The Primal Predator was a lone male Yautja who came to Denali National Park in Alaska to hunt grizzly bears in Predator: Primal, the 1997 Dark Horse comic by Kevin J. Anderson and Scott Kolins. During the hottest summer on record, he killed a stag and a tagged grizzly cub, then challenged the cub's mother. A stray plasma bolt from their first fight started a forest fire that drew Forest Ranger Anna Barr to his hidden ship. The mother bear beat him twice, and the badly hurt hunter returned to his ship and set off his self-destruct device.
Biography
Arrival In Denali
The Primal Predator landed his ship in the forests of Denali National Park during the hottest summer on record in Alaska. He hid the camouflaged craft on a wooded slope, far from roads and from the fire lookout tower where rangers watched the dry timber. His first kill was a stag, which he took down in a mountain meadow and kept as a skull trophy. The stag was easy prey, and he went back into the woods looking for an animal that could fight back. The large tracks of grizzly bears pointed him toward the prey he had come to Earth for.
Inside the ship he kept a trophy room lined with animal skulls and antlers, with a seat decorated with skulls at its center. The room showed a hunter who mostly took wild animals rather than people, and no human was among his kills during the visit to Alaska. Two rangers of the U.S. Forestry Service, Anna Barr and Glen, worked the lookout tower in the same part of the park. Anna was also a bear researcher, and she had radio tags on a pair of grizzly cubs whose progress she followed from the tower.
The Grizzly Cub
The Primal Predator found the two cubs Anna was tracking and fired on them with his plasmacaster. One cub died from the plasma bolt, and the other ran away into the brush. The hunter did not take a trophy from the small body and moved on in search of bigger game. The kill was a poor one by the standards of a Yautja hunt, since the cub could not defend itself. At the lookout tower, the cub's radio tag sent the signal for a dead animal, and Anna noticed it at once.
The number of grizzlies in the park had been falling, and Anna Barr wanted to know why a healthy cub had died so suddenly. Glen treated the death as an ordinary case of one animal killing another, but Anna did not accept that. She took the station's small helicopter and flew out alone to find the body. She stayed in radio contact with Glen at the tower while she searched the forest for a place to land.
First Fight With The Mother Bear
The dead cub's mother caught the Primal Predator's scent and charged through the forest to attack him. He tried to shoot her with the plasmacaster, but a swipe of her paw knocked the cannon aside and the bolt went into the dry trees. The mother grizzly then bit the weapon and damaged it beyond repair. The stray plasma bolt had set the forest on fire, though neither the hunter nor the bear noticed it during the fight. The bear then knocked the Predator over the edge of a small cliff and into a river below.
The hunter survived the fall, but he was wounded and lost his spear near the body of the cub. From the helicopter, Anna Barr saw the smoke of the new fire and called it in to the lookout tower so that fire crews could be sent. She also spotted signs of a strange landing site in the trees, although she did not know what had made them. The fire spread quickly through the dry timber of Denali while the Predator made his way back toward his ship.
The Ranger At The Ship
Anna Barr landed, found the body of the cub and the spear the hunter had left behind, and saw that the burn wounds did not match any weapon she knew. She followed a trail of glowing green blood through the woods and reached the hidden ship. The wounded Primal Predator was there and knocked her unconscious before she could call for help. He showed no interest in killing or taking the helpless ranger as a trophy. He left her lying in the grass near the ship while he dealt with his own injuries.
The Predator took off the armor and gear that the bear had damaged and used his medical kit to treat his wounds, injecting himself with a drug from it. He then wrecked Anna's portable radio and her helicopter so that she could not call for help or leave the area. When he was ready, he went back out into the burning forest to find the mother grizzly again. The Forestry Service sent aircraft to drop water on the fire, but the hunter ignored the planes and the flames around him.
Second Fight In The Fire
The Primal Predator tracked the mother bear down near the fire line and opened the second fight by throwing a combistick spear at her. The spear cut the right side of her face, but it did not stop her from closing in. He tried to drive her off with a burning branch, and she struck back hard enough to knock his bio-mask off his face. The mother grizzly then caught him in her grip, bit him, and threw him against a large boulder. The hunter fell and lay still, and the bear seemed to think he was dead.
The mother bear left with her surviving cub and went deeper into the forest, away from the fire. The Primal Predator was alive, but his injuries were far worse than after the first fight. His mask stayed on the ground where it had fallen, and he did not go back for it. He had lost both fights to the same animal and had nothing to show for the hunt except the stag and the dead cub. He dragged himself back through the smoke toward his ship.
Death Aboard The Ship
Back on board, the Primal Predator armed the ship's self-destruct device rather than leave the hunt as a defeat. He took his place on the skull-decorated seat in his trophy room and waited for the blast among his trophies. While he waited, he repeated words he had picked up from the human radio traffic, including talk of heroes and of what was worth dying for. Many Yautja stories show hunters choosing this kind of death after a failed hunt, in line with the Predator honor code. The fire was closing in on the ship at the same time.
Anna Barr had woken up and managed to signal Glen, and a Forestry Service helicopter picked her up shortly before the explosion. The blast destroyed the ship and killed the Primal Predator, throwing a huge cloud of fire into the sky over the park. The rangers guessed that a gas pocket had exploded under the burning forest. A week later, Anna went back to the site and found no clear trace of the ship, although the lost bio-mask was half-buried in the dirt nearby. The mother bear and her cub were alive and moved on through the mountains.
Weapons And Equipment
The Primal Predator carried the standard kit of an Earth hunt, including a shoulder-mounted plasmacaster, a cloaking device, a bio-mask and a pair of wristblades. The plasmacaster killed the grizzly cub, but the mother bear bit it and ruined it in the first fight. He also carried a spear, which he lost near the cub's body and later used again as a thrown weapon against the bear. His medical kit let him treat his wounds between the two fights. The wrist gauntlet and the controls of his ship held the self-destruct that ended the hunt.
Behind The Scenes
Kevin J. Anderson wrote Predator: Primal, with pencils by Scott Kolins, inks by John Lowe and colors by Dave Nestelle. Dark Horse Comics published the two issues in July and August 1997, and Bob Eggleton painted both covers, including the grizzly and Predator art on the cover of the first issue. Anderson said the idea came while he was hiking in the Sierra Nevada, when he decided that a big grizzly would be a better physical match for a Predator than a human. The comic was later collected in Predator Omnibus Vol. 4 in 2008. The Predator is never given a name in the comic, so fans call him the Primal Predator after its title.
Conclusion
The Primal Predator was a lone Yautja who hunted grizzly bears in Denali National Park during an Alaskan heat wave in Predator: Primal. He killed a stag and a tagged cub, but the cub's mother beat him in two fights, wrecked his plasmacaster and took his mask. His stray plasma bolt started a forest fire that brought Forest Ranger Anna Barr to his ship. Badly wounded, he went back aboard, waited in his trophy room and died when he set off the self-destruct device.
Appearances
- Predator: Primal #1-2 (Dark Horse, 1997)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Comics | Predator Deaths | Predator Lore
