Predator: Blood Feud: Plot, Characters & Lore
Predator: Blood Feud is a four-part Predator comic by Neal Barrett Jr. and Leo Durañona, serialized by Dark Horse Comics in Dark Horse Comics #4 to #7 between November 1992 and February 1993. A blind sensei in modern Tokyo named Juta was hunted by a Predator that had a score to settle from the age of the shogun. The story is one of the best-known clashes of Predators vs. samurai and tied a modern thriller to a blood feud that began three centuries earlier.
Plot Summary
Juta And Elaine
The story opened in Tokyo, where a blind man named Juta was spending the night with his lover Elaine, a doctor. Even in bed his mind kept drifting back to his work, a neural implant that could stimulate the part of the brain responsible for sight. As they walked home through the narrow streets with his dog, Juta explained that the device would not give people normal sight. Instead it would let a sightless person receive heat images, the infrared radiation given off by other people.
Elaine teased him about his one-track mind, and as a doctor she had doubts about any surgical procedure. Juta told her he meant stimulation, a pulse or a command, not surgery. Their walk was cut short when a gang of young punks with knives and dyed hair jumped them. Juta fought them off without his eyes, sending them sprawling across the pavement as his dog joined in. One of the attackers fled screaming that this was Juta, the blind killer, and Juta dismissed them as kids who all wanted to be yakuza.
The Vision
Moments after the fight, Juta stopped in the middle of a sentence as something tore through his mind. He saw a temple town in old Japan, frightened townsfolk and armored samurai, and above them a shimmering shape with two glowing red eyes. When he came back to himself, Elaine was holding his arm and asking what had happened to him. He told her that he had been somewhere else, at a battle back in the eighteenth century, and that he had really been there.
Juta said there had been a fight and something terrible that did not belong in that world. He had been blind since the age of ten, and although he still saw things in his head, nothing had ever been so vivid and real. Elaine had no explanation, and Juta could not say why the vision had come to him now. The two of them walked on toward his home and his school, unaware that the thing from his vision was already waiting for him.
The Dojo
At his building, Elaine joked about fixing them both a drink while Juta asked only for tea. Then he stopped at the door, sensing that something was not right inside, and told Elaine to stay back as his dog went in ahead. The hall was a slaughterhouse. Skinned bodies hung from the ceiling, blood covered the floor and the dog sniffed at the remains. Elaine named the dead one by one as Jiro, Mokurai, Kazuo and Gasan, and told Juta that every one of his students had been killed.
Juta was devastated and demanded to know what kind of maniac would do something like this to his pupils. Elaine said she would call the police, but Juta stopped her. His dog was growling at the far end of the room, and he ordered Elaine to turn around and walk straight out of the door. Whoever had done this, he warned her, was still here. Juta stayed behind in the ruined hall with his dog at his side, ready to face the killer even though he could not see it.
Payback Time
A cloaked figure smashed through the wall, and the Predator stepped out of the shadows with its blades bared. Juta's dog flew at it and was torn apart. To Juta's amazement, he could suddenly see the creature and Elaine as glowing heat images, exactly as if he already had his device. The hunter came at him with its wrist blades, and in its own alien voice it growled that it was payback time. Juta met it hand to hand, ducking under its claws and driving his fists into its mask.
The fight smashed through the dojo until Juta was hurled through a wall. Then the Predator looked down at him and muttered that it was not seeing him, and it left him lying in the rubble. Juta joked that he must be out of season. Afterward, Elaine demanded to know what the thing had been. Juta said that he did not know, but he was sure it had come for him, because it had not got him last time. He could not explain why he had said it, only that the words had come into his head.
Lord Sugai
The police inspector who took charge of the scene addressed Juta as Tanaka-san and asked him not to speak to the press. Elaine admitted that she had also glimpsed the creature before it faded out, and Juta realized it could cloak itself. He regretted leaving his dog, Shadow, who had been his friend as well as his eyes. That night he worked on the data for his device and drifted into a dream of the past, in which he was the young student of a master named Lord Sugai.
In the dream, demons called oni had appeared in Japan and slaughtered many of Lord Sugai's friends, old samurai who had put away their swords. Sugai saw that the demons were not true warriors but hunters with their own kind of honor, who had sensed courage in the old men. The shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi sent his army against them, and nearly a thousand men lay dead or dying. Shamed and enraged, the shogun decided not to send his army again but to choose one champion to challenge a single demon in the field.
The Champion
In the courtyard under the morning sun, the student felt as if an arrow from the gods had struck his heart. He told Lord Sugai that he must fight the demon. Sugai was certain he had lost his senses and reminded him that he was not a samurai, that he was only a boy and that he was blind. The boy insisted that these things were true, but still he had to be the one. The dream then showed the demon rising over him and cutting him down with a sweep of its blade.
The Predator spoke over the body, saying that he was dead and that it was good. Juta woke screaming as Elaine held him and told him he had only been dreaming. He said it was not a dream. He had seen how it started and how it had to end, and he begged Elaine to let him go, admitting that he had forgotten all about honor and was too scared to care. When she argued that he could not know how it would end, Juta told her there was nothing after that.
Nikko
Juta could find nothing useful in the data for his device. He told Elaine that his own head was now doing what the device ought to do, showing him the creature as an infrared image. The visions, he said, were memories of another Juta, and he was sure he had been there among Lord Sugai, the shogun and the creatures. Then he remembered that he had been the one who had to face the demon, and that it had all happened right there.
He told Elaine to get the car, and they drove her red sports car north toward Nikko. Juta guided her from memory, past a small village, a river and a Shinto shrine on a low hill. At the end of the road lay a pile of rocks, which Juta said was one of the shogun's summer palaces. It appeared in no guidebook, because the shogun had razed it after what happened there. Juta told her that this was where he had lived another life as that other Juta.
The Shinto Monks
As they climbed among the stones, a man with binoculars watched them from cover with armed soldiers behind him. Juta remembered how Lord Sugai had described the bloodied survivors coming back and the shogun's rage. He also recalled a Shinto monk telling his father that the boy had been chosen for the task. His father raged that the boy was his son, called it a monkish legend and offered to go in his place, but the monk said that his father was not the one.
Juta fell to his knees in the ruins as the memory broke over him. He had always thought that losing his eyes was an accident, but he now understood that the monks had blinded him because it had to be as it was before. He cried out that he could see his father's face. Then a shimmering, cloaked shape rose out of the rocks behind him as Elaine screamed his name. The hunter from his visions had followed them to the place where the feud had begun.
The Soldiers
Juta charged the creature, shouting that it had caused all of this and that it would end here. He landed a kick, but the Predator muttered again that it was not seeing him and that this one was the wrong kind. Soldiers hidden in the rocks opened fire, and their bullets pinged off its armor. The hunter turned on them, swatting Juta aside and tearing through the troops with its blades. It killed them with contemptuous ease, complaining that they were boring and no fun.
Juta stood among the dead soldiers and screamed at the Predator to fight him, but it ignored him. Afterward, an official in a trench coat raged that he had dead men all over the hillside and threatened to lock Juta up unless he talked. Juta said only that he had dead friends as well and did not know what the thing was. Elaine drove him back toward Tokyo, wondering whether anyone would believe that a monster from three hundred years ago wanted him. They found trucks and troops in the streets, and the city had become a war zone.
The Helmet And The Katana
Juta asked himself why the hunter had come for him and yet would not kill him. He sat in meditation with a sword and called on the spirit of his sensei to show him what he had been chosen to do. The voice told him that the gods had called him to face the oni once before and had called on him again, and that he must search within himself. When Juta looked deeper, he saw the mask of a demon and took up a long case.
An army officer, General Kataro, collected him at the checkpoint and had his driver Miyamoto take him to the ruins, saying the student comes when the sensei calls. Among the rocks, Juta dug where his vision guided him and pulled out an old Predator helmet and a katana. He recognized the blade as the twin of his own family sword, the one he had brought from home. As he wondered why the demon's helmet and the sword were together, the cloaked hunter appeared behind him with a roar.
The Duel
This time the Predator attacked in earnest and slammed Juta into the rocks. His sensei's voice told him that the creature had seen the helmet of its hunt brother, the demon Juta had killed long ago, and that it now knew who he was. The other Juta had been blind as well, and could see in the other way, as the demons themselves could see. The hunter had come to finish what it started and erase the shame of its brother's defeat.
Juta mocked the Predator, telling it that its brother had more honor and had tried to kill him with that very sword. They clashed with the blades in a furious duel, and although Juta was badly cut, his sword took the hunter's head. The sensei told him that the vision of his death had been created by his own fears. Cloaked Predators gathered on the ruins and declared that it was over now, and their ship lifted away into the night as Elaine ran to embrace Juta among the soldiers.
Key Characters
- Juta Tanaka was the blind sensei and inventor in Tokyo who had lived a past life as the boy chosen to face a demon. He beheaded the hunter with his family katana.
- The Predator was the hunter who returned to Japan to avenge its hunt brother. It slaughtered Juta's students and soldiers before dying in the duel.
- Elaine was Juta's lover, a doctor who saw the creature fade away and drove him to the ruins near Nikko.
- Lord Sugai was Juta's sensei in his past life, a wise man who saw that the demons were hunters with their own honor.
- Tokugawa Tsunayoshi was the shogun who sent his army against the demons and then chose a single champion.
- General Kataro was the army officer who drove Juta through the checkpoint to the ruins.
- Shadow was Juta's guide dog, killed by the Predator in the dojo.
Behind The Scenes
The story was serialized in the anthology Dark Horse Comics #4 to #7, with parts of six, six, six and seven pages cover dated November 1992 through February 1993. Neal Barrett Jr. wrote it, with Pierce Watters credited as consultant on Japanese history and tradition, while Leo Durañona penciled and inked every page. Eric Vincent colored the chapters and Ellie de Ville lettered them under editor Jerry Prosser. Durañona also painted the cover of Dark Horse Comics #4, showing a samurai on a tiled rooftop facing a cloaked Predator.
Blood Feud ran in the same anthology as Predator: Rite of Passage, and it followed earlier Dark Horse stories such as Predator: Bloody Sands of Time in sending the hunters into human history. Marvel collected it in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 in December 2022, alongside the other early Dark Horse Predator stories. Its feudal battles made it a key source for pages on the Samurai Killer Predator, and its hunters used the cloaking device and wrist blades made famous by the 1987 film Predator.
Conclusion
Predator: Blood Feud turned a short anthology serial into a story about memory, fear and inherited duty, linking a blind teacher in modern Tokyo to a boy chosen by the gods in the age of the shogun. Leo Durañona gave the hunters a ghostly menace that suited a tale of reincarnation, and Neal Barrett Jr. let the feud end the way it began, with one Juta, one demon and a pair of family swords. When the cloaked hunters declared it over, Juta had finally beaten the death he had feared for three centuries.
External Sources
- Dark Horse Comics #4 (Blood Feud Part 1) at the Grand Comics Database
- Dark Horse Comics #4 at Dark Horse
- Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 at Marvel
Tag Categories: Predator Comics | Predator Lore
