Predator: Bump In The Night: Comic Overview

Published: Dark Horse Presents #124 (August 1997)
Collected: Predator Omnibus Vol. 3 (June 2008), Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 (May 2024)
Story: Steven T. Seagle & Duncan Rouleau
Pencils: Duncan Rouleau
Inks: Jim Royal
Letters: Sean Konot
Cover: Val Mayerik
Editors: Bob Schreck, Jamie S. Rich
Designer: Cary Grazzini
Format: Eight-page black-and-white short story in an anthology issue
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Setting: A Florida backyard and swamp near Bonita Springs, late 1990s

Predator: Bump in the Night is an eight-page black-and-white Predator short story written by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau, with pencils by Rouleau and inks by Jim Royal. Dark Horse Comics published it in Dark Horse Presents #124, on sale August 13, 1997, with lettering by Sean Konot and a cover by Val Mayerik. It is set in a Florida backyard beside a swamp, where Bobby Collins and his friends left the yard after lights-out to prove an alien ship was real, watched a Predator hunt herons and went back to their tent while the hunter followed them home. It is one of the Dark Horse Predator comics that place a Yautja hunt on Earth in the late twentieth century.

Story Summary

Lights Out By Ten

A Florida house and backyard tent at night as Bobby's mother sends the boys to camp with lights-out rules, from Predator: Bump in the Night

Bobby Collins's mother sent him and his friends to camp in the backyard tent and went to bed herself. The rules were lights out by 10:00, keep the noise down and no leaving the yard. Bobby brushed off the lecture, and Jamie and Gus settled in to finish a horror story about a police trunk that held a bucket of human ears. The backyard already sat against swamp country, and the boys treated the night as a chance to stay up late rather than a warning.

A Better Monster Story

Three boys with flashlights trade monster stories in a backyard tent, from Predator: Bump in the Night

The ears yarn was said to have happened up in Cape Coral, where John's dad was a cop and had seen the evidence himself. When Jamie asked whether Bobby had a better monster story than that, Bobby answered that he had seen an alien spaceship out in the swamp. The others called him a liar and a jealous friend, and his mother yelled from the house to keep the noise down or they would all sleep inside. Bobby shut the argument with a promise: if they did not believe him, he would prove it.

Into The Swamp

Three boys sneak from behind through dense Florida swamp foliage at night, from Predator: Bump in the Night

The boys left the yard and pushed into the swamp with flashlights after lights-out. One of them worried about getting busted and about aliens that would suck their brains out through their nose holes. Bobby said he had only seen a ship, and he guessed the aliens had drowned or gone somewhere else. He still ordered lights out and silence as they closed on the spot he remembered.

The Hunter At The Ship

A Predator crouched under its ship with spears in a Florida swamp, from Predator: Bump in the Night

They found the ship exactly where Bobby had claimed, and under it stood an alien that had not been there the day before. The boys froze between excitement and fear, whispering that they had to move, had to look and had to worry about their brains. Jamie dared Bobby to go touch it. Bobby told him to shut up and stay quiet so they could watch the hunter instead.

Nailing Herons

From cover the boys watched the Predator work the swamp as if the birds were practice. It was nailing herons with its spear, a clean snap that left one bird's lights out while the hunter stayed focused on the kill. The scene is one of the comic's clearest looks at a Yautja treating local wildlife as warm-up quarry, the same pattern seen in other stories of Predators fighting wild animals. Bobby kept the others quiet and told them not to get them all killed while they watched.

Robert Samuel Collins

Bobby's mother confronts the boys after they return from the swamp, from Predator: Bump in the Night

The boys ran home thrilled about the tusks, the armor and the spear, crowing that Bobby was no liar and that the Cape Coral ears story had nothing on what they had seen. One of them bragged that he could build a spear like that with a pocket knife and a steak knife. Ma caught them outside and hit Bobby with his full name: Robert Samuel Collins. She warned that weird creatures lived in that swamp and could snatch him without her ever knowing, and she threatened to send his friends home and bring him inside.

Bobby apologized, promised he would never go back into the swamps and swore they would keep it down and go right to sleep. Ma accepted the promise for the night and went back into the house. The boys immediately asked whether the alien would follow them, kill them and suck their brains out their noses. Bobby's answer was practical: where was his flashlight?

Bump In The Night

Inside the tent the boys bragged that they had totally kicked that space monster's butt and looked at his ship without him knowing. They told each other to shut up and go to sleep or they would really get it from Ma. Outside, the Predator stood in the dark with its combistick, having followed them from the swamp to the backyard. The comic ends on that cliffhanger: the hunter that practiced on herons now waits beyond the tent fabric while the boys talk themselves into believing they got away clean.

Characters

Bobby / Robert Samuel Collins claimed he had seen an alien ship in the swamp, led Jamie and Gus to prove it and promised his mother he would never go back.
Jamie dared Bobby to touch the Predator and helped keep the monster-story contest going in the tent.
Gus was the third boy in the backyard camp; on the opening page Jamie told him to finish the Cape Coral ears story.
Ma was Bobby's mother. She set the lights-out rules, yelled when the boys got loud and confronted Bobby by his full name after they returned from the swamp.
John was mentioned only in the tent story; his father was a Cape Coral cop said to have seen a bucket of human ears in a trunk.
The Predator was the Yautja at the swamp ship. It hunted herons with a spear, never engaged the boys directly and followed them home to stand outside their tent.

Behind The Scenes

Dark Horse Comics published Predator: Bump in the Night in Dark Horse Presents #124, an anthology issue on sale August 13, 1997, with an August 1997 cover date. The Predator story ran eight black-and-white pages and led the issue ahead of Jon Lewis's Outside, Inside and a chapter of Arnold Pander and Zero Boy's Jack Zero. Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau wrote the story, Rouleau penciled it, Jim Royal inked it and Sean Konot lettered it. Bob Schreck and Jamie S. Rich edited the issue, Cary Grazzini designed it and Val Mayerik drew the cover.

In Dark Horse's 1997 Predator line the short sits near Predator: Hell & Hot Water and Predator: Primal, after the earlier Dark Horse Presents piece Predator: No Beast So Fierce. Seagle was then known for House of Secrets work at the same publisher, and Rouleau brought a cartoony, high-energy figure style to a story that stays with suburban kids instead of soldiers or rangers. The Florida swamp setting and backyard tent keep the hunt small: no self-destruct, no plasma firefight, only a ship, a spear and a hunter that ends the night at the edge of a child's campsite. Dark Horse's own solicitation sold the issue on an all-new Predator story by Seagle with Rouleau and Royal.

Reprints

Dark Horse reprinted the story in Predator Omnibus Vol. 3 in June 2008, together with Predator: Bad Blood, Predator: Kindred, Predator: Strange Roux, Predator: Hell & Hot Water and Predator: No Beast So Fierce. After Marvel acquired the Predator comics license, the story appeared again in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 in May 2024, the same volume that reprints Hell & Hot Water, Primal and Predator: Demon's Gold. Both collections keep Rouleau and Royal's black-and-white pages. The short length and anthology origin match other Dark Horse Presents Predator pieces such as No Beast So Fierce and Demon's Gold.

The Predator In Yautja Lore

The Predator of Bump in the Night never treats the three boys as quarry. It practices on herons, lets them watch from cover and later stands outside their tent with a combistick instead of cutting into the fabric, a choice that fits the wider Predator honor code against hunting children. Its visible kit is armor, tusks and a spear; the comic does not show a cloak, plasma caster or self-destruct. The crashed or landed Predator ship in the swamp is the story's only piece of heavy Yautja technology, and the cliffhanger leaves the hunter between a suburban yard and whatever hunt it came to Florida to finish. Decades later in prose, a different unnamed Yautja — the Florida Hunter of The Predator: Hunters and Hunted — also hunted Florida wetlands before humans took him alive.

Conclusion

Predator: Bump in the Night is an eight-page 1997 Dark Horse Presents story by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau, with inks by Jim Royal, letters by Sean Konot and a Val Mayerik cover on Dark Horse Presents #124. It follows Bobby Collins, Jamie and Gus from a backyard tent into a Florida swamp to prove an alien ship was real, through a reveal of a Predator nailing herons and back to a mother's full-name scolding. The boys bragged that they had gotten away with looking at the ship, while the hunter stood outside the tent with its spear and closed the night on the bump they never saw.