up to the roof, unaware that something unseen had already followed the gang inside.

The Slaughtered Gang

On the roof, the drugged Colombian screamed at something that nobody else could see and fired wildly in every direction. Harrigan shot him, and the man fell from the roof to the street below. Standing at the edge afterward, the lieutenant had the uneasy feeling that someone was watching him, and he insisted that it had nothing to do with the height. The hunter was crouched nearby the whole time, observing him in thermal colors. When Danny asked whether he was okay, Harrigan could not explain what had shaken him.

One floor down, the team found the rest of the El Scorpios cut to pieces among the broken glass. Leona wondered who could have done such a thing and suggested the Jamaicans, since the killings looked like their style. Harrigan wanted to know how the killers had escaped without anyone seeing them. He ordered the room stripped down for evidence, with a crime scene sketch in coordinates and every trajectory and every piece of glass logged. One body hung twenty feet above the floor, with no rope or ladder anywhere in sight.

Special Agent Keyes

Before forensics could finish, Deputy Chief Heinemann arrived and demanded that Harrigan's people leave the scene at once. Harrigan refused to roll over for anyone, even federal agents, without a good explanation. The standoff ended with the detectives back at headquarters, where Captain Pilgrim told Harrigan that a federal task force under Special Agent Peter Keyes was investigating drug trafficking in the city and expected full cooperation. Keyes walked in soon afterward, introduced himself as a DEA agent and got Harrigan's name wrong, which did not help their first meeting.

Harrigan dismissed Keyes as an Ivy League college boy with a handshake like a dead fish. He was more interested in the killings, since five armed gang members had died in seconds without a single bullet wound between them. Danny suggested a martial arts fanatic or a hitman with exotic weapons, but Harrigan pointed out that a professional would have fled instead of waiting. Pilgrim then introduced Detective Jerry Lambert, a showboating surveillance specialist from Rampart station. Lambert flirted with Leona until she grabbed him by the crotch, and Harrigan welcomed him to the war.

The Jamaican Posse

The violence moved next to the luxury penthouse of Ramon Vega, a Colombian drug dealer who received unwelcome visitors from a Jamaican gang. Vega offered them two million dollars in cash, but their leader told him that money had nothing to do with it. He explained that King Willie, the new ruler of the streets, wanted more than Vega's death and had sent them to take his soul. The Jamaicans strung the dealer up and laughed at his terror. Then a red triangle of laser light appeared on the chest of one of them.

A blast from the hunter's plasma caster tore the man apart, and the rest of the gang fired blindly at an enemy they could not see. A net pinned one of them, and the creature uncloaked behind their leader before killing them all. Police cars arrived outside, but federal officers ordered all units to stay out of the building. Harrigan's team had already gone in. Vega had been hung and marked with a voodoo symbol, and Leona explained that King Willie was a voodoo priest who had run terror gangs in Jamaica.

El Diablo

The only survivor was Vega's girlfriend, naked and covered in blood, who kept repeating in Spanish that the devil had come for them. Leona thought that the poor girl was in shock, while Jerry wondered why Colombian killers would leave an eyewitness behind. Harrigan was ready to bet the rent that the Colombians had nothing to do with it. He found a slash in a steel I-beam as clean as a razor cut. Then the lights went out, and Keyes arrived with his agents and asked to speak with Harrigan in private.

Keyes ordered his men to run olfactory tracers while Leona and Jerry were sent out. On the rooftop garden, he told Harrigan that persistence was one of his qualities, but that he did not listen and kept sticking his nose into federal business. He warned that the next time the lieutenant got in the way, he could easily turn up missing. Harrigan demanded to know who Keyes really was. The narration made it clear that the agent was the last man in the world anyone should cross, and the threat only made the lieutenant more determined.

Danny Goes Back

As an ambulance took Vega's girlfriend away, Harrigan told Jerry to find out where she was being taken. Danny reported that Keyes had set up operations in an off-limits tactical wing and that the federal agents had confiscated the bodies of the dead gang members. Harrigan called in a personal favor from Nathan Caldwell at the FBI in Washington and asked him to dig up everything on Keyes, convinced that the agent was not really DEA. He arranged to meet Danny at one in the morning for a closer look at the penthouse.

That evening, Harrigan took Leona to a surprise party for her 28th birthday at Ray's Tavern, and even Captain Pilgrim showed up. Jerry arrived with bad news. An unmarked helicopter had snatched Vega's girlfriend before the ambulance reached the hospital, which told Harrigan that Keyes had powerful backing and far more at stake than drug trafficking. Meanwhile, Danny returned to the penthouse alone, climbed into the ceiling and crawled through the space above the room. There he found a glowing spearhead wedged in a vent, the first physical trace of the killer.

A Trophy In The Storm

Danny reached for the strange object and realized too late that it did not belong to anything human. The hunter uncloaked above him, and the next panels showed the detective hanging upside down from the ceiling, his gun and hat lying in a pool of blood on the floor below. Danny Archuleta became the first member of Harrigan's team to die. Harrigan later learned that the spearhead had been pried from Danny's hand, which meant that his partner had held on to the evidence until the end.

A full-page splash followed the killing. On a rooftop above the city, the Predator stood in a lightning storm with its spear raised high, holding up Danny's skull and spine and roaring at the sky. Lightning lit the hunter's armor and dreadlocks as it celebrated the kill, and the image left no doubt that the killer collected its victims the way a big game hunter collected heads. Nobody on the streets below saw it, and Los Angeles went on with its drug war, unaware of what was hunting among its rooftops.

The Funeral

Danny was buried with full police honors as an honor guard fired a rifle salute. Harrigan's narration noted that a strange lull had settled over the city, halting the drug wars for the moment. A television reporter pushed a camera at him, called the killer a twisted psycho-vigilante turned cop-killer and asked whether Harrigan faced misconduct charges. Harrigan smashed the camera and reminded him that they were at a funeral. Captain Pilgrim told him that he was too close to the case and should stay out of it, then asked him to get one in for him when he found the killer.

Harrigan and Danny had worked the streets together for 15 years, and the loss turned the case into something personal. Spotting Keyes on the steps outside, Harrigan grabbed the agent and told him that he did not care who he was, because one of his men was dead. Keyes warned him that he had no idea what he was getting into. Harrigan told him to stay out of his way. As Keyes's agents pulled the lieutenant off, one of them reminded their boss that they were too close now to let anything get in the way.

The Team Stands Together

Leona and Jerry had seen the confrontation. Leona told Harrigan that the fight did not belong to him alone, and Jerry threw his own speech about teamwork back at him, reminding him that loyalty had to work in both directions. Harrigan agreed that they would do it together and asked what they had on Keyes. Leona had followed his men for three days until she lost them that morning near Vernon and Industry in the meat-packing district. With Colombians, Jamaicans and now Danny dead and no pattern, she believed that Keyes had found the killer or was close.

Harrigan asked Leona to set up a meeting with King Willie and then attended Danny's autopsy. His partner had died instantly, boned like a fish by a blade about 14 inches long that was sharper than any razor. The spearhead pried from Danny's hand was even stranger. Forensic tests showed that its metal did not match anything on the periodic table, and the examiner concluded that it was not of this world. Rather than frightening Harrigan off, the discovery only made him more determined to find the killer and settle the score for his partner.

King Willie

Harrigan's audience with King Willie took place in an alley, where the Jamaican leader waited in a Cadillac surrounded by his men. Willie asked whether Harrigan had come to offer favors, but the lieutenant only wanted information about whoever was doing the killing. Willie said that he did not know who the killer was, only where he came from, which was the other side. He described a spirit world and warned that the demon would take them all, since nobody could see its eyes until it came calling. He called it the dread and said that nothing could stop it.

With nothing more to say, Willie sent Harrigan away. Alone in the alley, the Jamaican heard a voice telling him to prepare himself, an imitation of human speech that came from the cloaked hunter. Willie drew a sword from his cane and called out to the demon, asking where it was hiding. The Predator answered by uncloaking in front of him and killing him where he stood. His death closed the first issue, with the hunter's victims now including Colombians, Jamaicans, a police detective and the self-proclaimed new king of the streets of Los Angeles.

The Boy In The Cemetery

The second issue opened with new forensic results. Traces found at the crime scenes contained ammonia, nitrates and cattle blood with a heavy load of DES, a steroid used to fatten cattle before slaughter. Whoever killed Danny had been inside a slaughterhouse not long before. Meanwhile, a boy named Anthony played with a toy gun among the graves of a cemetery, pretending to shoot at enemies. He aimed into a tree and found something crouched in its branches, a shimmering shape that only he seemed able to notice.

Anthony innocently offered the cloaked hunter some candy. His mother called him back, and the boy told her about the huge ghost in the tree. The Predator let him go unharmed. Elsewhere, Harrigan stood at the grave of Daniel Archuleta, thinking about fifteen years on the force ending with his partner taken out like a piece of meat. He felt that it should have been him. Holding his pistol, he admitted that he was playing out of his league, but he swore to Danny that he would get the killer no matter how powerful the people involved were.

Three Hours Late

Harrigan arrived at the station three hours late, telling Leona that he had been nowhere, just thinking about better times. She had news. King Willie's body had been found that morning in an alley on South Adams, and there was still no trace of Keyes. Harrigan also learned that his contact had come through. Keyes really was head of a drug task force, but before that he had been a hotshot at the Strategic Defense Institute, and he had transferred out of Washington eight months earlier with all of his records classified.

Harrigan's best leads put the killer in the meat-packing business, and Keyes had disappeared in the slaughterhouse district, so he decided that they should check it out. He told Leona and Jerry to take the Metro to Vernon station, where he would pick them up within an hour. When Leona asked what was wrong with the car, he reminded Jerry that surveillance was his specialty and that Keyes's men might be watching. The two detectives slipped out the back of the building to make sure that nobody followed them.

The Metro

On the train, Jerry admitted that it had been a long week and that the job was getting to him, and he asked Leona whether she had always loved being a cop so much. She said that she could not live without it, though Jerry noticed that she did not look well. Their quiet ride ended when a gang of thugs started robbing passengers, claiming that a friend needed emergency surgery. A man in glasses pulled a revolver, a thug produced a bigger gun, and within seconds half the Metro car was pointing weapons at each other.

Jerry and Leona drew their own guns, ordered everyone to drop their weapons and announced that they were all under arrest. Before they could finish reading anyone their rights, the hunter smashed into the carriage while cloaked and then appeared in full view, towering over the passengers. Jerry and several armed riders opened fire, but the bullets did nothing to slow it down. The creature tore into the gunmen and hurled one of the thugs through a window. Leona realized that ordinary firepower was useless against whatever had come aboard the train.

Leona Spared

Jerry told Leona to get the passengers out and to pull the emergency brake, then turned to face the hunter alone and invited it to dance. Leona herded the survivors into the next carriage while gunfire and screams filled the car behind her, and blood splashed across the window as another passenger died. The train screeched to a halt in the tunnel. Searching the wrecked carriage afterward, Leona found a body hanging upside down and feared that it was Jerry. She called out his name in horror, not knowing that the killer was still close by.

The Predator was standing right behind her. Leona screamed, but instead of killing her, the hunter studied her through its mask and scanned her body. The scan revealed the outline of a fetus in her womb, and the creature turned away and let her live. The sequence made the reason clear without a word of dialogue. Like the hunters of the films, this one followed an honor code that protected the unborn, and it left Leona alone and in shock in the wreckage of the Metro train while it went after other prey.

Into The Tunnel

Harrigan reached the Metro station to find Deputy Chief Heinemann surrounded by reporters asking about the number of victims and what had happened to Keyes. Heinemann begged Harrigan to help him make a statement, since Keyes and his team had disappeared and a train full of slaughtered passengers waited below. Harrigan told him to talk to the press about teamwork. Paramedics carried Leona out on a stretcher in deep shock but alive, and one of them reported fetal heart tones. Harrigan had not known that she was pregnant, and he wished he could feel like congratulating her.

There was no time for baby showers, since the skinned bodies of passengers hung inside the train. Captain Pilgrim had found no sign of Jerry, and Harrigan wondered where he had been, after all his talk of teamwork, when his people needed him most. That strange feeling returned, and he went into the tunnel calling Jerry's name. He arrived just in time to see the Predator drive its wrist blades through Jerry from behind and drop the body onto the tracks. Harrigan ran toward his fallen detective, cursing the creature as it escaped.

The Chase

The hunter climbed the wall of a building above the Metro entrance, and Harrigan jumped into his car to follow it. He told himself that the demon was fast but could not outrun a car, and that it would have to stop sometime. Whether the killer was flesh or spirit, Harrigan promised to find a way to make it hurt. The chase led him through the streets of the industrial district toward the slaughterhouses that the forensic evidence had pointed to. For a moment, he wondered whether he had lost the creature among the warehouses.

Passing an Acme Meat truck, Harrigan believed that he was on the right track. Before he could get any further, a red truck rammed his car, and armed men surrounded him and ordered him out. They belonged to Keyes, who stepped forward and remarked that Harrigan simply could not take no for an answer. The federal agents had set up their operation in the slaughterhouse district, and the lieutenant had driven straight into the middle of it. Keyes decided that it was finally time to show the stubborn policeman what he was really dealing with.

The Briefing

Inside a mobile laboratory, Keyes showed Harrigan an image of the killer built from scent molecules, explaining that its camouflage bent light and that this was the only way to see it. He described an otherworldly life form that had been visiting Earth for 700 years, drawn to heat and conflict in places such as Vietnam and Beirut. Ten years earlier, a reconnaissance team had run into one in Central America, and its self-destruct device had vaporized 200 acres of rain forest. Now another had come to Los Angeles in the hottest year on record.

Keyes warned that such an explosion in downtown Los Angeles would be a disaster, just as the olfactory scans picked up the target on the move. Keyes's team had learned that the hunter came to the slaughterhouse every two days to feed, since it had a taste for beef, and it was walking right into their trap. His agents carried nitrogen freeze guns and planned to capture the creature alive in a cryogenic chamber, where its self-destruct could be isolated. Their insulated suits would hide them from its infrared vision. Harrigan agreed with Keyes for once, though he suspected that they were all about to become history.

The Ultraviolet Trap

When Harrigan asked about the light show, Keyes's technician Garber explained that the meat in the plant had been flooded with a radioactive dust that glowed under the UV floodlights. The dust stuck to everything it touched and would show up in the agents' goggles. The team switched to ultraviolet and radio silence, and Keyes was sure that the hunter was playing right into their hands. The creature soon landed among the hanging carcasses, and Garber expected his men to spot it at any moment. The trap seemed ready to close on its prey.

The Predator cycled through its vision modes until the agents, glowing under their own ultraviolet lights, stood out clearly. Harrigan realized at once that the hunter had spotted the team and shouted a warning, but Keyes snapped at him to keep radio silence. The lieutenant told him to turn off the lights. It was too late. Harrigan's narration described the agents as men who had lost their edge to overconfidence, typical of men in power who had forgotten fear. The creature leaped among them with its weapons, and Keyes and his men paid for their complacency.

Police Clean Up

Harrigan grabbed Garber and demanded that he get the men out, but the technician could only insist that the hunter should not have been able to see them. On the slaughterhouse floor, an agent's freeze gun jammed as the creature closed in. Harrigan's narration observed that Keyes and his men were in deep trouble and that, as usual, it fell to the police to clean up the mess. The federal team lacked the firepower to save themselves. Fortunately, Harrigan had brought some, and he left the van armed with a combat shotgun.

A white-haired agent died in front of him as the hunter cut him down. Harrigan stepped out and told the creature that it had wanted him, and now it had him. He believed that the Predator had grown too cool, much like Keyes, after winning for too long. This was his turf, and the first rule of the streets was Murphy's Law, which held that anything that could go wrong would go wrong. He emptied his shotgun into the hunter, splattering green blood across the floor, and the creature went down hard among the carcasses.

The Death Of Keyes

Harrigan approached the fallen hunter and decided to see what was under its mask. When he pulled it off, the alien face reminded him of King Willie's warning about the dread. He should have remembered Murphy's Law. The creature revived and hit him with a blast that threw him across the floor, and Harrigan apologized to Danny for giving it his best shot and failing. Then Keyes, still alive, staggered forward and fired his freeze gun, engulfing the hunter in a cloud of liquid nitrogen before it could finish the lieutenant.

Keyes told Harrigan to get out because he was finishing this himself. The hunter shook off the attack and readied a weapon of its own. Harrigan shouted a warning, but a spinning smart disc struck Keyes and killed him. The agent who had treated the creature as a specimen to be captured died the same way as his men, beaten by a hunter he had never truly understood. The Predator had already shown plasma blasts, spears, nets and now flying discs, and Harrigan had no wish to find out what other weapons it carried.

On The Ledge

Harrigan ran. He climbed toward the roof, reasoning that it was the only way out and hoping to keep the goodbye short. The hunter had taken hits that would have dropped a gorilla and was only breathing heavily. Harrigan was down to his .38 revolver with six rounds, which he knew was not enough. When he reached the rooftop, the Predator was right behind him. It leaped at him, and the two of them went over the edge of the building together, clinging to the ledge high above the street with the hunter grabbing at the detective.

Harrigan hung from the ledge while the hunter clung on below him. When he saw the creature working at the device on its wrist, he recognized the same kind of self-destruct that had flattened a stretch of rain forest. He grabbed the disc and told the creature that it might be a sore loser, but it was not taking half of Los Angeles with it. He sliced through its arm, and the hunter fell screaming down the side of the building, leaving its severed forearm and the disarmed device in Harrigan's hands.

Into The Lair

The wounded hunter landed below, and Harrigan remarked that perhaps the creature did not understand that it was supposed to die unless he used a weapon it recognized. He climbed down a drainpipe after it, urging himself on, with the disc in his hand. Even after losing an arm, the Predator refused to give up. It ran into the sub-basement of an apartment building, down an elevator shaft and into a sewer, with Harrigan close behind at every step of the way beneath the streets of the city.

The trail finally led him to the hunter's lair inside its hidden ship, a vast alien chamber filled with drifting yellow mist. Harrigan coughed through the fumes and called out to ask whether anybody was home. Through the haze, he made out carved walls and trophies mounted around the chamber. Then a voice behind him repeated the words he had once used to warn Danny, telling him to watch his back. The Predator was waiting for him, its remaining wrist blades extended for one final duel with the detective.

For Danny

Harrigan thanked the creature for the advice and swung the disc, and its edge clanged against the hunter's blades. The two traded blows through the mist until the disc was knocked spinning out of his hand and the lieutenant was sent sprawling. The Predator loomed over him, ready to finish the fight. Harrigan told it that he was not through yet. His fingers closed around the disc again, and he felt the weapon come to life in his hand with a rising hum as its curved blades sprang out.

Harrigan drove the disc into the hunter's body, telling it that this was for Danny, and green blood poured from the wound as the creature died with a final growl. Panting, he raised the disc again and began to dedicate the next blow to someone else. He never finished the sentence. Through the mist, several more hunters stepped forward and surrounded him, and Harrigan realized that the creature he had chased across Los Angeles had never been alone. The Lost Tribe of the film, which included the Guardian, the Scout and the Shaman, now stood between him and the way out.

The Elder's Gift

Harrigan believed that it was over. He was beyond avenging Danny or Jerry and had no strength left to do anything but breathe the poisonous air and wait for his life to end. It did not end. An elder hunter, his dreadlocks bound with checkered bands, stepped forward and handed him an antique flintlock pistol. Its engraving read Vito De La Mirandella, Anno Domini 1640. Harrigan's narration explained that, like all hunters and warriors, the creatures held to a code of honor and respected their prey.

Harrigan felt that the old hunter had at least thought enough of him to let him live, and he walked out of the ship through the mist. Behind him, the alien vessel blasted its way out from under the city and rose into the sky over Los Angeles. Harrigan wondered whether the elder understood the meaning of the gift, a dueling pistol from the seventeenth century that was as much a challenge as a present. In the distance, he heard federal helicopters arriving too late to see anything. The story ended with his certainty that the hunters would be back.

Key Characters

• Mike Harrigan was the LAPD lieutenant who narrated the story, defied the federal task force and killed the Predator aboard its ship with its own disc.
• The Predator was the cloaked hunter that stalked the gang war in Los Angeles, killed Danny, Jerry and Keyes, and lost an arm before Harrigan finished it.
• Leona Cantrell was the detective on Harrigan's team who survived the subway massacre when the hunter discovered that she was pregnant.
• Danny Archuleta was Harrigan's partner of fifteen years, killed in Vega's penthouse after he found the hunter's spearhead.
• Jerry Lambert was the showboating surveillance specialist who joined the team and was killed in the subway tunnel in front of Harrigan.
• Peter Keyes was the federal agent who introduced himself as DEA, hid a classified past at the Strategic Defense Institute and was killed by the hunter's disc at the slaughterhouse.
• King Willie was the Jamaican gang leader and voodoo priest who warned Harrigan about the demon before it killed him in an alley.
• Garber was Keyes's technician, who ran the ultraviolet trap from the van and could not explain how the hunter saw his men.
• The Elder was the old hunter who spared Harrigan aboard the ship and gave him a flintlock pistol engraved with the year 1640.
• Heinemann and Pilgrim were Harrigan's superiors, the deputy chief and the captain who pressed him to cooperate with the federal agents.

Behind The Scenes

Dark Horse published Predator 2 #1 in February 1991 and #2 in June 1991, each a 36-page issue priced at $2.50 with a pair of bound-in trading cards. Franz Henkel scripted both issues from the screenplay by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. Dan Barry penciled the first issue, with inks by Randy Emberlin, colors by Lurene Haines and letters by Gail Beckett. Mark Bright penciled the second, inked by Emberlin and Ron Randall, colored by Monika Livingston and lettered by Mike Heisler. Randy Stradley edited both, and each issue used a photo cover from the film.

Henkel followed the film's plot closely but told it through Harrigan's first-person narration and added smaller scenes, including Leona's birthday at Ray's Tavern and Harrigan's call to an FBI contact. Harrigan watched Jerry die in the subway tunnel rather than arriving too late, and Keyes explained the hunters in a mobile laboratory without a taped interview with the jungle survivor. The one-armed hunter ran straight to its ship, and the comic dropped the film's healing scene in which it bared a forked tongue. The elder's pistol bore the year 1640, matching Simon Hawke's novelization instead of the film's 1715, and the story ended without Garber's closing exchange with Harrigan at the crater.

Conclusion

Predator 2 gave Dark Horse a faithful two-issue retelling of the film, compressing the gang war, the federal cover-up and the final duel into 62 story pages while keeping its heat-soaked vision of Los Angeles. Harrigan's narration gave the comic a hard-boiled voice that the film never used, turning the story into a personal account of a cop who lost two of his detectives and refused to back down. The art changed hands between issues, with Dan Barry and Mark Bright each drawing half of the hunt in their own style.

The comic also kept the details that made the film important to the franchise, from the hunter sparing the pregnant Leona to the clan aboard the ship and the gift of the old pistol. Marvel reprinted both issues in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 in December 2022, alongside Predator: Concrete Jungle and Predator: God's Truth. Set in 1997, the story took the same place on the Predator timeline as the film it adapted, and it ended with the same warning that the hunters would return.

External Sources

• Predator 2 #1 at Dark Horse
• Predator 2 #2 at Dark Horse
• Predator 2 #1 at the Grand Comics Database
• Predator 2 #2 at the Grand Comics Database
• Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 at Marvel

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Tag Categories: Predator Comics | Predator 2 Lore | Predator Lore