Predators: Surviving Life: Plot & Lore

Published: July 2010 (on sale July 14, 2010)
Collected: Predators trade paperback (October 2010), Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 (May 2024)
Script: David Lapham
Pencils: Allan Jefferson
Inks: David Rivera, Jordi Tarragona
Colors: Michelle Madsen
Letters: Nate Piekos
Cover: Sean Phillips
Editors: Scott Allie, Sierra Hahn, Freddye Lins, John Schork
Format: One-shot film sequel (40 pages)
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Setting: Game Preserve Planet, two months after Predators (2010)

Predators: Surviving Life, also sold as Predators: Preserve the Game, is Dark Horse Comics' official sequel to Predators (2010), written by David Lapham and pencilled by Allan Jefferson. David Rivera and Jordi Tarragona inked the interiors, Michelle Madsen colored the story, Nate Piekos lettered it, and Scott Allie, Sierra Hahn, Freddye Lins, and John Schork edited the July 2010 one-shot with a Sean Phillips cover. The comic picks up two months after the film with mercenary Royce and IDF sniper Isabelle still stranded on the Game Preserve Planet, where hunters gift Royce human-sized armor and drop a Four-Armed Predator against them. Among Dark Horse Predator comics, it stands beside Predators: Beating the Bullet and Predators: A Predatory Life as the post-film chapter of the same preserve season.

Plot Summary

Two Months Alone

Shirtless and long-haired, Royce holding up the severed head of an alien creature in the jungle of the game preserve

Two months after the fight with the Berserker, a long-haired Royce watched the skies of the Game Preserve Planet for the hunters' ship to return. He believed the earlier ship had left for Earth without him while he went back for Isabelle, and he called that a stupid move. He killed every creature the ships dropped, mounted their skulls on stakes, and told himself he was king of the hill until the aliens came to knock him off and take him home.

Each new drop was something different, and Royce decided the hunters were training him and keeping him sharp. He abandoned a set of scavenged armor as too cumbersome and hunted with a lighter kit, even as wounds left him light-headed. He admitted he was going down the same road as Noland and the Navy SEAL before him, the road of dead loners, and when another ship lowered a horned, tusked animal at night he concluded he would need help to survive.

Reunion In The Hollow

Comic art of Isabelle kneeling beside the wounded, shirtless Royce on a bed of leaves in the jungle

At dawn Isabelle finished off that horned animal near her hollow when Royce stumbled up and collapsed with an infected wound. Three days later he woke under a bandage of leaves, and she complained that he had stayed away for weeks only to come back and die at her door. She had lived alone in the jungle while he stayed clear, and she treated the infection as the job that let him walk again.

When Royce said he was becoming an animal like Noland and would die alone, Isabelle answered that they were all each other had on the planet. They spent the night together in the hollow, and Royce's narration admitted he could get lost in the contact even while he called the choice stupid. The preserve still dropped prey around them, and neither of them had a ship.

Armor For A Champion

An armored Predator stands roaring before Royce and Isabelle after leaving a bundle of human-sized hunter gear

That same night an armored Predator walked out of the trees, roared in its own speech, dropped a bundle at their feet, and left without fighting. Inside was a set of Predator armor sized for a human, with a bio-mask and a shoulder cannon among the pieces. Royce joked that it was Isabelle's size because it looked small and scrawny next to the hunters, then took the gift as a sign the hunters had chosen him.

He told her the hunters were naming him their champion against their strongest warrior, and that killing that warrior would bring a ship next. Isabelle answered that she had a bad feeling as a disc-shaped Predator ship crossed the night sky and began a drop. The armor waited on the ground while the next hunt closed on them.

The Four-Armed Predator

A huge unmasked Four-Armed Predator crashes into the forest clearing with a FOOM as debris and smoke fly around it

The ship beamed down a huge Four-Armed Predator that hit the forest floor hard enough to raise a cloud of rock and dust. The creature turned invisible soon after landing, and the comic never explained whether its extra arms were natural or the result of tampering like that seen among other Predator hybrids. Royce planned to lead it to a waterfall ravine where Isabelle would fire her sniper rifle from cover.

Isabelle called the ravine suicide and said she had never fired that weapon before, then accused Royce of loving the hunt and using her the way he used everyone else. He shot back about the partner she had let die and pressed her to take the bait before the giant closed in. The argument cost them the setup, and the Four-Armed Predator attacked while they were still open.

Cliff Escape

Royce, wearing Predator armor, carrying Isabelle away from a huge four-armed Predator as rocks fly around them

The giant's blades cut Royce as Isabelle struggled with the cannon, and for a moment he thought the right move was to leave her and run. Instead he grabbed her, leapt off a cliff he guessed was a thousand feet high, and let the new armor absorb the landing while his knees buckled but did not break. The suit made him faster and gave him the stamina to dodge while they fled into flooded trees.

In cover he put on the bio-mask, found that it read his brain waves and showed vitals and terrain he could not read on scavenged gear before, and used it to track the cloaked hunter. When the creature closed again he set the forest ablaze with the shoulder weapon so the fire would throw it off and buy time. Isabelle sealed his chest wound with the armor's first-aid gear at a waterfall and pointed out that he had come back for her twice.

Kill At The Waterfall

A cloaked Four-Armed Predator looms over Royce in scavenged armor among the trees as he braces with wrist blades

Royce stood in the river as bait while Isabelle took a ledge above the falls with her sniper rifle. He waited waist-deep under the falls with wrist blades out, calling the reliance on anyone else a new risk, while the Four-Armed Predator cloaked into the trees and laughed at him in clicks. When the fight opened, cracked ribs and old instincts told him he was a dead man if he tried to finish it alone.

He held the creature in the water so Isabelle would have a clear sniper shot, remembered that Travis had paid for trusting him in Africa, and refused to abandon her the way his instincts urged. Isabelle hit the Four-Armed Predator in the head and body with repeated shots until it fell in the clearing. The hunt that the armor gift had staged ended with both humans still alive at the waterfall.

Watching The Ships

Royce in a chest plate of Predator armor looking up at a Predator ship flying past the moon, with Isabelle below him

One week later a bandaged Royce and Isabelle watched another Predator ship cross the night sky and drop supply pods. When she asked why he wanted to go back, he deflected by asking whether she was trying to ruin his reputation. He said he did not know how many creatures they would have to kill, but he was sure they would reach home together or die on that rock together.

Key Characters

Royce was the American mercenary who spent two months killing drops alone, returned to Isabelle with an infected wound, accepted human-sized Predator armor, and helped kill the Four-Armed Predator before the comic left him watching the next ship.
Isabelle was the IDF sniper living in a jungle hollow. She treated Royce's wound, killed the Four-Armed Predator with her sniper rifle from the waterfall ledge, and survived with him to the one-shot's close.
The Four-Armed Predator was the huge hunter beamed down after the armor gift. It cloaked, drove Royce and Isabelle off a cliff, and died under Isabelle's sniper fire.
The armored Predator who delivered the human-sized kit roared, dropped the bundle, and left without fighting, staging Royce as the hunters' champion.
Noland and the Navy SEAL appear only in Royce's narration as the lonely path he feared he was repeating while he hunted alone.

Editions

Dark Horse Comics published Predators: Preserve the Game as a July 2010 one-shot with the street date of July 14, 2010, and the interior story title Surviving Life. David Lapham wrote the sequel, Allan Jefferson pencilled it, David Rivera and Jordi Tarragona inked it, Michelle Madsen colored it, and Nate Piekos lettered it under Scott Allie, Sierra Hahn, Freddye Lins, and John Schork, with a Sean Phillips cover. The floppy ran about forty pages under the official-sequel banner and sold beside the film adaptation and the June weekly Predators issues that had already carried Welcome to the Jungle and A Predatory Life. Dark Horse collected the Predators film comics in a trade paperback in October 2010 that gathered the sequel with the related prequel and adaptation material.

After Marvel took the Predator comics license, the Lapham and Jefferson story returned in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 in May 2024 beside Homeworld, Captive, Nemesis, Demon's Gold, Xenogenesis, Welcome to the Jungle, A Predatory Life, Beating the Bullet, and the later Hunters trilogy. The omnibus pages used for this overview run from the Preserve the Game open through the week-later ship watch at the close.

Behind The Scenes

Dark Horse timed Surviving Life for July 2010 so shops could sell an official post-film sequel in the same month as Predators in theaters and Beating the Bullet on the stands. Lapham had already written the Royce Africa backups collected as A Predatory Life, and Surviving Life continued that character into the months after the Berserker fell. Allan Jefferson's interiors carried the long-haired scavenger look and the Four-Armed Predator's bulk, while Sean Phillips's cover put a bio-mask in profile under the Strangers in a Strange Land line. Scott Allie and Sierra Hahn led the editorial team that shipped the one-shot under Mike Richardson's Dark Horse banner.

The comic never showed how Royce or Isabelle left the preserve, and that answer came years later from Predator: Hunting Grounds. In tapes added to that game, Isabelle told OWLF agent Sean Keyes that Royce used the armor's cloak to find a landing site with two ships, unlocked both so one would answer to her, and flew off alone to face the hunters. She worked out the controls, found Earth in a planetary directory, and landed in the Mexican jungle, while Royce's last known act was leaving the Game Preserve Planet alone.

Conclusion

Predators: Surviving Life, also sold as Preserve the Game, is the July 2010 Dark Horse Predators sequel by David Lapham and Allan Jefferson, with inks by David Rivera and Jordi Tarragona, colors by Michelle Madsen, and letters by Nate Piekos. It follows Royce and Isabelle from two months of scavenged life on the Game Preserve Planet through the armor gift and the Four-Armed Predator hunt to a week later under another hunter ship. The one-shot ended with both still on the rock, promising home together or death together.