Predators: A Predatory Life: Plot & Lore

Published: June 2010, backup strips across Predators #1-4
Collected: Predators trade paperback (October 2010), Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 (May 2024)
Script: David Lapham
Pencils: Gabriel Guzman
Inks: Mariano Taibo
Colors: Michael Atiyeh
Letters: Nate Piekos
Cover: Paul Lee (Predators #1 series cover)
Editors: Scott Allie, Sierra Hahn, Freddye Lins, John Schork
Format: Backup story across a four-issue weekly series
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Setting: War-torn Africa, shortly before Predators (2010)

Predators: A Predatory Life is a Dark Horse Comics backup story written by David Lapham and pencilled by Gabriel Guzman, inked by Mariano Taibo, colored by Michael Atiyeh, and lettered by Nate Piekos. It ran across the four weekly issues of Predator: Welcome to the Jungle in June 2010, under editors Scott Allie, Sierra Hahn, Freddye Lins, and John Schork. The strip follows mercenary Royce on a contract in a war-torn African state to kill rebel leader Ayotunde Kutti, then ends with a hunter watching him from the bush. Among Dark Horse Predator comics, it is the Earth-side prequel to Predators (2010) that shows Royce before the drop onto the Game Preserve Planet.

Plot Summary

War-Torn Africa

Government soldiers unload United Nations ration crates while civilians crowd a dusty African compound in Predators: A Predatory Life

In a war-torn African state, Royce watched government soldiers divert United Nations food rations while civilians pressed against trucks and fences under a hard orange sky. Mothers took beatings for trying to reach the crates, children lost parents in the scramble, and Royce treated the scene as the ordinary order of a country that still called him when orphans grew up with guns. Rebel raids had already blown up a secretary of state and stripped a convoy of armored vehicles and antitank missiles. The government that stole the food was the same government that needed a foreign killer.

A driver named Bapoto collected Royce in a jeep and talked about brandy and imported mangoes waiting at headquarters while a skinned cow lay in the dust beside the road. Royce rode past shacks, power lines, and a child carrying water buckets, already measuring the contract rather than the country. He had worked for governments like this before and expected the same mix of fear, bribes, and deniable murder. The job ahead was to erase a rebel leader the general could not cut out of the jungle himself.

The General's Bargain

Royce watches government soldiers and tanks march past the general's office window in Predators: A Predatory Life

In a colonial office the general ate fruit while guards stood with rifles, showed Royce a photograph of rebel leader Ayotunde Kutti, and called Kutti's fighters terrorists who held nearly a third of the country. He wanted Kutti dead, and he also wanted Kutti's women, children, and white mercenaries killed so nothing of the rebel camp remained. Royce listened without comfort and looked out at tanks and marching soldiers who still lost every time they stepped into Kutti's jungle. The general needed a contractor who would finish what his army could not.

Royce demanded two-thirds of his fee up front and accepted the contract while making clear that he despised the men who hired him as much as the target. He refused air drops and river approaches that Kutti would watch, and chose a cross-jungle march on foot instead. From the window the government's strength looked large, and Royce still rated it useless without him. The bargain sent him into the trees with a guide who was already more liability than help.

Bapoto And The Jungle

Royce moves through rainy jungle with a drum-fed shotgun while a large snake coils on a tree beside him in Predators: A Predatory Life

Royce covered about twenty-two miles on the first day while Bapoto struggled behind him, claiming Blackwater training in North Carolina and promising he would keep up. Royce expected a paid watcher on every contract and did not argue when the general attached one, because arguing only made employers nervous. He read Bapoto as the man ordered to kill him after the job so the government could skip the back end of the fee and blame tribal fighting. In the tall grass he broke that plan before it matured.

Royce smashed Bapoto across the face, mocked a Machiavelli line about keeping enemies close, and finished him with a knife in the mud as rain moved in over the canopy. He wiped the blade clean, left the body behind, and continued alone toward Kutti with a drum-fed shotgun and no guide. A snake watched from a trunk while Royce pushed deeper, already planning the deaths of Kutti and the men around him. He told himself the general would not complain once that work was done.

Kutti's Village

Royce crouches in a tree with a submachine gun while armed soldiers search the grass below him in Africa

Three days later Royce reached Kutti's village of stilt houses beside a river and watched from a tree while soldiers and mercenaries moved among women and children. Sniping was not his specialty, yet the shot from the branch would have been easy, and the contract still demanded the whole camp rather than a single kill. Through binoculars and a scope he recognized one of Kutti's white mercenaries as Travis, a man he had fought beside in Pakistan. Travis had an arrangement with Kutti, and Royce refused to open on the women and children the general had ordered erased.

A past job in the Philippines had already taught him what a wrong tip and a ruined building did to his rate and to his reputation as a man without conscience. He still cared enough to reject deliberate slaughter of civilians even while he planned to kill every soldier and mercenary who stood with Kutti. To pull Travis and the armed force out before he went in for the leader, he shot one of Kutti's men from the tree and let the glare sell him as an amateur bounty hunter. Travis led most of the soldiers and mercenaries into the jungle on the false trail, leaving only a handful of guards between Royce and the general's rival.

Attack On The Village

Royce attacking with a drum-fed gun among the burning huts of Kutti's village in Predators: A Predatory Life

With the search party gone, Royce dropped from cover and walked through the emptied village as a one-man assault, torching the thatched huts and rolling grenades under the parked trucks and jeeps until fuel and flame tore them apart. The guards who had stayed behind ran into the smoke and fell to the drum-fed gun one after another, and the explosions carried through the jungle to the men chasing the false trail.

The Contract

Royce holding a drum-fed submachine gun on the rebel leader Ayotunde Kutti in front of a bookshelf

With the village burning behind him, Royce burst into Kutti's headquarters, shot the men inside, and cornered Ayotunde Kutti beside a bookshelf with the drum-fed gun up. Kutti called the government butchers and offered more money, and Royce answered that he had a contract and shot him.

In a side room a woman with a revolver and a baby surprised him, and his return fire wounded her even though he had refused to hunt women and children on purpose. He saw the baby crying, judged the wound as carelessness rather than the old Philippines disaster, and left her alive because Travis's returning party was already too close.

Travis Returns

Drawn back by the explosions, Travis and the mercenaries pushed into the bloodied hut, where the dying woman named a white man as the shooter. Royce opened fire on the crowded room before the men could spread out, and the gunfire cut through mercenaries packed shoulder to shoulder. The contract still named every mercenary, and Royce treated the survivors as unfinished work rather than witnesses to spare.

Travis

Travis ordered a break for a beach where a man named Mason would take survivors home, and Royce hunted the men who ran, admitting to himself that he liked the work when it was not too easy. He caught Travis at a jeep on a riverbank, heard his employers called monsters for the camps and the children, and answered that it was not his problem. Travis called him the bad guy on this job, and Royce said he was the bad guy on every one before he shot his old comrade and walked away from the burning vehicle.

The Watcher

Tracker Predator watches Royce from the bushes at the end of Predators: A Predatory Life

From the undergrowth the Tracker watched him, one of the Super Predators who would later run the preserve hunt. Three red targeting lights and the hint of a bio-mask closed the Earth story while Royce hoped the next job would be harder than this one. Soon afterward he would wake in freefall over the Game Preserve Planet with other killers taken as prey, the same season that Welcome to the Jungle had already staged for Drake and Noland.

Key Characters

Royce was an American mercenary who took the general's money to kill Ayotunde Kutti, murdered his guide Bapoto on the approach, emptied the rebel camp, and shot his old comrade Travis before a Super Predator marked him for the preserve.
Ayotunde Kutti was the rebel leader who held nearly a third of the country, hired white mercenaries including Travis, and died in his headquarters when Royce finished the contract.
Travis was a mercenary who had fought beside Royce in Pakistan, ran Kutti's armed response after the sniper feint, and died at a riverside jeep after calling Royce the bad guy.
Bapoto was the guide and paid watcher who claimed Blackwater training, followed Royce into the jungle, and died when Royce judged him as the man ordered to kill him after the job.
The Tracker was a Super Predator who watched Royce from the bush after Travis fell and marked him for the hunt on the Game Preserve Planet.

Editions

Dark Horse Comics published A Predatory Life as backup strips across the four weekly Predators issues in June 2010, beside Marc Andreyko and Guilherme Balbi's Welcome to the Jungle A-story. David Lapham wrote the Royce strip, Gabriel Guzman pencilled it, Mariano Taibo inked it, Michael Atiyeh colored it, and Nate Piekos lettered it under Scott Allie, Sierra Hahn, Freddye Lins, and John Schork. Paul Lee's series covers fronted the floppies that carried both stories, and issue #1 reached shops on June 9, 2010, as part of the official prequel push for Robert Rodriguez's Predators film. The backup remained a separate Royce Earth story rather than a chapter of Drake and Noland's preserve hunt.

Dark Horse collected the Predators comics in a trade paperback in October 2010 that gathered Welcome to the Jungle with the related film tie-in material, including A Predatory Life. After Marvel took the Predator comics license, the Lapham and Guzman strip returned in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 in May 2024 beside Homeworld, Captive, Nemesis, Demon's Gold, Xenogenesis, Welcome to the Jungle, and the later Hunters trilogy. The omnibus pages used for this overview run from the Predators backup open through the Tracker's watch at the close.

Behind The Scenes

Dark Horse timed the weekly Predators event for June 2010 ahead of the July theatrical release, pairing Andreyko's official prequel with Lapham's Royce backups so shops could sell both Drake's preserve fall and Royce's last Earth job in one month. Gabriel Guzman's interiors carried the African jungle and camp assault while Paul Lee's covers put Adrien Brody's Royce beside Laurence Fishburne's Noland under the official-prequel banner, even though Royce's comic spotlight lived mainly in the backup. Lapham later wrote Predators: Surviving Life, a sequel strip to the film that continues after A Predatory Life's prequel stretch. Scott Allie and Sierra Hahn led the editorial team that shipped all four issues in a single month under Mike Richardson's Dark Horse banner.

The strip names Travis, Bapoto, and Ayotunde Kutti as the human cast around Royce and ends on the Tracker rather than on a preserve drop drawn inside these pages. It fills in why Royce arrives on the Game Preserve Planet as a practiced lone killer who already distrusts partners and still refuses some civilian targets. Retailers received the backups as part of the short-run movie bridge rather than as a long Dark Horse ongoing, and the story's later life has been through the 2010 trade and the 2024 Original Years Omnibus reprint.

Conclusion

Predators: A Predatory Life is the June 2010 Dark Horse Predators backup by David Lapham and Gabriel Guzman, with inks by Mariano Taibo, colors by Michael Atiyeh, and letters by Nate Piekos. It follows Royce from a stolen-rations African state through Bapoto's death, the feint against Travis, and the killing of Ayotunde Kutti to the Tracker's watch in the bush. The contract ends on Earth, and the Super Predators' preserve hunt begins where this strip stops.