Predator: Hell And Hot Water: Comic Overview

Published: April to June 1997, three issues
Collected: Predator: Hell & Hot Water (February 1998), Predator Omnibus Vol. 3 (June 2008), Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 (May 2024)
Script: Mark Schultz
Pencils: Gene Colan
Colors: Gregory Wright
Letters: Steve Dutro
Cover: Mark Schultz
Editor: Bob Cooper
Assistant Editor: Dave Land
Format: Three 36-page issues with 24-page stories
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Setting: The Humboldt Current off southern Chile, late 1990s

Predator: Hell & Hot Water is a three-issue Predator comic series written by Mark Schultz and penciled by Gene Colan, published by Dark Horse Comics from April to June 1997. Gregory Wright colored it, Steve Dutro lettered it and Mark Schultz drew the covers. It is set in the cold waters of the Humboldt Current off southern Chile, where Captain Rafe Cromartie and a dive team tried to capture a Predator that had fallen from the sky and found a volcanic sea-floor ecosystem worse than the hunter. It is one of the Dark Horse Predator comics that place a Yautja hunt on Earth in the late twentieth century.

Story Summary

Something Falls Into The Humboldt Current

Chilean fishermen on a storm-tossed vessel watch something fall from the sky into the Humboldt Current

Two days before the main hunt, the crew of a Chilean fishing vessel worked well out into the Humboldt Current off the southern archipelagoes. A fast weather front closed on them, and through the rain they heard a roar like a huge turbine in the sky. Something flickered in the storm, taking on material shape and an electricity of its own before it hit the cold water. The Chilean authorities ran a cursory search and found nothing, but radar and other reports kept the incident alive. Word of the crash reached a secret organization that already knew Predators were real.

The organization treated the sighting as a rare early chance to act while the hunter was still in a known patch of ocean. Seismic readings in the region also pointed to unusual activity on the sea floor. Captain Rafe Cromartie was ordered south with a dive team, heavy underwater gear and a narrow window before the Chilean navy and other services crowded the area. The brief assumed the crash was a Predator arrival, even if the cold ocean was not where the hunters usually made camp. Cromartie accepted the risk and prepared to fish for something that had never been taken alive.

Captain Cromartie's Mission

Captain Rafe Cromartie and his team receive their briefing about the Predator crash off the Chilean coast

In the briefing, the handlers told Cromartie that one member of the mission already carried top-secret cover training about alien hunters. That operative was Izzy, whose public persona was gun-shy around weapons so that, if things went bad, she would read as a non-combatant. Buried under that cover was a combat persona that could use a firearm without panic. The team also received a sensor tuned to the frequency of Predator command apparatus, which they hoped would light up the hunter's gear in the water. Cromartie called the job a suicide mission in coarse water, but he still took the assignment.

The organization had invested heavily in mixed-gas tanks, wet suits, surveillance kit and personal arms for an ocean-floor hunt. Support staff warned that volcanic tremors were warming water that was normally cold, which matched the seismic picture. Prior contact reports said a Predator's cloaking tech failed in water, so the team expected no invisible ambush once they were submerged. Cromartie split the divers into elements and ordered ultrasonic silence so the hunter would not hear them first. He told them to take what the Predator gave them and not to chase glory.

Descent Into The Humboldt

Divers in teal gear face huge glowing eel-like fish over the volcanic sea floor in the Humboldt Current

The first dive took the team down over a volcanic stretch of sea floor that ran farther than the lights could show. Strange fish moved through the dark like electric eels, throwing charges as they chased one another. The divers switched frequencies when contact got messy and tried to keep a link to the surface boat. Sensors picked up something that was not a clean Predator lock, and the team closed in to look. The heated water and alien microfauna already suggested the crash site was not an empty crater.

Grinnell and Matteson worked one flank while Brahm stayed with Cromartie. The plan was to see the hunter first, jam its self-destruct if they could and bag it for study. Instead the volcanic terrain and the living lights of the rift pulled their attention off the Predator. When the ambush came, it came from a hunter that had already chosen its ground among the rocks and the heated vents. The first dive ended with the team scattered, their comms breaking up and names going unanswered in the dark water.

Couder Dead, Matteson Missing

Surviving divers recover from an underwater ambush after Couder is killed and Matteson vanishes

The survivors surfaced with a broken report: the Predator had been waiting for them. Couder was dead, and Matteson was gone into the black water. One diver said the hunter could have finished them all but had chosen a single kill and a single captive on purpose. Cromartie ordered a mission change on the spot and refused to write Matteson off as lost equipment. Leaving a living teammate in the Predator's hunting ground was not an option the team would accept.

Back on the boat, the crew argued over whether Matteson could still be alive in the cold and the dark. The sensor still showed a stationary contact about a kilometer east, up against the base of an island. Cromartie decided they would go back down along the bottom with tighter ultrasonic discipline. He told the surface watch that if the team had not checked in within two hours, the boat should run. The second dive would be a rescue first and a capture second.

Couder's Skull And Spine

The dive team stands over Couder's body bag on deck after finding his skull and spine ripped out

When the team recovered what was left of Couder, the fish had already worked on the carcass. His head and most of his spine were gone, the classic trophy cut of a Predator kill. On deck they bagged the remains and tried to keep the rest of the crew from staring. Cromartie used the body as hard proof that the hunter meant business and that the first ambush had not been a random shark attack. Positive identification left no room for hope that Couder had simply drifted off station.

The team read the trophy as a message tied to Matteson's disappearance. In Cromartie's view the Predator had ambushed Couder's element on purpose, kept one human alive as bait and dared the rest to come get him. Returning Couder's weapon without the man fit that ransom logic. Izzy argued that they needed every diver they could get, including her, even though her cover identity was not listed as a combat operative. Cromartie let her suit up for the return trip into the rift.

Back Into The Depths

An aquatic Predator with a multi-pronged spear crouches on the sea floor among fish

The second descent followed the Predator's lead into darker water and rock. The hunter knew human prey and left a trail that was easy to read on purpose. Cromartie told the team they were dropping into a hole the Predator wanted them to enter, and that silence still mattered. Izzy took a rebreather and joined the line, arguing that she was a better diver than the others wanted to admit. Above them the storm and the boat felt a long way off as the lights of the surface faded.

On the sea floor the Predator waited in its own element, spear ready among the fish. Prior reports that a cloak failed in water still guided the team's sensors, but the hunter had other ways to vanish in rock and silt. The divers said goodbye to the sun and pushed into the passages the Predator opened for them. Every easy turn felt like an invitation written for impatient humans. Cromartie kept them moving toward the electromagnetic ghost of Matteson's helmet and refused to let the line break.

A Sealed Ecosystem

Cromartie's divers discuss microfauna and volcanic heat inside a sealed underwater ecosystem

Inside the rock the air pockets were breathable, and the team found chambers that should not have existed under ordinary geology. Volcanic heat and hydrothermal vents supported microfauna that looked like rotifers or other sealed-world organisms. One diver noted the irony that a killer from space had stumbled into a biosystem Earth science had barely imagined. The life forms did not behave like ordinary deep-sea prey, and the tunnels linked heated pools into a self-contained world. Cromartie ordered the team to stay sharp and keep their toes under them on the wet stone.

The Predator used the labyrinth as its hunting ground. It led the humans from chamber to chamber, always just ahead of the sensors and always leaving them a path forward. Cromartie and Izzy argued about whether the hunter was guiding them toward Matteson or toward something else entirely. The deeper they went, the less the mission looked like a simple bag-and-tag of a stranded Yautja. The sealed ecosystem was not scenery; it was the reason the Predator had come down from the sky.

Following The Hunter

Divers with headlamps advance through a dark underwater cavern while tracking the Predator

The team advanced through limestone formations and blue-lit caverns, calling names across short ranges. Cromartie set cover elements and sent divers into the next chamber while others held the rear. An electromagnetic sensor locked on a Predator helmet signature behind a rock shelf, and the plan was to converge and drop him in minutes. The hunter made the path easy enough that even the veterans felt the trap. Human scent and noise carried farther in the closed tunnels than anyone liked.

When the signal shifted, the team realized the Predator had been playing their gear. As long as the helmet registered, they thought they knew where they stood in the dark. Once he discarded or masked that beacon, he was invisible to their scanners again and free to choose the next strike. Shouts of warning went out too late for everyone still packed in the narrow tunnels. The cavern hunt turned from a tracked pursuit into a fight for air and exits.

The Cloaked Ambush

Divers react in a cavern ambush as the Predator breaks their sensor lock and strikes

The ambush hit while the team still trusted the sensors. One diver went down hard on the wet stone; another froze in place asking what had happened. Radio calls to Tanguy and Grinnell drew no reply as the line broke into fragments. Cromartie ordered a quick follow on Matteson's trail and told the others he would explain later if they lived. Panic rose as the cavern shook under them and the hunter's next move stayed unseen in the blue dark.

Grinnell found himself trapped in a tight squeeze of rock and water, fighting not to thrash away his air. The Predator had turned the tunnels into a maze that favored its reach, its patience and its knowledge of the vents. Cromartie's command net frayed as elements lost line of sight and line of sound in the shaking rock. The mission that had started as a capture was now a running fight through flooded passages. Every flare and every shout risked drawing something besides the Yautja out of the heated pools.

The Tentacled Worm

A huge magenta tentacle seizes a diver while Cromartie's team fights in the cavern

From a muck pool in the cavern floor a huge tentacled worm heaved itself into the light. Cromartie later described it, after talks with biology, as belonging to the archaea-like life of that subterranean world. The creature took divers with shocking speed and ignored the careful lanes the team had drawn for a Predator fight. Brahm and others vanished into coils while the rest fired, cut and tried to drag free whoever they could reach. In that moment the worm made the Predator look like the smaller problem in the cavern.

Half of Cromartie's command was probably dead within minutes of the worm's rise. The capture mission collapsed into a scramble to stay alive between the Yautja and the tentacled horror. Sensors that had been tuned for Predator frequencies did nothing against the new threat from the muck pool. Cromartie tried to pull what was left of his people toward any exit that still held rock and air. The sealed ecosystem had its own apex predators, and the humans were caught in the middle of their fight.

Bait For Something Worse

The Predator fires an energy weapon at the purple tentacled creature while divers flee

In the chaos Cromartie understood the Predator's real hunt. The humans had not been the prize; they were bait to draw the worm into the open so the Yautja could study and kill it. The hunter watched strengths and strategies before it committed itself, then struck when the worm focused on easier meat. Izzy and Cromartie saw the pattern too late to refuse the role the Predator had written for them. They were guinea pigs in someone else's trial, useful only while the worm still hunted.

Even so, the match was closer than the Predator expected. The worm's reach and the collapsing cavern put hunter and quarry in the same kill zone of rock and hot water. Divers used flares and explosives to buy seconds while the two monsters tore at each other in the blue dark. Cromartie kept one thought clear: if the Predator and the worm finished each other, his remaining people might still leave. Hope was thin in that collapsing chamber, but it was better than standing still.

Escape From Hell And Hot Water

Survivors fight free as the cavern collapses around the Predator and the tentacled worm

The end of the hunt was noise, blood and falling stone. Cromartie held for one clean chance while the Predator was distracted, then drove his people toward the surface routes. Miraculously, both Izzy and Matteson survived the cavern after the worst of the worm attack. Izzy's combat persona kept her effective with the scuba gear when her cover identity would have frozen on a weapon. The Predator, presented with chances to destroy their equipment, left the humans alone once they were no longer useful bait.

After the return, Cromartie wrote a personal addendum to his report. He had gone toe to toe with Lucifer and lost half his command, and he called the mission a failure in its current mode. He argued that Predator interception as they practiced it invited the deaths of countless other agents. With that uppermost in his mind, Captain Cromartie of the special unit resigned his command. The Humboldt Current kept its sealed nightmare, and the survivors carried the story out of the hot water.

Characters

Rafe Cromartie was the captain who led the Chilean dive mission. He lost half his command to the Predator and the worm and resigned after the debrief.
Izzy was the team's covert operative, carrying a gun-shy cover persona over a combat identity. She survived the cavern and helped get the survivors out.
Couder was killed in the first ambush. The Predator took his skull and spine as a trophy and left his weapon as a message.
Matteson was taken alive as bait during the first dive and later found alive in the cavern system.
Grinnell, Brahm and Tanguy were divers on Cromartie's team. Several did not answer after the cloaked ambush and the worm attack.
The Predator was the aquatic hunter that crashed into the Humboldt Current, used the humans as bait and fought the tentacled worm in the volcanic caves.
The tentacled worm was a huge subterranean creature from the sealed hydrothermal ecosystem that seized divers and forced the Predator into the open.

Behind The Scenes

Dark Horse Comics published Predator: Hell & Hot Water as a three-issue color miniseries with April, May and June 1997 cover dates. Issue #1 went on sale April 30, 1997, issue #2 on May 29 and issue #3 on June 25. Mark Schultz wrote the story and drew the covers, Gene Colan penciled the interiors without a separate inker, Gregory Wright colored the pages and Steve Dutro lettered them. Bob Cooper edited the issues with Dave Land as assistant editor, and Julie Gassaway designed the series logo.

Schultz took the job on the condition that he could send the Predator somewhere new, and he used his own scuba experience to build the undersea plot. Colan, long associated with horror comics such as The Tomb of Dracula, treated the script as cinematic page-to-page storytelling. Dark Horse billed the series as the first major underwater Predator story, with humans caught between the Yautja and a second deep-sea horror. The finished art kept Colan's pencil textures visible under Wright's colors, which gave the cold water and cavern light a rough, stormy look.

Editions

Dark Horse collected the three issues in the Predator: Hell & Hot Water trade paperback in February 1998, edited for the collection by Lynn Adair. The series was reprinted again in Predator Omnibus Vol. 3 in June 2008, alongside Predator: Bad Blood, Predator: Kindred, Predator: Strange Roux and short stories from Dark Horse Presents. After Marvel took the Predator comics license, the story returned in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 in May 2024, the same volume that includes Predator: Demon's Gold. The omnibus printings keep Schultz's cover art and Colan's underwater pages in color.

Conclusion

Predator: Hell & Hot Water is a 1997 three-issue Dark Horse series by Mark Schultz and Gene Colan, with colors by Gregory Wright and covers by Schultz. It follows Captain Rafe Cromartie's dive team into the Humboldt Current after a Predator crash, through a first ambush that killed Couder and took Matteson, and into volcanic caverns where a tentacled worm waited. The Predator used the humans as bait, the survivors escaped a collapsing hunt, and Cromartie resigned rather than send more agents into the same kind of interception.