Predator: Primal: Comic Overview

Published: July to August 1997, two issues
Collected: Predator Omnibus Vol. 4 (September 2008), Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 (May 2024)
Script: Kevin J. Anderson
Pencils: Scott Kolins
Inks: John Lowe
Colors: Dave Nestelle
Letters: Steve Dutro
Cover: Bob Eggleton
Editor: Bob Cooper (#1), Randy Stradley (#2)
Designer: Harald Graham
Format: Two 36-page issues
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Setting: Alaskan wilderness, late 1990s

Predator: Primal is a two-issue Predator comic series written by Kevin J. Anderson and penciled by Scott Kolins, published by Dark Horse Comics in July and August 1997. John Lowe inked it, Dave Nestelle colored it, Steve Dutro lettered it and Bob Eggleton painted the covers. It is set in a remote Alaskan wilderness where Forest Ranger Anna tracked a tagged grizzly into a hunt between a Predator and a mother bear while a forest fire closed on all three. It is one of the Dark Horse Predator comics that place a Yautja hunt on Earth in the late twentieth century.

Story Summary

A Hunter Over Alaska

A Predator in blue armor pounces on a deer in an Alaskan meadow, from Predator: Primal

Over the mountains and forests of North America, a Predator ship already hunted. In a remote Alaskan meadow a deer grazed under snow-capped peaks until the hunter dropped from cover, killed it, and took the skull for a trophy. The kill was only a warm-up. Inside a dark chamber lined with animal skulls, the Yautja checked spear, wrist blades and tracking gear and studied prints left by something far larger than deer.

Armed for bigger game, the hunter left the ship and moved into the wilderness on foot. The Alaskan summer heat had dried the timber, and the forest held both the prey it wanted and the humans who watched for fire from a distant tower. The hunt that followed would pull a Forest Ranger, a mother grizzly and a wildfire into the same ground.

Fire Observation Station

Forest Rangers Anna and Glen inside a U.S. Forestry Service fire observation tower in Alaska, from Predator: Primal

At a U.S. Forestry Service fire observation station, rangers Anna and Glen watched a hot, dry stretch of Alaskan forest. It was the hottest summer on record, and both of them said the fire danger had never been so high. Their tower held radios, maps and the telemetry that tracked the tagged grizzlies Anna studied in the wild, and Glen kept a small stack of wrestling tapes for the long shifts.

Glen talked about primal combat on the tapes and joked that humans were soft next to anything that fought tooth and nail. Anna answered from the binoculars that the wilderness did not care about human rankings, and that their job was to catch smoke early. Neither of them knew a Yautja hunt had already opened in their sector.

The First Bear Kill

A standing grizzly marked by Predator targeting lasers, then hit by a plasma bolt, from Predator: Primal

In the woods below the tower, a mother grizzly moved with her cubs along a river while the Predator locked its targeting lasers on her chest. The triad of red dots painted her fur for a clear shot, and a moment later the plasma bolt struck. The hit threw the bear, sprayed blood across the clearing, and left the cubs scrambling as the hunter confirmed the wound. Back at the station the telemetry flashed red as Anna registered a lost tagged animal.

Glen shrugged the alert off as predator and prey in the natural order. Anna shut him down, packed her gear and left the station to find the kill herself. She kept radio contact with the tower as she headed into wilderness where neither of them knew what else might be waiting beyond a dead bear and a missing tracer signal.

Predator And Prey

A Predator with wrist blades faces a rearing grizzly bear in an Alaskan clearing, from Predator: Primal

From a small helicopter Anna searched forests and rivers for the lost grizzly while Glen stayed on the radio at the tower. On the ground the hunter and the bear closed among the trees below her flight path. The grizzly reared and roared as the Predator extended its wrist blades, and the fight turned brutal in a clearing under the mountains.

Plasma fire and close combat tore through fur and armor until neither combatant would break off. The first smoke of a wildfire rose from the clash and the dry timber around it. Anna reported in as she flew toward the plume, still thinking she was chasing a dead bear rather than a fight between Earth's largest land predator and something from the stars.

Wildfire On Our Hands

A Forestry Service helicopter flies over a cliff scar and forest toward a remote Alaskan lake, from Predator: Primal

Anna radioed Glen that they had a more serious problem than a missing tracer. If they did not get fire crews into the sector at once, they would have a wildfire on their hands. From the helicopter she could already see smoke columns and a scar of disturbed ground in country too remote for a quick walk from the tower.

Below them the Predator and the grizzly kept fighting across cliffs and grass while flames climbed the treeline. Yellow-green blood marked where the hunter had been hurt, and the mother bear tracked that trail as smoke thickened over the valley. The empty wilderness from the tower was now a three-way chase of fire, bear and Yautja.

No Accidental Death

Forest Ranger Anna crouches in Alaskan woods examining a kill site, from Predator: Primal

Anna set the helicopter down and walked the burn and the kill site on foot. What she found was no accidental death and no ordinary animal fight. She had never seen a wound like it and could not imagine a human weapon that would leave such a mark, and she wondered whether a poacher with unknown gear was loose in her sector.

Tracking through undergrowth with her sidearm ready, she followed broken brush and blood that did not match any ordinary hunter. The trail led her toward something metallic half-buried in a hillside, far larger than any camp or cabin the Forestry Service had marked on the local maps. She moved in carefully, still expecting a poacher camp rather than a crash.

Ambush At The Ship

A wounded Predator roars over fallen Forest Ranger Anna beside a crashed ship in Alaska, from Predator: Primal

Anna found the crashed Predator ship nestled into the slope and could not believe what she was seeing from the ground. A cloaked figure melted out of the shadows and struck her down before she could raise a clear alarm. She went face-down in the dirt beside alien gear, cut off from Glen as the fire and the hunt closed around her.

The hunter stood over her in ornate armor, roaring as yellow-green blood dripped from a wound and smoke rose behind the wreck. Issue one closed on that ambush: a Forest Ranger down at an alien crash site, a mother grizzly still in the burn, and a Yautja that had already decided the forest was its hunting ground.

Between Fire And Hunter

A Predator and grizzly clash near forest fire in Alaska, from Predator: Primal

The second issue opened on the same Alaskan crisis. An angry grizzly, a spreading forest fire and a bloodied Predator still shared the ground, and Forest Ranger Anna was far out of her depth between them. The hunter stalked burned timber and living prey, checking weapons and thermal sights while Anna lay near the ship.

Glen tried to raise her from the tower again and again. Even if her walkie-talkie was out, the radio in the helicopter should have stayed keyed open, and her silence worried him more than any lost cub. Anna came to among grass and smoke, then ran again through woods that now belonged to fire and the hunter alike.

Forestry Fire Crew

Forestry Service helicopters make water-drop runs over a burning Alaskan forest, from Predator: Primal

Forestry Service fire crews began their runs over the blaze, dumping water on a fire that still looked large enough to swallow the valley. From the radio net Glen tried to keep track of both the fire's progress and Anna's last known position while the crews worked the smoke columns from the air and called hits on each pass.

The humans fought the wildfire as a natural disaster and did not yet understand that the spark and the hunt below were part of the same crisis. For the Predator the smoke and rotor noise were cover for a wounded chase. For the mother grizzly they were one more reason to stand her ground in the burn.

Final Hunt In The Flames

A Predator with wrist blades faces a rearing wounded grizzly in close combat, from Predator: Primal

The final hunt closed in the burning forest. The Predator roared challenge as the grizzly charged again, and spears, claws and wrist blades met in the smoke. They fought across grass, stream and flame until both were bloodied and the wall of fire pressed in from every side of the clearing.

Anna moved through the brush at a distance, trying to read the shapes in the firelight and stay alive long enough to reach help or another radio. When the clinch broke, the bear and the hunter had torn each other down to a last exchange against the blaze, with neither side ready to leave the field.

Worth Dying For

A wounded Predator sits on a skull-armrest throne in its trophy chamber, from Predator: Primal

Badly hurt, the Predator dragged itself back toward its crashed ship and the trophy chamber inside. Green blood marked the hull and the doorway as it crossed the threshold. On a stone seat among animal skulls the hunter sat still and echoed fragments of human radio chatter about heroes and what was worth dying for.

Glen had told Anna that finding her mattered more than any lost grizzly cubs, and those words found their way into the dying hunter's mimicry. The Yautja's gauntlet and ship systems wound toward a final option as the forest fire closed on the crash site and left little time to escape.

The Blast

A massive explosion erupts from the Alaskan forest as a small plane banks away, from Predator: Primal

Anna was pulled clear as a flare of alien light rose from the trees and rescue aircraft banked hard over the burning wilderness. The ship and the wounded hunter went up in a blast that threw a towering column of fire and force into the sky. From the air the explosion looked like a second sun over the mountains and the green timber below.

On the ground the detonation erased the crash site and most of the evidence of what had fought there. Glen and the fire crews later talked about an unexplained blast in the burn and guessed at gas pockets or worse. Anna already knew the place would never look ordinary again.

A Week Later

A Predator bio-mask lies half-buried in dirt while Forest Ranger Anna walks away toward mountains, from Predator: Primal

A week later Anna walked the scarred ground alone under a clear sky. Something strange had happened there, and she was not even sure she wanted to understand it. She knew it was the place, yet she told herself there was no sign at all, or at least nothing she wanted to submit with her official report.

Behind her, half-buried in the dirt, a blue Predator bio-mask still watched from the soil she had missed on the walk out. Elsewhere in recovering meadow grass, a grizzly and her cub moved on through the mountains, while the wilderness kept the rest of the story to itself.

Characters

Anna was the U.S. Forestry Service ranger and bear researcher who left the fire observation station when a tagged grizzly went red on her tracer. She flew the sector, found the Predator ship and survived the fire and the blast.
Glen was Anna's partner in the lookout tower. He stayed on the radio, argued about natural order and later tried to raise her when the helicopter stayed silent.
The mother grizzly was the large bear the Predator came to Alaska to fight. She battled the hunter through the forest fire and remained part of the wilderness after the blast.
The Predator was the Yautja hunter that took lesser game, challenged the grizzly, ambushed Anna at its crashed ship and ended the hunt with a self-destruct blast.
The Forestry Service fire crews flew water drops over the wildfire while Anna and Glen tried to keep the human side of the disaster under control.

Behind The Scenes

Dark Horse Comics published Predator: Primal as a two-issue color limited series with July and August 1997 cover dates. Issue #1 went on sale July 23, 1997, and issue #2 on August 20, 1997, each a 36-page comic priced at $2.95. Kevin J. Anderson wrote the story, Scott Kolins penciled it, John Lowe inked it, Dave Nestelle colored it and Steve Dutro lettered it. Bob Eggleton painted both covers. Bob Cooper edited issue #1, Randy Stradley edited issue #2, and Harald Graham designed the series.

Anderson has said the idea came to him while hiking in Sequoia National Park's Mineral King area, when he wondered why a Predator would hunt only humans when Earth's largest land carnivores offered a tougher hand-to-hand fight. He placed a bear-specialist Forest Ranger between the hunter and a grizzly and added a forest fire so the short two-issue story would have more than a monster-versus-bear spectacle. In Dark Horse's 1997 line the series followed Predator: Hell & Hot Water, sat near Predator: Bump in the Night, and was followed by Predator: Nemesis. Xenopedia and Dark Horse's own solicitation copy both sell the book as Alaska, a lone ranger, a crazed grizzly and an unexpected visitor from the stars.

Editions

Dark Horse did not issue a standalone Primal trade paperback in the 1990s. The two issues were collected in Predator Omnibus Vol. 4 in September 2008, alongside Predator: Nemesis, Predator: Homeworld, Predator: Xenogenesis, Predator: Hell Come a Walkin', Predator: Captive and Predator: Demon's Gold. 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 reprints Hell & Hot Water and Demon's Gold. Dark Horse also released the complete comic digitally on May 22, 2013, reusing Eggleton's issue #2 cover art. The omnibus printings keep Kolins and Lowe's Alaskan interiors in color under Nestelle's palette.

The Predator In Yautja Lore

The Predator of Primal came to Earth for a hunt worthy of its skills, taking a deer as an early trophy and then seeking a grizzly as the real challenge. It used a cloak, wrist blades, a spear, a plasma weapon and a bio-mask, and it kept a trophy chamber of animal skulls inside its crashed ship. When Anna found that ship the hunter struck her down, yet the larger duel remained the fight with the mother bear in the burning forest. The self-destruct that ended the hunt fits other Yautja stories in which a failed or finished hunt is erased rather than left for humans to study, a pattern that also sits beside the wider Predator honor code of choosing hard prey.

Conclusion

Predator: Primal is a 1997 two-issue Dark Horse series by Kevin J. Anderson and Scott Kolins, with inks by John Lowe, colors by Dave Nestelle and covers by Bob Eggleton. It follows Forest Ranger Anna from a U.S. Forestry Service lookout into an Alaskan wildfire where a Predator and a mother grizzly tore through the same woods. The hunter ambushed Anna at its ship, fought the bear to a bloody standstill and erased the crash site in a blast, leaving Anna with a scarred landscape and a report she did not fully want to write.