Predator: No Beast So Fierce: Comic Overview

Published: Dark Horse Presents #119 (March 1997)
Collected: Predator Omnibus Vol. 3 (June 2008), Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 (December 2022)
Script: Mike W. Barr
Pencils: Scott Kolins
Inks: Dan Schaefer
Letters: Sean Konot
Editor: Bob Schreck
Assistant Editor: Jamie S. Rich
Format: Eight-page black-and-white short story in an anthology issue
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Setting: An unnamed jungle on Earth

Predator: No Beast So Fierce is an eight-page black-and-white Predator short story written by Mike W. Barr, penciled by Scott Kolins and inked by Dan Schaefer. Dark Horse Comics published it in Dark Horse Presents #119, cover-dated March 1997, with lettering by Sean Konot. It is set in a jungle, where Mrs. Trask, the widow of a man killed by a lion, hired a party of hunters to track the animal down while a Predator followed them through the trees. It is one of the Dark Horse Predator comics set on Earth.

Story Summary

Mrs. Trask's Hunting Party

One night in a jungle camp, Mrs. Trask gathered a group of hired hunters in her tent. Her husband, Captain Cyrus Trask, had been killed by a lion that had roamed the jungle for years, and the hunters who had known him remembered his death as a great loss. Mrs. Trask showed them a picture of the lion mauling a man and declared that this time the animal had gone too far. She promised to see it killed as her husband had been killed, and she offered each hunter a fee and a much larger bonus to the man who brought it down.

While she spoke, a Predator was crouching in the grass outside the camp. Two of the hunters turned at a noise in the dark but saw only a lizard running through the grass. When the meeting ended, Mrs. Trask's assistant asked when he should wake her, and she told him to come half an hour earlier than he had planned so that the party could start at first light. Alone in her tent, she said good night to a framed photograph of Cyrus that stood beside her bed.

Into The Jungle

That night the Predator stood in the shadows close behind Mrs. Trask, and she turned around without noticing it. In the morning she led the party into the jungle in a pith helmet and sent Abu, Coughlan and Von Willhan ahead to take point, warning everyone to stay on guard. The Predator followed the hunters from the branches above the trail. When one of the men in front called out that he had found something, another told him to keep quiet, because fewer men at the kill would mean a bigger share of the bonus.

The hunters at the front were the first to meet the Predator. It dropped out of the trees onto the group, caught one man by the throat and cut him down with its wrist blades. A second hunter opened fire with a submachine gun and shouted at the others to get away, but the Predator killed him with its plasma caster. Farther back, the rest of the party heard the shooting, and one of the men remarked that the last shot did not sound like any gun he knew.

The Lion In The Net

The black-maned lion leaping out of the jungle undergrowth with its jaws open and its claws out

Mrs. Trask told the worried hunters that the men at the front knew their work and ordered them to keep their minds on the lion. The party threw smoke grenades into the undergrowth to drive the animal into the open. A large black-maned lion burst out of the smoke and leapt at the hunters, and one of them fired a net launcher that caught it in the air and pinned it to the ground. The hunters then spread out and surrounded the trapped animal, while the Predator was still somewhere in the jungle around them.

The Predator Attacks

The Predator in the middle of the hunting party as plasma bolts and blood tear through the men around it

One hunter aimed his rifle at the lion's head, but Mrs. Trask stopped him. She reminded the men that they would all share the bonus and drew a pistol, because she meant to kill the lion herself. The lion began to growl and fight against the net, and the hunters could not understand why it had suddenly become so agitated. An old hunter in a hood was the first to see the reason, as the Predator had come out of the jungle behind the party.

The Predator charged into the middle of the group and fired its plasma caster at the men around the net, killing them one after another. A young hunter cried out as the others fell beside him. Mrs. Trask turned her pistol on the creature and swore that it would not stop her from killing the lion, but she died with the rest of her party. The Predator then walked past the bodies of the hunters toward the lion, which was still trapped under the net and roaring at it.

The Predator And The Lion

The unmasked Predator reaching out with its bare hand toward the roaring lion after freeing it from the net

Standing over the trapped lion, the Predator took off its bio-mask and dropped it in the grass, then set its plasma caster down beside it. It cut the net open with its wrist blades and let the lion go free. The unmasked hunter and the lion faced each other, and the lion roared as the Predator reached out to take hold of it with its bare hands. The two fought in the grass beside the outstretched hand of a dead hunter, and the story ended without showing which of them won the fight.

Characters

The Predator walking past the bodies of the hunters toward the lion trapped under the net

Mrs. Trask was the widow of Captain Cyrus Trask. She hired a party of hunters to kill the lion that had killed her husband, and she died when the Predator attacked the party.
The Predator followed the hunters through the jungle and killed all of them. It then freed the lion from the net and fought it without its mask or plasma caster.
The lion was a black-maned man-eater that had killed Captain Trask. The hunters trapped it in a net, and the Predator released it to fight it.
Cyrus Trask was a captain killed by the lion before the story began. His widow kept a framed photograph of him in her tent.
Abu, Coughlan and Von Willhan were the hunters Mrs. Trask sent ahead to take point.

Behind The Scenes

Dark Horse Comics published Predator: No Beast So Fierce in Dark Horse Presents #119, an anthology issue cover-dated March 1997. The Predator story ran eight black-and-white pages alongside the first part of Troy Nixey's Trout, the second part of Evan Dorkin's Hectic Planet and the end of Art Adams's two-part Monkeyman & O'Brien story, and Nixey also drew the issue's cover. Mike W. Barr wrote the Predator story, Scott Kolins penciled it, Dan Schaefer inked it and Sean Konot lettered it. Bob Schreck edited the issue with Jamie S. Rich as assistant editor, and Cary Grazzini was the designer.

The closing caption of the story quoted an exchange from William Shakespeare's Richard III, in which Lady Anne said that even the fiercest beast felt some pity and Richard answered that he felt none and was therefore no beast. The title of the story came from Lady Anne's line. The caption gave the source as scene 1, act 2, although the exchange comes from act 1, scene 2 of the play. The back cover of Dark Horse Presents #119 carried an enlarged Predator panel from the story, penciled by Kolins and inked by Schaefer.

Reprints

Dark Horse reprinted the story in Predator Omnibus Vol. 3 in June 2008, together with Predator: Bad Blood, Predator: Kindred, Predator: Strange Roux and Predator: Hell & Hot Water. After Marvel acquired the license, it appeared in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 in December 2022, again in black and white. That edition printed Chris Warner's cover for the first issue of the 1989 Predator series, as recolored by Wes Dzioba for a 2017 anniversary collection, on the page before the story.

The Predator In Yautja Lore

The Predator of No Beast So Fierce treated the man-eating lion as its own quarry and killed the armed humans who had come to take it. Like other Predators shown fighting wild animals, it went after a large and dangerous beast rather than the people hunting it. Before facing the lion it removed its mask, set down its plasma caster and cut the animal free, so that the fight began with its bare hands against the lion's teeth and claws. That choice follows the Predator honor code, which favors a fair fight against worthy prey.

Conclusion

Predator: No Beast So Fierce is an eight-page 1997 Dark Horse Presents story written by Mike W. Barr and drawn by Scott Kolins and Dan Schaefer. It follows Mrs. Trask's hunt for the lion that killed her husband while a Predator stalked her party through the jungle. The Predator killed the hunters and Mrs. Trask, freed the lion from their net and fought it without its mask or plasma caster, and the story ended before the fight was decided.