Predator: The Preserve was the second story in Marvel's Predator comics by Ed Brisson, published as Predator (2023) #1-5 from March to July 2023 and collected in October 2023. Drawn by Netho Diaz, it continued the story of Theta Berwick, the human Predator hunter introduced in Predator: Day of the Hunter. In 2062 she found the Game Preserve Planet, a jungle world where Yautja hunters released humans taken from Earth across more than seventy years, and tried to lead a group of these strangers off the planet aboard her ship, the Sandpiper.
Plot Summary
Dropped Onto The Preserve
In 2062, a group of soldiers and fighters fell by parachute into a jungle on a distant planet, and Predators began killing them as soon as they landed. One soldier was shot down while another lost his head to a hunter's blade. The survivors gathered in a cave and compared their stories, which made little sense together. Allen remembered a pub brawl in Britain, Beau a training exercise in 1997, Omar a desert ambush in 2018 and Ernesto, a militiaman from the Philippines, a mission in 2015. Kiyoshi Yakusbo of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces insisted that it was 2055, and Awja said only that she was military too.
The married soldiers Isla and Lucas said they had been taken from their honeymoon in 2022. They worked for the OWLF, the program that ran Project Stargazer, and knew its files on Predator incidents in Colombia in 1987, Los Angeles in 1997 and several places in 2018. The group came to suspect that they had all been frozen in some kind of hypersleep and carried to the planet. They took weapons from the dead, and when supply crates dropped from the sky, one of them held a live purple creature with a tentacled head that attacked as soon as it was opened.
The group brought the beast down, and Allen helped Omar out from under its body. Lucas decided that the Predators were collecting deadly creatures and using the planet as a hunting preserve, while Omar called it an alien safari in which the humans were only game stock. A second creature then burst out and killed a helmeted soldier beside Isla. In the chaos a Predator crouched in the trees above opened fire, then dropped down and ran Beau through with its wrist blades. Allen urged the others to make a stand, but the hunter cut through the soldiers one by one while Lucas begged Isla to run.
Theta Berwick Arrives
One of the hunters in the jungle was human: Theta Berwick, who wore Predator armor, fought one of the Predators and killed it. She introduced herself and her companion Paolo Silva and told the survivors to come with them if they wanted to get off the planet. When two other Predators found the body, one of them triggered the dead hunter's self-destruct device as they walked away. The blast tore open the crates and freed a pack of pale River Ghosts into the jungle, and the two hunters strode out of the flames unharmed.
In the pouring rain Omar demanded answers, and Theta told him that they were being hunted on a training ground where the Predators practiced on live prey to improve their skills. Paolo gave the date as April 13, 2062, which horrified Isla and Lucas. Theta explained that she had followed the Predators for nearly twenty years, had scoured their data logs and believed they kept a farm of people on ice until needed. She led the group past the dead hunter's ship and guessed that the Predators wanted to test themselves against as many fighting styles as possible, which Allen found hard to believe.
The March To The Sandpiper
Theta's plan was to reach her ship, fly the group to an Astar Industries outpost a few miles away and let the company take them back to Earth. She warned that anyone who stayed behind was on their own, since her crew would not stay with them. Allen, who remembered knocking heads in a pub just before he was taken, joked that the hunters must have some kind of admin department keeping track of every brawler. The march through the rain went badly, as Predators stalked the column through the trees and Awja grew more and more frightened.
Ambush At The Sandpiper
Theta called her ship's computer, Sandy, and the Sandpiper dropped its cloak in a clearing. Before everyone could board, a plasma blast cut down Ernesto and Theta shouted that it was an ambush. The survivors fired blindly into the trees, unable to see the hunter, and Allen grumbled that the whole planet was nothing but trees until Isla spotted its red eyes. Theta took on the Predator in a duel with an axe and buried the blade in its body, splashing green blood, but the hunter fought back.
The Predator wounded Theta badly and cut off her arm, and she knelt in front of it and dared it to finish her. At the same moment Kiyoshi sat at the Sandpiper's controls, remarking that old Astar AR-TX87 ships were practically begging to be stolen, and lifted off without the others. Isla watched the ship leave while Theta ordered Sandy to land again, but the computer did not obey. Omar rallied the survivors to go back for Theta, insisting that she needed their help.
River Ghosts In The Rain
Before the Predator could kill Theta, the pale River Ghosts from the crates swarmed out of the rain and dragged it down. One of them slashed through its body while the hunter screamed and fought back with its blades, spilling green and purple blood across the ground. Theta crawled away from the struggle and collapsed, and Allen found her and lifted her onto his shoulder. With the ship gone, the survivors had to carry the wounded hunter through the storm while the creatures were still feeding on the Predator behind them.
Out in the jungle the other hunters paid for freeing the River Ghosts, as a Predator in green armor was mobbed by the pale beasts in the rain. It tore into them with its blades and spilled their purple blood, but they ripped it open in return. A second hunter in gold mesh armor cut one of the creatures apart with a long curved blade, and the dying Predator roared and keyed its wrist device as its partner walked away before the explosion tore through the trees. Aboard the Sandpiper, Awja held a rifle on Kiyoshi, who argued that Astar would only want to study people who had spent half a century in stasis.
Mutiny Aboard The Sandpiper
While the others fought outside, Kiyoshi boarded the Sandpiper and tried to fly it away alone, setting a course for Earth that would take 252 days. Awja held a rifle on him and forced him to land again, and the rest of the group got aboard, but the ship was now full of rival plans. Awja, who only wanted to go home, locked Kiyoshi in a cell for the attempt. Paolo operated on Theta with Allen holding her down and Omar entering an admin code at the controls on Paolo's orders, and Theta came out of it with a second robotic arm to match the one she already had.
Theta's Trophy Room
Exploring the ship, Isla and Lucas found Theta's trophy room of Predator technology and her logs of Predator hunting routes, which showed that some of the hunters were heading for Earth. Paolo told them he had been with Theta for five years and that she had killed 31 Predators in twenty years. The couple freed Kiyoshi, knocked Awja out and took the Sandpiper toward Earth. Isla then switched on a black box recovered from a Predator ship, which Paolo had connected but never activated, and its signal let another hunter track them.
The Hunter On Board
The Predator boarded the Sandpiper and killed Lucas with its wrist blades in front of the cell where Awja was held, then vanished behind its cloak. Isla saw her husband's body on the ship's cameras, and Kiyoshi sealed himself in the control room. Allen revealed that he had been a Leeds enforcer for the Monarch crime firm, known as Allen the Axe Adkins, and had been gone for about eighty years. He armored himself with Predator gear from Theta's armory and joined her, while someone had taken the ship's communications offline.
The hunter killed Omar with its wrist blades as Paolo hid in the cell with Awja. Theta and Allen, both in gold Predator armor, found the pair there, and Paolo nearly shot them before he recognized Theta. Awja told them that Kiyoshi and Isla were trying to stage a coup and take over the ship, and that Lucas had been guarding her when the hunter struck. When the survivors regrouped, Isla confessed that she and Lucas had wanted to bring the Predator files to the OWLF, and that she had a daughter, Ava, who had been four years old when Isla was taken.
Isla tried to apologize to Theta, who said she did not care how Isla felt, and moments later the Predator struck from behind its cloak and drove a wrist blade through Allen's head. It killed Kiyoshi and stabbed Isla, then leapt at the others with its red eyes glowing. Theta, wearing Predator armor, wrestled with it while Isla drove a blade into its side, and Awja handed Theta a rifle that she emptied into the hunter's face until the gun clicked empty. Splattered with green blood, Theta told Awja that it was just the three of them, leaving Theta, Paolo and Awja as the only survivors.
Six Months Later
Six months later, Theta flew Awja through a snowstorm to a spot near an Astar base on Tusket, apologizing that she could not get any closer. Awja worried that the company would try to commandeer her ship again, but said that a five-klick trek through the snow to freedom was nothing after all they had been through. Asked whether she was sure about giving the OWLF one of her black boxes, Theta said that Isla had been right and that she trusted Awja to deliver the information on the Predators.
Theta admitted that she had been stuck on a personal vendetta for decades, ever since one of the hunters killed her parents, and had never thought about what the rest of the world knew. Awja told her that none of them would be alive if Theta had not come along, and Theta answered that small victories were still victories. Paolo said that if the Predators were keeping people in stasis for their hunts, they needed to find them. After Awja said goodbye and set off on her snow vehicle, Theta told Sandy that it was time to get hunting, and the Sandpiper flew off into the storm.
Key Characters
- Theta Berwick was the human hunter who had followed Predators for nearly twenty years in the Sandpiper. She lost an arm in an axe duel on the preserve, received a second robotic arm and survived the hunter aboard her ship.
- Paolo Silva had flown with Theta for five years after the events of Day of the Hunter. He operated on her arm and hid with Awja during the final attack.
- Awja was a soldier who wanted only to go home. She locked up Kiyoshi, handed Theta the rifle that killed the boarding Predator and was flown to an Astar base six months later.
- Allen Adkins was a Leeds enforcer for the Monarch crime firm, known as Allen the Axe. He carried the wounded Theta to the ship, armored himself in Predator gear and was killed with a wrist blade through the head.
- Kiyoshi Yakusbo was a member of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces from 2055. He tried to steal the Sandpiper, was freed by Isla and Lucas and was killed in the final fight.
- Isla and Lucas were OWLF soldiers taken on their honeymoon in 2022. They seized the ship to bring Theta's Predator files to Earth, and both were killed by the boarding Predator.
- Omar was a security consultant taken after a desert ambush in 2018. He held Kiyoshi at gunpoint during the escape and was killed by the boarding Predator.
- Ernesto and Beau were among the strangers who woke in the jungle and died before the group left the planet.
- The Sandpiper Predator tracked the black box signal, boarded Theta's ship under cloak and killed five of its passengers before Theta shot it.
Behind The Scenes
Predator (2023) #1 went on sale on March 8, 2023, and the following issues came out on April 12, May 17 and June 28, 2023, with the fifth and final issue on July 26, 2023. Ed Brisson wrote the series and Netho Diaz penciled it, with inks by Belardino Brabo, joined by Victor Nava on the first issue and Roberto Poggi on the second. Erick Arciniega colored the series and VC's Clayton Cowles lettered it, under editor Sarah Brunstad. Giuseppe Camuncoli drew the main covers, colored by Richard Isanove.
Marvel collected the five issues as Predator by Ed Brisson Vol. 2: The Preserve, released on October 25, 2023. The collection opened with a recap of Theta's story from Day of the Hunter, and the series brought characters taken from the 1980s, 1990s, 2010s and 2020s into its future setting in 2062. The OWLF files that Isla and Lucas described tied the comic to the events of the films in 1987, 1997 and 2018. Theta and Paolo returned in Predator: The Last Hunt, which continued their search for the humans held in stasis.
Conclusion
Predator: The Preserve is the five-issue Marvel series by Ed Brisson and Netho Diaz, published in 2023, that took Theta Berwick to the Predators' game preserve. It follows a group of humans taken from Earth across seven decades as they flee the hunters in 2062, fight among themselves for control of the Sandpiper and are picked off by a cloaked Predator aboard the ship. The story ends with only Theta, Paolo Silva and Awja alive, and with Theta and Paolo setting out to find the people the Predators still keep in stasis.
External Sources
- Predator by Ed Brisson Vol. 2: The Preserve at Marvel
- Predator (2023) #1 at Marvel
- Predator (2023) #5 at Marvel
Tag Categories: Predator Comics | Predator Lore
