Predator: Rite of Passage: Plot, Characters & Lore
Predator: Rite of Passage is a two-part Predator comic written by Ian Edginton and drawn by Rick Leonardi, published by Dark Horse Comics in its Dark Horse Comics anthology in 1992. Told entirely without dialogue, it followed a young warrior who killed a lioness to prove himself, only to return home and find his village burned and its people skinned. Tracking the killer into the rocks, he faced a Predator alone in a fight to the death that ended with an unexpected encounter with the rest of the hunters.
Plot Summary
The Falling Star And The Spear
The story opened at night on a rocky clifftop above a pale plain, where a lone figure holding a spear watched a streak of light cross the starry sky. Up close, he was an older man with a stubbled face, a hoop earring and a deep scar running over one eye. He stared up at the falling star with a look of dread, as if he recognized what it was. The comic carried no captions or speech balloons at any point, so the meaning of the scene was left to the pictures and to the pages that followed.
The story then moved to daylight and a village of thatched huts, where a young warrior with painted cheeks watched a procession of robed elders approach. One of them held out a long hunting spear across his hands, and the youth took it from him while the men of the village gathered behind him. The young man grinned with pride and excitement as the crowd raised their weapons in salute. Then he set off at a run, leaping away from the cheering villagers across the grassland to begin his trial alone.
The Lion Hunt
Out on the plain, a lioness burst after a herd of gazelles and brought one of them down in a cloud of dust. As she fed on the carcass, the young warrior advanced on foot with his spear in hand, approaching the kill from behind. The comic used a sequence of small panels to slow the moment down, showing the gazelle's death, the cat settling over its prey and the hunter closing the distance. The lioness looked up from her meal and saw him coming, then rose from the carcass and turned on him with a snarl, her fangs bared in a tight close-up.
The youth stood his ground and ran straight at her with his weapon raised, and the lioness launched herself through the air, claws out and jaws wide, in a single wide panel by Rick Leonardi. The two crashed together, and for a moment she bore him down beneath her weight. He twisted free, threw her off and drove his spear into her body with both hands. When it was over, the cat lay dead with the bloodied shaft in her side, and the warrior raised his arms to the sky in triumph while a pair of gazelles watched from the bushes.
The Burned Village
His test complete, the warrior made the long walk back with the lioness slung across his shoulders as proof of his kill, but smoke was already rising on the horizon. He found the village burning, its huts broken open and scorched. Bodies hung upside down from the branches of a great tree, flayed and red, the work of a killer who had skinned its victims. The young man sank down among the ruins with his spear across his knees, his face frozen in horror at the slaughter of his people while he had been away on his hunt.
A vulture perched over one of the hanging bodies as the warrior walked beneath the tree. On the ground, clawed feet far larger than any man's had left deep footprints leading away from the village. The young man looked them over, and a close-up of his eyes showed his grief hardening into resolve. Whatever had destroyed his home had left a trail that a hunter could follow. He gathered up the lioness and his spear and set out after it alone, leaving the smoking ruins of the village and the bodies in the tree behind him.
Into The Red Rocks
Still carrying the lioness, he followed the tracks out across the open savanna, a tiny figure beneath distant mountains with the smoke of his home drifting behind him. The trail led him on to a cluster of tall red rock spires rising out of the grassland. Among the boulders and dead trees, the warrior advanced cautiously into the shadows of the outcrop, gripping his spear. The bright open plain gave way to looming stone and dark clefts where anything could be waiting for him.
He peered into one of those clefts, and a pair of glowing red eyes opened in the blackness. From its hiding place, a masked figure watched him walk past a heap of bones and skulls. Then three red dots of light swept across the young man's body, a triangle of laser beams that settled on his chest as the unseen hunter took aim with the targeting system of its shoulder cannon. The warrior had found the killer of his people, but the killer had found him first.
The Laser Sight
The warrior looked down to see the three red points on his skin. Turning, he caught sight of the Predator crouched high in the rocks, its outline shimmering through its cloaking field as the laser triangle streamed from its shoulder. The youth froze in shock, gripping his spear, and the shadowy shape began to move. A panel showed only part of the hunter's body as it dropped toward him, and the young man cried out in terror as the attack began.
He ran for his life as plasma bolts tore into the ground around him, each blast throwing up fire and earth. Still clutching his spear, the warrior leapt through the explosions while the triangle of the targeting laser tracked across his back. The hunter stayed hidden behind its cloak as it fired, and the young man had no way to strike back at something he could barely see. All he could do was keep running through the smoke and the burning grass as the shots landed around him.
Fire In The Grass
One shot burst right behind him and threw him headlong into the long grass, the blast flaring yellow where he had been running a moment before. Moments later, a clawed foot came down beside the smoking ground as the hunter stalked forward to inspect its fallen prey. The young man lay where he had landed, his spear lying in the grass close to his hand. To the hunter, the warrior appeared to be just one more kill waiting to be collected.
The warrior was not dead. He lay face down in the grass with his eyes open, keeping perfectly still as the panels cut back and forth to the moment the blast had thrown him. The tactic was a simple one that any hunter on the plain would have understood, waiting for the prey to come close. He had already shown on the lion hunt that he could hold his nerve against a charging animal, and now he lay motionless while the Predator approached through the smoke.
Playing Dead
The Predator walked out of the flames, fully visible at last in heavy armor, mesh and a battered mask. Through its thermal vision, the hunter scanned the young man's body where it lay sprawled on the ground. As it bent closer, the youth's fingers tightened around the shaft of his spear. Then he sprang up from the grass and lunged straight at the creature's mask, putting everything he had into a single thrust before the hunter could react to the sudden attack.
The spear point slammed into the mask in a shower of sparks. An explosion of white light followed, flinging the hunter backward across the grass in a burst of debris. When the glare faded, the warrior and the Predator both lay stunned on the ground some distance apart. The young man slowly lifted his head, blood running from his mouth, and saw the hunter lying motionless in the scorched grass beyond him. Neither of them had won yet, and the youth began to drag himself up from the ground with the last of his strength.
The Unmasked Hunter
Bloodied but on his feet, the warrior approached the fallen hunter. Its mask had been torn away, revealing the Predator's mandibles, and glowing green blood spilled from its wounds. He drove his spear down into the creature and raised his arms above the body. The Predator was not finished. Its armored arm lashed up and raked the young man's face, and it rose with the spear still lodged in its chest, lifting the warrior off the ground in one clawed hand while its broken mask lay in the grass.
The struggle turned savage. The warrior wrenched at the spear in the wound as green blood sprayed, but the Predator hurled him to the ground. He came back with a curved blade, slashing at the hunter, and screamed as it struck back at him. Clinging to the Predator's back, he stabbed again while the spear still hung from its body. In silhouette against the dusk, the warrior struck a final blow that appeared to take the hunter's head, and the creature crumpled to the earth. The young man stood alone for a moment before he collapsed beside his dead enemy.
The Watchers
The warrior came to as two more Predators shimmered into view above him, their cloaking fields falling away. Wounded and exhausted, he could only stare up at the masked giants from where he lay at the edge of a rock. One of them stepped forward and extended a long, curved blade toward the young man, but it did not strike. The young man could only lie there and wait to see what the newcomers would do with the one who had killed their companion.
The Predators then turned and walked away, fading back into invisibility one after another. Moments later, a Predator ship rose from behind the trees on beams of yellow light, its engines blasting the grass around the warrior as he shielded himself on the ground. The young man watched the craft climb away into the evening sky. The two hunters had left him alive on the darkening savanna, with the dead Predator still lying in the grass where it had fallen.
The Hunter's Trophy
By night, the warrior stood on a rocky ridge in a long cloak, carrying his spear and what looked like a large curved shield. The final page showed what he had taken from the fight, the skull of the dead hunter with its beaded locks now mounted on his shield, and the Predator's serrated wristblades in his hands. The boy who had left his village to kill a lioness now stood alone, carrying trophies taken from a far deadlier hunter. His people were gone, but he had avenged them with nothing more than his spear and his courage.
The last panel returned to the clifftop and plain of the opening scene, with a lone figure walking beneath another streak of light crossing the stars, closing the circle of the story. The older man of the first page had a scar over his eye in the same place where the Predator had raked the young warrior's face. That detail suggested that the opening showed the same warrior years later, watching the sky for the return of the hunters. The comic never confirmed it in words, leaving the connection to the art alone.
Key Characters
- The young warrior was the unnamed hero who killed a lioness for his trial, found his village slaughtered and killed the Predator responsible. He was left alive by the other hunters and kept the dead Predator's skull.
- The scarred warrior was the older man who watched a falling star in the opening scene, apparently the same hero years later.
- The Predator was the armored hunter that skinned the villagers and attacked the warrior with its shoulder cannon. It lost its mask and was killed in close combat.
- The other Predators were the two hunters who decloaked over the wounded warrior and left in their ship without harming him.
- The elders were the robed men who gave the young warrior his spear before his hunt.
- The lioness was the big cat the warrior killed to complete his trial.
Behind The Scenes
Rite of Passage ran in two eight-page chapters in the anthology Dark Horse Comics #1 and #2, cover-dated August and September 1992. Ian Edginton wrote the story, Rick Leonardi penciled it, Dan Panosian inked it and Gregory Wright colored it, with Jerry Prosser editing the anthology. The first issue had a fold-out painted cover by Dave Dorman showing an unmasked Predator in front of a wall of fire, and the second carried a cover by Mike Mignola. The story contained no dialogue at all, so the only lettering was its title, an unusual choice among the early Predator comics.
Dark Horse later reprinted the story in Predator: Jungle Tales in 1995, in the 1998 Predator vs. Judge Dredd collection and in Predator Omnibus Vol. 1 in 2007. Marvel included it in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 in December 2022, alongside Predator: Concrete Jungle, Predator: Cold War, Predator: Dark River and Predator: Bloody Sands of Time. Its young hunter proving himself mirrored the blooding ritual of the Yautja, while its undated setting left its place on the Predator timeline open.
Conclusion
Predator: Rite of Passage told its whole story through pictures, following a young warrior from his first great hunt to a battle with a creature far deadlier than any lion. Ian Edginton and Rick Leonardi turned a simple coming-of-age tale into a revenge story, and the silent pages let the violence and the landscape speak for themselves. The ending, with the surviving hunters leaving the youth alive with his trophies, suggested that the Predators recognized him as a worthy warrior, giving the title its double meaning.
External Sources
- Dark Horse Comics #1 at the Grand Comics Database
- Dark Horse Comics #2 at the Grand Comics Database
- Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 at the Grand Comics Database
- Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 at Marvel
Tag Categories: Predator Comics | Predator Lore
