Predator: Hunters was a five-issue Dark Horse Comics series written by Chris Warner and drawn by Francisco Ruiz Velasco, published from May to September 2017 and collected in January 2018. It brought survivors of earlier Predator encounters together as a privately funded team of human Predator hunters led by Jaya Soames. Their first mission took them to Kehua, an empty island in the remote Bunting Islands of the South Pacific, where the colonists of neighboring Amelia Island had held a band of stranded Yautja known as the Exiles for more than a century and hunted alongside them.
Plot Summary
The Castaways Of Kehua
Three shipwrecked fishermen ran through the jungle of a remote Pacific island, searching for a trail that led down to the sea. One of them, Marcel, was yanked off his feet and into the trees by an unseen attacker. Moments later his cries for God to help him came back from the canopy in his own voice, although his companions knew that he was already dead. The two survivors, a bearded fisherman and an island man armed with a machete, ran past a towering totem of bones and human skulls that the island man recognized with dread, and they reached a cliff high above a bay.
A tall Predator in a carved mask and crude armor of wood and bone came out of the jungle behind them. The island man shouted Mete Kohua and charged with his machete, but the hunter cut him down with a single blow. It then seized the bearded fisherman, who tore a forked ornament off the creature as he went over the edge and plunged down a waterfall into the pool below. The Predator waded through the pool, picked up the island man's body and walked back into the jungle. Behind it, the fisherman's hand rose out of the water, still gripping the ornament, and he survived.
Recruiting Enoch Nakai
Enoch Nakai was working at the Snake Pit, a run-down gas station whose roadside sign advertised an alien space monster, when a black SUV pulled in. Jaya Soames, Tyler Swain and Raphael Herrera told him that they had no ties to any government. Nakai explained that the ordnance accident reported at Cole Army Base had been a cover story for the destruction of the base. A Predator had slaughtered his unit there, on land that had once belonged to his people, and Nakai had tracked the Big Game Predator and cut off its head.
After he left the army, federal agents had asked Nakai to join a secret unit that hunted Predators. They cared more about the creatures' gear than about killing them, so he refused, and the army labeled him a psycho and discharged him. Nakai showed his visitors the gas station's fake exhibit, a molded Bloodthirsty Invader from the Stars, and Swain mocked him with racist taunts until Nakai squared up to him. Soames insisted that Nakai was a warrior rather than a zookeeper and invited him to go to war with them. He quit on the spot, dumped a bucket of snakes on his boss and left with the team.
On the drive, the others described their own encounters. Herrera had been a drug trafficker whose cocaine lab deep in the jungle was raided by police, soldiers and the American DEA, and a Predator attacked in the middle of the firefight. He learned that the creature could die, but a rival wiped out his organization and his family within weeks, and he came to see killing Predators as his atonement. Swain had been a private contractor hauling supplies to a forward base in Kandahar when Taliban fighters ambushed his convoy. He claimed that a mortar round knocked him out and that he woke to find a Predator taking trophies from the dead.
Soames traced her family's war to her great-grandfather, Captain Edward Soames, who had pursued the serial killer known as Spring Heeled Jack through London in the late 19th century and discovered that Jack was a Predator. The captain later returned to India, where he hunted man-killing tigers for maharajas, and his pursuit of the alien hunters passed to his son, his grandson and finally to Jaya. A mounted Predator head hung in the family's trophy room while she was growing up. Nakai agreed to join once the team took him home to collect his belongings.
The recruits flew out by helicopter to Soames's ship, the Durga, where the crew welcomed her back and stood ready to sail on her order. Aboard was Mandy Graves, who woke from a nightmare about the night a Bad Blood Predator slaughtered her team beside a crashed helicopter. Soames introduced her as another survivor who had faced a Predator in combat and lived. When Swain grabbed her, Mandy threw him over her shoulder onto the deck, and Nakai joked that he would marry her one day.
Briefing Aboard The Durga
Once the Durga was underway, Soames briefed the team on its target. A fishing vessel out of Fiji had been blown off course by a storm and capsized by a rogue wave. A few crewmen escaped on a raft and, after days adrift, found refuge on an isolated island that turned out to be inhabited. Three of them were caught and caged for days, until one morning the cages stood open with machetes left beside them, and the men were hunted. Two were killed, and the third fell from a cliff into the ocean, reached the raft and drifted until a New Zealand trawler picked him up, but he died soon afterward.
The fisherman had not tried to reach any neighboring island because there were none. His boat had been fishing illegally in an international marine reserve around the Bunting Islands, one of the most isolated places on Earth, with no other land for 1,000 nautical miles. Amelia Island, the largest of the chain, was the only inhabited one, and its nearest neighbor was the castaways' island of Kehua. The Bunting family had settled the islands in the 1800s, and the current steward was Dr. Henry Bunting, a physician who had done mission work in New Guinea and the Marshall Islands. The team had no official clearance to enter the reserve.
Nakai doubted that the team could match the hunters' technology. Soames answered with the ship's armory and a vault of captured Predator equipment, including bio-masks, armor, wristblades and a smart disc. Her people had studied the gear and built countermeasures to stop the creatures from hiding. In the gym, Swain mocked Nakai as Grandpa, and Soames threw Nakai to the mat again and again in a judo bout. She showed him the scars across her stomach from a Predator that she had killed, and she told him that he had two more weeks at sea to get ready.
Amelia Island
The Durga approached the Bunting Islands posing as a science vessel, and the team went ashore without visible weapons to avoid raising suspicion, although Soames kept a hidden weapons locker in the launch. Islanders waved from their boats and the dock as the launch came in, and a little girl ran up to greet Soames. Dr. Henry Bunting met the visitors in person and welcomed them to Amelia Island as honored guests. Across the water rose the jagged peaks of Kehua, where an Exile in a wooden mask speared a wild boar in the jungle, carried the carcass back to its camp and roasted it over a fire beside a caged human prisoner.
That night the Durga sent drones over Kehua and steered them south toward the waterfall described in the fisherman's account. Above the jungle their cameras found a towering shrine of bones and human skulls smeared with fresh blood, and the operators knew that the report had been true. An Exile standing on a rocky ledge near the shore spotted the machines and roared at them as they flew past. The officer running the flight ordered the crew to mark the GPS coordinates, recall the drones and prepare the strike team for a landing.
Dinner With Dr. Bunting
Bunting entertained the team with a feast of roast pig at a beachside bar on Amelia Island. The visitors claimed to be surveying fish stocks and reefs, and Bunting praised the work, since his great-grandfather Malcolm Bunting had turned his back on the destruction of the natural world 150 years earlier. Malcolm had traded away most of his holdings to buy the archipelago and build a refuge from the excesses of mankind, and his descendants carried on that mission. Family holdings in New Zealand and elsewhere still supported the mostly self-sufficient colony.
When Herrera asked about the neighboring island, Bunting explained that his grandfather had hoped to turn Kehua into a private hunting preserve. Most of the exotic animals brought there died, apart from Carpathian boars and venomous Brazilian jararaca vipers that had arrived as stowaways, and Bunting claimed that nobody had set foot on the island in years because the islanders feared the snakes. He invited the crew to stay ashore as his guests, but Soames politely turned him down, and the islanders waved goodbye from the beach as the launch carried the team back to the ship.
The Raid On Kehua
The strike team put on black armor fitted with cooling units that hid their body heat, and Soames ordered Nakai to stay at the back. They crossed to Kehua by boat at night, cut the engines and rowed ashore wearing night vision. As the team waded up a creek toward the waterfall, a tiger leapt out of the jungle, and Nakai fought it off. Moments later a thrown spear killed one of the soldiers. The cooling suits hid the team from the hunter's thermal vision, while their own sensors picked up the heat of the Exile hiding in the trees.
Herrera opened fire, and the wounded hunter fled, leaving a trail of green blood. Mandy chased it until she lost its signature, and then the Exile dropped out of the trees and killed more soldiers before the team riddled it with bullets. The dead hunter carried no technology at all, only a spear and a wooden mask. In its camp, Nakai freed the caged prisoner, a long-haired old man who warned them that three more of the creatures were on the island. Swain complained that there was nothing worth taking except spears and masks.
Retreat To The Boats
A second Exile then speared a soldier through the head, and Herrera ordered the team back to the boats. The soldiers believed that their cooling suits would hide them once they reached the jungle, but glowing bolts rained down on them, and they realized that the Exiles could see them. Three of the creatures leapt down from the trees with spears and clubs hung with skulls, and one of them tore apart another soldier. Mandy went back for the stragglers, dropped her empty rifle and faced a lone Exile with only her knife.
A grenade blast knocked Mandy to the ground before the Exile could reach her. Dazed, she told Nakai that she had to die there, but he dragged her to her feet and pulled her to the boats. The survivors fled across the water to the Durga, and only after they were clear of the beach did they notice that Herrera was missing. Swain had been covering the retreat beside him and could not explain what had happened, and the strike team had lost several soldiers in the fighting.
Swain's Confession
The Exiles had taken Herrera alive and hung him upside down in their camp. He cursed the hunter to its face, and it killed him with a blade. Back on the Durga, Mandy attacked Swain for leaving Herrera to die, and Nakai pulled her away. Swain confessed that he had frozen after watching the creatures tear apart a soldier named Bradford. He also admitted that his Afghanistan story was a lie. He had not been knocked out by a mortar round, but had hidden while the Predator killed everyone else in the convoy, and Soames reminded him that Herrera had counted on him.
In her cabin, Mandy told Nakai that she should have died with her team. Nakai, who had lost friends to a Predator himself, wanted to wipe the creatures out and asked for her help. The freed prisoner panicked and warned the crew that the hunt belonged to the islanders, and Soames feared that the people of Amelia Island were in danger. Canoes then approached the ship carrying Dr. Bunting, who announced that explosives had been fixed to the hull of the Durga, and he set one off to prove it.
Prisoners Of The Colony
Colonists in wooden masks modeled on the Exiles' faces boarded the ship with spears and took the crew prisoner as Bunting's special guests. The old man the team had freed was the Exiles' pet. Bunting explained that over a century earlier, soon after his great-grandfather founded the colony, fire fell from the sky one night as a Predator ship crashed into the deep ocean, and its crew barely escaped to Amelia Island. The founder, an admirer of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, believed that they were visitors from another world, and the colonists fought them.
Many colonists died for every Exile they killed. When only four of the creatures were left, the colonists captured them, starved them until they were weak and shipped them to Kehua, which had been planned as a game preserve for boars and the odd tiger. With no way off the island and no other land within reach except Amelia, the captive Predators thrived. Over the generations Kehua became a place of trial for the colony. The colonists learned from the Exiles, wore masks like theirs and handed uninvited visitors to the hunt as a Bunting family tradition.
The Hunt On Kehua
The colonists put Soames, Nakai, Mandy, Swain and the freed prisoner ashore on Kehua with weapons stuck in the sand and a few minutes' head start. Bunting promised that his own people would come after them and advised his prisoners not to be hunted, but to be the hunter. Masked colonists followed, imitating the clicking calls of the Exiles, while the three surviving Exiles mourned their dead companion on a bier. Nakai proposed that the team split up so that at least one of them might reach the Durga.
A masked hunter brought Mandy down and praised her spirit before the kill, but she turned his own spear on him and then killed a second attacker. Swain hid in the river, and Nakai killed a colonist with a machete. Soames fought several masked hunters with a machete, shouting a battle cry to the goddess Durga, until one of them wounded her and praised her courage. A real Exile then burst out of the jungle and killed the colonists around her. Wounded and alone, Soames squared up to it, ready to finish the fight, but the hunter pointed her away with its blade and let her go, and she slipped off into the jungle.
Artemis, a young islander the team had met on the day it arrived, found Soames in the jungle. She had swum back to Amelia the night before and returned with a boat, and she hid Soames under a tarp and took her to the Durga. Soames swam under the ship to pull a mine off the hull, climbed aboard and took a rifle from the armory. She shot the colonist guards, freed the crew and had the remaining colonists thrown overboard. Before leaving, she had rockets loaded onto the ship's helicopter as a parting gift for their hosts.
The Final Predator
On Kehua, two of the Exiles chased Nakai through the jungle while Bunting's surviving hunters gathered on the beach. The Durga's helicopter arrived over them, and Soames ordered the crew to open fire, raking the colonists with bullets and rockets. Mandy finished the wounded Dr. Bunting with a machete, repeating his advice about being the hunter. The Exiles cornered Nakai on a rocky ledge above a waterfall until Swain charged into the fight with a war cry of Afghanistan and drove one of them off the ledge with a spear. Gunfire from the helicopter then cut down the second Exile.
Mandy wanted to finish the last Exile from the helicopter, but Soames stopped her, because it had spared her life and had been the islanders' prisoner just as the team had been. She dropped it a bag of Predator gear from the ship's vault so that it could have some dignity at last. The Exile put on a new mask and Yautja armor and returned to its skull shrine, where it raised its fist as the self-destruct in its wrist gauntlet counted down. Asked how he was holding up, Nakai answered that for the first time in a long time he felt alive.
Key Characters
- Enoch Nakai was the Navajo veteran who had killed the Predator at Cole Army Base. Soames recruited him from the Snake Pit gas station, and he survived Kehua with the help of Swain.
- Jaya Soames led and funded the team from her ship, the Durga, continuing a family war that began with Captain Edward Soames. She retook the ship from the colonists and spared the last Exile.
- Mandy Graves was the only survivor of a team slaughtered by a Bad Blood Predator. She fought her way across Kehua and killed Dr. Bunting with a machete.
- Tyler Swain was a former private contractor who had lied about his Afghanistan encounter. He froze during the raid on Kehua but later charged the Exiles to save Nakai.
- Raphael Herrera was a former drug trafficker who hunted Predators as atonement for his past. The Exiles captured him during the retreat from Kehua and killed him.
- Dr. Henry Bunting was the physician and steward of Amelia Island who fed outsiders to the Exiles. He died on the beach of Kehua after the Durga's helicopter attacked his hunters.
- Artemis was a young Amelia Island woman who turned against the colony. She rescued the wounded Soames and took her back to the Durga by boat.
- Captain Edward Soames was Jaya's great-grandfather, who discovered that Spring Heeled Jack was a Predator and later hunted man-killing tigers for maharajas in India. His war against the alien hunters passed down through his family to Jaya.
- Malcolm Bunting was Dr. Bunting's great-grandfather, who traded away most of his holdings to buy the Bunting Islands as a refuge from the excesses of mankind. His colonists fought the Exiles after their ship crashed and confined the last four on Kehua.
- Marcel was one of the shipwrecked fishermen from the Fijian boat who were hunted on Kehua. An unseen Exile dragged him into the trees, and his cries for help then came back from the canopy in his own voice.
- Bradford was one of the soldiers on Soames's strike team. The Exiles tore him apart during the retreat from Kehua, and watching his death left Swain frozen while Herrera was taken.
- The Exiles were Yautja stranded on Earth after their ship crashed in the ocean more than a century earlier, and the colonists confined the last four on Kehua. Three of them were killed, and the last one was left there with Predator gear.
Behind The Scenes
Dark Horse announced Predator: Hunters in February 2017 as part of its celebration of thirty years of Predator, alongside a hardcover collection of Mark Verheiden's Concrete Jungle, Cold War and Dark River comics. Issue #1 went on sale on May 3, 2017, and the fifth and final issue followed on September 6, 2017. Chris Warner, a longtime Dark Horse senior editor, wrote the series, and Francisco Ruiz Velasco handled pencils, inks and colors. Michael Heisler lettered it under editor Randy Stradley. Doug Wheatley painted the regular covers, and Ruiz Velasco drew the variant covers.
The series brought back Enoch Nakai from the 1991 series Predator: Big Game and Mandy Graves from Predator: Bad Blood, a 1993 series that Warner had edited. Jaya Soames was tied to Captain Edward Soames, who hunted the Predator behind Spring Heeled Jack in the 1997 series Predator: Nemesis. Warner went on to write two sequels for Dark Horse, Predator: Hunters II in 2018 and Predator: Hunters III in 2020, which followed the team on new missions against the Predators.
Dark Horse collected all five issues in the Predator: Hunters trade paperback, a 120-page book with a Doug Wheatley cover that was released on January 24, 2018. After the Predator comics license moved to Marvel, the series was reprinted in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2, a 992-page hardcover released on May 22, 2024. That omnibus also collected Predator: Hunters II and Predator: Hunters III, along with older Dark Horse series such as Nemesis, Homeworld and Xenogenesis, and its direct market edition carried a variant cover by Bob Eggleton.
Conclusion
Predator: Hunters was the five-issue Dark Horse series by Chris Warner and Francisco Ruiz Velasco that gathered survivors of earlier Predator attacks into a privately funded hunting team under Jaya Soames. The team sailed to the remote Bunting Islands and discovered that the colonists of Amelia Island had held the last Exiles on Kehua for more than a century. The raid on Kehua cost the team Raphael Herrera, and the colonists then turned the survivors loose there as prey. The story ended with Dr. Bunting and his masked hunters dead, the last Exile armed with gear from the team's vault and Enoch Nakai feeling alive for the first time in years.
External Sources
- Predator: Hunters TPB at Dark Horse
- Predator: Hunters #1 at Dark Horse
- Predator: Hunters #5 at Dark Horse
- Dark Horse announcement of Predator: Hunters
- Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 at Marvel
Tag Categories: Predator Comics | Predator Lore
