Mindhunter: Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator

Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator: Mindhunter is a three-issue miniseries written by David Quinn, with pencils by Mel Rubi and inks by Mike Perkins. Dark Horse Comics published it with Top Cow, and the first issue is dated December 27, 2000. Detective Sara Pezzini, bearer of the Witchblade, and mob hitman Jackie Estacado, host of the Darkness, spend a New Year's Eve in New York that keeps breaking apart. They wake as prisoners on a living ship run by Kenneth Irons, ally with the female Yautja hunter Sister Midnight, and destroy an Alien-Darkness hybrid before an escape shuttle can carry it to Earth.

Plot Summary

New Year's Eve In New York

On New Year's Eve in New York City, Sara Pezzini worked a formal party at the Plaza while she was undercover. She danced with a man named Pellegrini, whom the police suspected in several murders, and waited for a chance to get him alone. Her retired partner Hank and other officers watched the operation from a surveillance van. Sara was carrying the Witchblade, and the evening was already wrong. She grew unusually hot as midnight came, and Pellegrini grew rougher with her. After the countdown he took her away from the main party and toward a private room.

The room did not stay consistent with the party she had just left. Hank seemed to be talking to her even though he had retired years earlier. Sara briefly treated that as the Witchblade interfering with her senses. People and details around the Plaza were not holding still, and she had no clean way yet to tell a bad lead from a world that was being changed under her.

Jackie Estacado Attacks Pellegrini

Jackie Estacado appeared in the room with a gun. He treated the police operation as something that had never happened, and he wanted Sara out of his way. He had come to kill Pellegrini himself. Sara would not let him execute a suspect. Jackie treated Pellegrini as a criminal who deserved to die, and he argued that a killing would do more than a prison sentence. Their argument stopped when Pellegrini's body distorted into something monstrous, which confirmed that the room was not behaving like New York.

Jackie used the Darkness on the creature, and Sara joined him with the Witchblade. Pellegrini's body kept producing worse shapes, and one of them resembled an Alien. The two fought together even though they did not trust each other. Sara decided the important fact was not the monster. She knew something was wrong, which meant the world around them was being manipulated rather than simply attacked.

The False New York

After the fight, Sara and Jackie left the building and kept moving through New York. Her memories no longer matched the street. Hank had apparently never been at the party, even though she clearly remembered him in the van. Events and people shifted around her, and the city felt built rather than lived in. She also remembered their earlier encounter with Yautja and Aliens, a fight in which the hunters had honored them and the infestation had been treated as destroyed. Whatever was happening on this New Year's Eve did not line up with that ending.

A Predator appeared nearby, and that meeting failed in the same way as the party. Jackie and Sara were attacked while the landscape changed around them. The hunter seemed to belong to the hostile setting, and creatures like Jackie's Darklings showed up beside other monsters. Jackie noticed that the place answered their thoughts and fears. When he pictured a way out, the environment changed. The two pushed against the illusion instead of accepting it, and the false New York collapsed.

Irons Reveals Himself

Sara and Jackie fell through a run of impossible places. Facehuggers, Aliens, Darklings, and other creatures crowded those scenes, and a voice spoke straight into their minds. The voice named itself Irons. He claimed to come from Sara's future. In the time he described, Earth was a wasteland dominated by Aliens, and the surviving humans treated the creatures almost as angels and accepted life under the hive. He blamed Sara for that future.

Irons showed her images of that ruined Earth and laid the infestation on her actions. Sara refused to take the vision as a real future. The wasteland stayed his claim and his display, and she treated it as another manipulation. He mocked the refusal and kept changing the world around her and Jackie, running them through a game whose rules he controlled.

Awakening On Irons' Ship

Sara and Jackie kept fighting through the nightmare until Irons let their minds go. Sara opened her eyes and found that her body had never been in New York. She and Jackie were restrained inside a spacecraft, wired into machinery that had been feeding the false city into their senses. Irons described the enormous vessel as an extension of himself, effectively his body. Other prisoners had tried to interfere with it, and the ship had answered the way an organism answers an attack.

Predators had been among those prisoners. Irons said the vessel had swept them aside when they tried to tamper with it. Sara and Jackie tore themselves off the equipment. They were physically aboard his ship, in orbit above Earth, and the New Year's party had been a scene played through their senses rather than a place they had stood in.

Predators And Aliens In The Prison Ship

Leaving the chamber did not end Irons' experiment. The ship held other captives, including Predators and large numbers of Aliens. Sara and Jackie met one of the hunters, Sister Midnight, and at first prepared to fight her. Sara tried to make the hunter understand that they had the same enemy. They could kill each other inside the prison, or they could cooperate long enough to get out. Sister Midnight appeared to understand.

The alliance was needed at once. Adult Xenomorphs poured through the ship. They struck with tails and inner jaws, and their acid blood made every cut dangerous. Sara, Jackie, and Sister Midnight fought through them while Irons kept speaking from a distance. The vessel was less a normal spacecraft than a prison and arena he could reshape. He watched the prisoners and pushed on what they perceived, so the captives were being driven into repeated hunts against each other.

Fighting Through The Living Ship

The group went deeper while Aliens came out of the corridors. Sara and Jackie also ran into smaller creatures and other organisms held on the ship. Irons kept trying to split them. He brought back the future he had shown Sara and insisted that Aliens were destined to colonize Earth. She treated that prediction as another move in the same game. Sister Midnight was the useful ally against the swarm. Her armor, bio-mask, and cloaking device were still on her, and she fought with wristblades from her wrist gauntlet and a shoulder plasma caster. Sara stopped treating the hunter as an enemy and started treating her as another prisoner trying to live through Irons' hunts.

Jackie used the Darkness to cover Sara and to hit the creatures, while she fought with the Witchblade. Those powers put them ahead of the ordinary prisoners Irons had collected, and they also made the pair more interesting to him. Sara decided that getting off the ship was not enough. They needed to destroy the vessel before it could threaten Earth.

Blowing Open Irons' Ship

Sara and Jackie found a route toward the outside of the vessel. Jackie used the Darkness to tear through the structure and opened part of Irons' ship to space. The breach caused a violent decompression. Sara and Jackie were pulled into the vacuum with debris and an Alien. Jackie held the Darkness around them for the short time they were outside the hull, long enough for the pair to reach another part of the ship. The breach also showed one of Irons' advantages. The vessel repaired itself, and the damage in the hull began to close almost at once. Sara saw that cutting individual sections would not finish the ship, so they needed a way to destroy the whole structure together.

The Escape Shuttle

Sara remembered an escape shuttle from their movement through the vessel and wanted to reach it before the ship was destroyed. Irons kept taunting them on the way, and she suspected he was already moving other captives against them. She started a self-destruct sequence that left them only minutes. The route ran through another chamber with an Alien in it. Jackie made a weapon from a metal pipe and fought beside her. With the countdown almost done, they reached the shuttle and sealed themselves inside. Sister Midnight appeared in those last moments. Sara first took the hunter for a pursuit. The Predator boarded the escape craft as Irons' main vessel exploded behind them, and the three prisoners left together.

The Alien-Darkness Hybrid

Destroying Irons' ship did not end the danger. Something else had reached the shuttle. The creature that came out mixed an Alien's body with the substance of the Darkness. That hybrid was the DarkAlien. It could reshape itself and regenerate in much the same way as Jackie's Darklings. Jackie recognized what had happened: one of the Aliens had taken the Darkness into itself.

Wounds that should have crippled or killed the DarkAlien closed again. It could throw out tendrils and rebuild damaged tissue, and it kept an Alien's strength and aggression. The shuttle was already on an automated path toward Earth. If the hybrid lived through the descent, the infested world Irons had shown Sara could be produced by this creature rather than by any future he had proved. Sara, Jackie, and Sister Midnight attacked it in the cramped craft. Tearing it apart failed while the Darkness remained in it, and the hybrid used the new abilities without needing to be taught.

Irons' Last Game

Sara and Jackie looked for the shuttle's controls while Sister Midnight kept the DarkAlien busy. Sara tried to turn the craft into the Sun and burn the hybrid before it reached Earth. For a moment the course changed that way. Irons then took the controls back and corrected the path, so the shuttle returned toward the night side of the planet. Jackie and Sara understood that he was still steering events after his main ship had been destroyed.

Sara also saw that his predictions were part of the trap. He had claimed that destroying the Darkness and the Witchblade would save Earth from becoming an Alien hive. His own actions had put an Alien carrying the Darkness on a shuttle aimed at the planet. He kept speaking to her and framed the crisis as another choice: destroy the ship, eliminate the powers he blamed for that future, or accept the Alien as the final form of the will to survive. Sara rejected the choice. She and Jackie decided they were done playing his game. During the fight the Witchblade stopped matching the warnings it had given her in earlier encounters. Its attention moved toward Sister Midnight.

The Predator Takes The Witchblade

The DarkAlien attacked again. Jackie tried to protect Sara, and the creature's regeneration still made it nearly impossible to kill. Sister Midnight fought it at close range and took serious injuries. Sara then let the hunter wield the Witchblade. The artifact left her and formed around Sister Midnight's body, joining the hunter's armor and weapons to the Witchblade's power. The Predator gained blades and more protection, enough to meet the hybrid directly. For a short time the fight was the Witchblade against the Darkness, one acting through a hunter and the other through an Alien.

Sister Midnight hit the hybrid again and again while Sara and Jackie tried to stay alive around the fight. When the hunter tore through the body, the Darkness flowed back over the wounds and restored it. She kept the creature occupied long enough for Sara to understand what the Witchblade was doing. The artifact had gone to the hunter because Sister Midnight was willing to die to stop the hybrid from reaching Earth. Sara reached toward the Witchblade while it was still on the Predator. Through that link she and the hunter acted together, the hunter on the creature and Sara directing the artifact through the connection. The combined attack destroyed the DarkAlien instead of leaving it able to rebuild.

Return Toward Earth

Sara lived through the last fight, exhausted and badly weakened. Sister Midnight helped her afterward. Sara understood that the hunter had knowingly risked her life to destroy the hybrid and keep it off Earth. The Witchblade returned to Sara. With Irons' main vessel destroyed and the DarkAlien dead, the shuttle was no longer carrying the threat he had tried to build. Sara and the hunter got clear of the immediate danger together, and Sara took the hunter's conduct as honorable after Irons had used both of them as quarry.

The surviving craft headed back toward Earth. Sara thought about her father and about why she had become a police officer. Irons had tried to convince her that her actions would destroy the world. She refused to let that vision decide what she did next. She also looked again at Jackie. He had argued with her through most of the ordeal and had often acted for himself, and he had still helped save her and stop Irons' plan. The hunter who had started as another enemy in the prison ended the battle as the ally who wore the Witchblade against the hybrid. As the shuttle left, Sara was unsure what would happen between herself and Jackie. Their argument slipped back into its usual tone, with Sara teasing him and Jackie answering in kind. For the moment, Irons' mindhunt was over, the hybrid was destroyed, and Earth had been spared the future he had claimed was inevitable.

Key Characters

• Sara Pezzini was the New York detective undercover at the Plaza on New Year's Eve. She carried the Witchblade, broke Irons' false city, started the ship's self-destruct, and directed the Witchblade through Sister Midnight to destroy the DarkAlien.
• Jackie Estacado came to kill Pellegrini and stayed with Sara once the illusion failed. He used the Darkness to fight, to open the hull, and to keep both of them alive in vacuum, and an Alien took that same power into itself on the shuttle.
• Kenneth Irons fed the false New York into their senses from a living ship he described as his body. He showed Sara a ruined Earth and blamed her for it, then kept steering the escape shuttle after the prison ship exploded.
• Sister Midnight was the Yautja prisoner who stopped fighting Sara and Jackie and hunted the Aliens with them. She boarded the shuttle, wore the Witchblade against the DarkAlien, and helped Sara after the hybrid was destroyed.
• Pellegrini was the murder suspect Sara danced with at the Plaza. Inside the false New York his body warped into monstrous shapes, including one that resembled an Alien, before the city collapsed.
• The DarkAlien was an Alien that had taken on the Darkness. It regenerated inside the shuttle, rode an automated course toward Earth, and was destroyed when Sara and Sister Midnight struck it together through the Witchblade.

Editions

Dark Horse Comics published Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator: Mindhunter in three full-color issues, produced with Top Cow. David Quinn wrote the series. Mel Rubi pencilled it, Mike Perkins inked it, Dan Jackson colored it, and Clem Robins lettered it. Phil Amara edited the issues, and Amy Arendts designed them. Issue one is dated December 27, 2000, and Dwayne Turner drew that cover. Dark Horse listed it as a 32-page full-color comic.

Issue two is dated January 31, 2001, with a cover by Tony Daniel. Issue three followed in February 2001. The indicia title is Witchblade/Aliens/The Darkness/Predator. Dark Horse collected the three issues as a trade paperback in 2001.

Behind The Scenes

Mindhunter followed the earlier Top Cow and Dark Horse crossover Overkill: Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator, in which Sara Pezzini and Jackie Estacado had already fought Aliens and Predators. Dark Horse sold the new series as a stranger continuation of that war, with the pair cutting through an illusion before they could stop a threat to human life on Earth. David Quinn, then known for Doctor Strange, wrote it. Mel Rubi, who had drawn Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator and Aliens vs. Predator: Xenogenesis, pencilled all three issues.

The plot is built so that New York, the ruined future, and parts of the ship cannot be taken at face value. Kenneth Irons shows Sara an Alien-dominated Earth and tells her she caused it. She treats those images as his manipulation, and the shuttle crisis is something he arranges in the present rather than proof that the future he described already exists. Dwayne Turner painted the first-issue cover, with Sara between a Predator and an Alien under the Mindhunter logo.

Conclusion

Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator: Mindhunter is David Quinn and Mel Rubi's three-issue Dark Horse and Top Cow series, begun in December 2000. It takes Sara Pezzini and Jackie Estacado from a false New Year's Eve in New York onto Kenneth Irons' living prison ship, where they fight beside Sister Midnight. They destroy the ship, and on the escape shuttle the Witchblade goes to the hunter long enough for the two of them to kill the DarkAlien. The shuttle turns back toward Earth without that hybrid, and the future Irons threatened stays a claim he never made true.

External Sources

• Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator: Mindhunter #1 (of 3)
• Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator: Mindhunter #2 (of 3)

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Tag Categories: Avp Comics | Alien And Predator Crossovers