Predator: The Hunted City: Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: 1993 to 1994, three parts in Dark Horse Comics #16 (December 1993), #17 (January 1994) and #18 (February 1994)
Collected: Predator Omnibus Vol. 2 (2008), Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 (December 2022)
Script: Charles Moore
Pencils: D. Alexander Gregory, with Scott Fischer on part three
Inks: Rob Haynes (part one), Jasen Rodriguez (parts two and three)
Colors: Gregory Wright
Letters: Bill Pearson
Cover: George Pratt (Dark Horse Comics #16)
Format: Three eight-page chapters in an anthology
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Setting: Manhattan, New York City, 1947

Predator: The Hunted City is a three-part Predator comic written by Charles Moore and penciled by D. Alexander Gregory, serialized by Dark Horse Comics in Dark Horse Comics #16 to #18 in 1993 and 1994. Set in Manhattan in 1947 and narrated by a freelance news photographer named Max, it followed a Predator that was picking off New York gangsters one crew at a time. At the center of the story was Tony Vincenzo, a war veteran and mob boss who had already faced the hunter once and was determined to finish the fight.

Plot Summary

A Dying Breed

A mansion behind iron railings at night under the title The Hunted City, with the caption Manhattan, Upper East Side, 1947

The story opened on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1947, as Max reflected that the city was a jungle. Gunmen burst into a house and opened fire, and one of them told the man inside that the turf wars were over, that every family was making peace except him, and that he was all alone now, a dying breed. The man they had come for was Tony Vincenzo. He fought back with a knife and then a tommy gun while the hitmen sneered that the big war hero should face them and take it like a man. Within moments, the house had become a slaughterhouse.

Something In The House

A silhouetted Tony Vincenzo staggering back as the masked Predator works the device on its wrist in Predator: The Hunted City

Vincenzo soon realized he was not alone with the gunmen. One of the attackers was cut down by something unseen, another begged God for mercy, and a spear flew past Vincenzo and smashed through the window behind him. Bloodied and barefoot, he fired his tommy gun into the dark until a huge masked hunter knocked him across the room. Even then he taunted the Predator, guessing that it was not from around there and warning it that nobody messed with Tony Vincenzo. He grabbed its arm as police sirens rose outside and told it to hope the cops got it before he did.

The Predator worked a device on its wrist and answered in borrowed voices, calling for the lights to be brought up and telling Vincenzo to take it easy. By the time the police arrived, the hunter had gone, and Vincenzo was left among the bodies of his attackers. Detective Tooley told the gathering reporters that three scumbags were dead and a fourth was headed for a rubber room, and that the case was closed. Max was not convinced, and he wondered aloud what kind of weapon could have done so much damage, since not even Vincenzo could have done all that with a knife.

The Press At The Door

Silhouetted Predators crouched on a rooftop watching Max and Detective Tooley talk on the street below in Predator: The Hunted City

Outside the house, Max pushed through the crowd of press photographers as the police led Vincenzo away. Tooley joked that Max always arrived just in time, and the reporters swapped rumors that Vincenzo had killed a few of Bernie Jinks' best guns. Asked what had happened, Vincenzo answered only with the word nothing, then shouted that it was not over, because Tony Vincenzo always finished a fight. Max's fellow reporters dismissed Vincenzo as a soldier boy who had lost his mind, a loudmouth who had finally made good on his threats to rip out men's lungs.

Tooley reminded Max that he was a freelancer who got paid for more work, while the detective wanted the case closed. He told Max he could hunt shadows all he wanted. From the rooftops above the street, the Predator watched them through its red-eyed mask, repeating their words back in their own voices, including the remark that news people were the ones who ran this town. The hunter had heard every word of the conversation, and it had taken a particular interest in the photographer who would not let the story go.

The Mobster Murders

The second chapter opened with Max complaining that the mobster murders had been going on all week and that Tooley could not keep brushing him off. Inside a gang hideout, cards, glasses and blood were spread across a table, and a body hung upside down from a broken window. When Max forced his way to the scene, Tooley refused to play games and ordered him out. Men in suits then hustled the photographer away, and Tooley explained that they were feds and that he was only doing his job.

Driving home, Max decided that Tooley usually played it square for a cop, but things were getting crazy. He had expected the arrest of Tony Vincenzo to stop the freaky murders, but now Vincenzo had disappeared, along with Max's film from the lab, and the feds were squeezing him out of the picture. A car forced him off the road, and armed men hauled him out, telling him that he was an important man around town. They took him to a fish market on the waterfront.

Bernie Jinks

Waiting inside was the crime boss Bernie Jinks, whose own men were being found filleted like mackerels. Max told him that the police had acted weird when Vincenzo went missing, that more murders had followed, and that he had been blackballed ever since the feds appeared. Bernie called him a liar and had his men rough him up, then mocked him for worrying that Vincenzo was back on the streets to settle old debts. Max pointed out that even Vincenzo was not crazy enough to kill his own men, and that they had been hit like all the other families.

Through The Skylight

The Predator crashing down through a skylight in a shower of glass as gangsters fire up at it in Predator: The Hunted City

On the roof, the Predator killed a guard named Franco and answered the gang below in his voice. It wore a traditional mask over a mesh suit and fought with wristblades, thrown spears, grenades and a shoulder cannon with a three-dot laser sight. When Bernie complained about the heat and asked where Franco had gone, the hunter crashed down through the skylight in a shower of glass while his men opened fire. Spears flew across the room, and one of Bernie's gunmen was struck down as Max scrambled for cover. Speaking with Tooley's voice, the Predator told Max to get out of there, and it greeted the crime boss as Bernie boy.

Bernie stumbled into the hunter and begged it to take everything he had and let him go. Instead, the Predator lifted him by his collar, and in the voice of one of the gangsters it mocked his jewelry, calling him a walking pawn shop. The hunter killed Bernie, and a blast tore through the room. Gunmen rushed in firing at the Predator, and at their head was a shirtless Tony Vincenzo, armed and wearing bandoliers across his chest, who told his men to teach the freak a lesson.

Vincenzo Returns

Yellow tracer fire striking the Predator as it roars NRAHHH in a red-walled room in Predator: The Hunted City

The third chapter opened at the fish market, where Max recalled that Tony Vincenzo and his boys had burst in out of nowhere, saving him from the thing. Vincenzo's men spread out among the crates to corner the Predator, but Max began to suspect it was no mindless killing machine. The hunter cut down Vincenzo's gunmen one after another, and a grenade blast threw bodies across the warehouse. Vincenzo found his friend Lou dying on the floor, then grabbed Max and dragged him away, insisting that he needed him and that Max had to get the truth out with enough film.

As they fled, Vincenzo explained that the feds had taken him when he was arrested, describing them as spooky OSS types from military intelligence. They believed the thing was some kind of outer space whoozit and wanted it covered up for national security, so he had escaped before they could kill him. He also revealed that he and Bernie had been partners before the war, until Bernie crossed him when he came back a little different. With the right story, he said, the feds would get their payback, just as Bernie had got his.

The Last Fight

The Predator seizing Tony Vincenzo by the head and lifting him off his feet in Predator: The Hunted City

Vincenzo told Max that this was the last fight he had to finish, and when Max called him twisted, he replied that he was only a little bent. Max shot back that bent was not even the word for him, and that with all the ordnance he was carrying he would sink like a stone. The two men ended up in the water of a flooded tunnel, and the Predator came for Vincenzo, just as he had expected. He shouted that he knew it could not resist, before the hunter lifted him off his feet and began to crush him.

Vincenzo told Max to get his knife while the Predator was looking at the camera. The hunter swatted Max aside, smashing the camera, but Vincenzo pointed out that it was wounded on one side, where he had hurt it before. A grenade pin was pulled, Max drove Vincenzo's knife into the Predator's side, and the hunter repeated the words that it was a dying breed in a laughing voice. Max thought the creature should have learned about the knife by then. Moments later, a blast tore through the tunnel in a wall of fire.

The Atomic Age

The wounded Predator laughing that Vincenzo is a dying breed beside panels of Max driving the knife into its side and a fiery PFWHOOM blast in Predator: The Hunted City

Afterward, US Army trucks filled the street as soldiers and medics carried away the wounded. Max asked Vincenzo why the thing had pushed him aside to get at Max, and Vincenzo explained that the creatures were attracted to power, whether physical or political, and that the feds had noticed it following the photographer. Max realized that Vincenzo had used him as bait, and Vincenzo replied that he should expect nothing else from a crook. Federal agents took charge of the scene and told Max he could go home once their medic had cleared him.

One agent warned Max that a man in his position had a lot of responsibility, especially in this atomic age, and that a story like his might frighten the wrong people. Telling him that knowledge was power, he opened Max's camera and took the film. Max later told Tooley that he doubted they would hear from Vincenzo again. At home, Max wondered how the thing could use a grenade but be stumped by a camera, and decided it could not relate to something it could not fight. Looking at a photograph of the masked hunter in flames, he admitted he would miss Vincenzo.

Key Characters

Max was a freelance news photographer and the narrator of the story. He kept chasing the mobster murders after the police closed the case and became the bait in Vincenzo's last fight, where he drove Vincenzo's knife into the hunter's wounded side.
Tony Vincenzo was a war veteran and New York crime boss who survived the Predator's first attack. He escaped federal custody, returned with his gang and set a trap for the hunter.
Tooley was the police detective who closed the Vincenzo case and kept trying to keep Max away from the murders.
Bernie Jinks was a rival crime boss and Vincenzo's former partner. He was killed by the Predator in his fish market hideout.
Lou was one of Vincenzo's men, found dying during the fight at the fish market.
Franco was one of Bernie's guards, killed on the roof before the Predator crashed through the skylight.
The federal agents were the men who took Vincenzo into custody, called in the army and confiscated Max's film.

Behind The Scenes

The Hunted City ran in three eight-page chapters in Dark Horse Comics #16, #17 and #18, cover-dated December 1993, January 1994 and February 1994. Charles Moore wrote the script and D. Alexander Gregory penciled all three parts, with Scott Fischer joining him on pencils for the final chapter. Rob Haynes inked the first part and Jasen Rodriguez inked the second and third, while Gregory Wright colored the story and Bill Pearson lettered it. George Pratt painted the cover of issue #16, showing a kneeling Predator raising a skull and spine against a smeared red and green background.

Each chapter shared its issue with other serials, and issue #16 also carried the conclusion of Aliens: Cargo and the final part of The Thing From Another World: Questionable Research. Dark Horse later reprinted the story in Predator Omnibus Vol. 2 in February 2008, and it was also translated for the Norwegian anthology X9 Spesial in 1995. Marvel included it in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 in December 2022, where George Pratt's painting appeared as the opening page of the story.

Place In The Predator Comics

The Hunted City was one of several short Predator serials that ran in the Dark Horse Comics anthology in the early 1990s, following Predator: Rite of Passage, Predator: Blood Feud and Predator: The Pride at Nghasa. Its gangland setting echoed the urban hunts of Predator 2, which also showed a Predator stalking the criminal underworld of an American city. With its 1947 setting, it holds a place on the Predator timeline as one of the few Predator stories set in the years after the Second World War.

Conclusion

Predator: The Hunted City moved the hunt from jungles and battlefields into the noir streets of postwar Manhattan, where the prey were gangsters and the only witness was a stubborn photographer. Charles Moore built the story around Tony Vincenzo, a mobster as relentless as the hunter itself, and ended it with the feds burying the truth in the name of the atomic age. Its talking Predator, fish market massacre and bitter ending made it one of the more unusual Dark Horse shorts.