Overkill: Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator
Overkill: Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator is a two-issue crossover written by Paul Jenkins for Image Comics, Top Cow, and Dark Horse, begun in November 1999. Detective Sara Pezzini, bearer of the Witchblade, and mob hitman Jackie Estacado, host of the Darkness, follow a run of mutilated bodies in a New York warehouse district. The killings come from two sources: adult Xenomorphs, and a Yautja that uses one of those Aliens as part of its hunt. Sara cuts off the hunter's arm, Jackie kills it, and a recovery party takes the body after showing Sara a vision tied to the Witchblade. Mindhunter continues the same crossover a year later.
Plot Summary
Murders In The Warehouse District
A run of violent killings hit the warehouse district of New York City. Police first treated them as gang violence, but the bodies were mutilated in ways that did not match an ordinary gang fight, and the evidence pointed to more than one kind of attacker. Detective Sara Pezzini took the case. At the same time Jackie Estacado followed his own contacts into the same district. Both were used to supernatural violence through the Witchblade and the Darkness, and neither yet knew that the attackers were not human.
Jackie questioned men tied to the warehouses. They were frightened and had little he could use, and they were as exposed as anyone else in the district. Some victims looked torn apart by a creature. Other traces looked like a killer carrying advanced weapons. The murders did not share one cause, and the trail put Jackie on the same ground Sara was already walking.
The Xenomorph And The Hunter
Sara and Jackie met an adult Xenomorph in the warehouses. Sara fought it with the Witchblade, and Jackie answered with the Darkness and the creatures he could call through it. Close fighting was dangerous even after a killing blow, because of the creature's acid blood. That Alien accounted for some of the mutilated bodies the police had found. It did not account for all of them.
A Yautja was already working the same ground. The hunter watched through its bio-mask and stayed hidden with a cloaking device instead of stepping into the open. It was hunting, not caught in the infestation. Sara and Jackie drew it because the Witchblade and the Darkness set them apart from ordinary people. When it attacked, Sara armed the Witchblade and Jackie sent Darklings into the fight. The creatures slowed the hunter. They did not keep it off him.
The Predator Uses A Xenomorph
The hunter did not treat every Alien as an enemy it had to kill on sight. It used at least one Xenomorph as part of the hunt, the way a hunter uses an attack animal, and watched how chosen prey handled one of the most dangerous creatures it knew. That overlap is why Alien attacks and Yautja activity sat on top of each other in the same warehouses. The hunter watched, picked targets, and tested the people who stayed alive. Sara could form armor and blades with the Witchblade. Jackie could call Darklings. Surviving what should have killed them made both of them more interesting prey.
Sara Cuts The Hunter's Arm
The hunter eventually took Jackie at close range. Jackie answered with the Darkness and sent creatures at it. The Predator cut through the Darklings and kept coming. Jackie could replace them and strike from more than one direction, and the hunter's weapons, strength, and experience still closed the distance. It beat him down and stood over him. It did not kill him. It wanted to examine him.
Sara reached them before that examination could finish. The Witchblade let her fight the hunter hand to hand. She damaged its weapon and cut off one arm. The wound drove the Predator back. Sara and Jackie lived through the fight, and the hunter was not done with them. Losing the arm did not end the hunt.
The Flash And The Abduction
The second issue picks up with the wounded hunter still in the district. It had learned that the Darkness needed the absence of strong light. Jackie was at his most dangerous in the dark, and a hard light could break that advantage. The hunter sent the Xenomorph at Sara so she had to fight the Alien, then hit Jackie with a flash that cut him off from the Darkness. With Jackie down, the Predator took him alive. Sara could not stop the abduction while the Alien was on her.
Jackie woke restrained on a table in the hunter's hiding place. The Predator had equipment for examining captured prey, not only for killing or taking trophies, and it used a probe on him while he could not call the Darkness in the usual way. Sara survived the Xenomorph and followed them. Cake and his gang walked into the same fight, armed for human criminals and unready for what was in the warehouses. Sara used that chaos to reach Jackie. Once he was off the table, the Darkness answered him again.
Jackie Kills The Predator
The human fight did not drop out of the story. Jackie confronted Cake and killed him, which cleared one of the last armed human threats and left Jackie free to go after the hunter that had taken him. The Predator was already badly hurt from Sara and was missing an arm, and it kept fighting. Jackie turned the Darkness loose on it and reversed the earlier beating. He killed the hunter.
Before the Predator died, it set off a device. The device was a homing beacon, not a self-destruct. Sara and Jackie did not know who would answer the signal. Other Yautja arrived.
The Recovery Party
The arriving hunters did not attack Sara and Jackie. They had come for the dead Predator. One of them held a senior place in the group and dealt with Sara instead of opening another hunt. He showed her a vision that tied the Yautja to the history around the Witchblade, using images rather than speech. The vision reached past the warehouse fight and treated the Witchblade as something the hunters already knew.
After that, the group took the body. They did not punish Sara and Jackie for the kill. They left with the corpse so it would not stay behind for people to study. The Xenomorphs, the hunt, and the abduction were over. The police still had mutilated bodies and damage they could not explain. Sara and Jackie knew what had actually been in the district.
Key Characters
- Sara Pezzini investigated the warehouse murders with the Witchblade. She cut off the hunter's arm, tracked Jackie after the abduction, and received the recovery party's vision.
- Jackie Estacado followed the killings through criminal contacts. The hunter beat him, flashed him, and examined him on a table. After Cake died, Jackie killed the wounded Predator.
- The Yautja hunter used a Xenomorph as part of the hunt, learned that strong light broke the Darkness, and died after sending a homing beacon.
- Cake led a gang into the same fight and was killed by Jackie.
- The recovery party answered the beacon, took the body, and did not retaliate. Their senior hunter showed Sara a vision tied to the Witchblade.
Editions
Image Comics, Top Cow, and Dark Horse published Overkill: Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator as two issues in late 1999. Paul Jenkins wrote both. Issue one, dated November 1999, was pencilled by Clarence Lansang and Joe Benitez, inked by Victor Llamas and Alp Altiner, colored by Dan Kemp and Matt Milla, and lettered by Robin Spehar and Dennis Heisler. Renae Geerlings, Matt Hawkins, Jason Ross, and David Wohl edited the series. Lansang and Kemp drew the first cover.
Issue two, dated December 1999, added Brian Ching on pencils and Matt Banning and Jay Leisten on inks. Victor Llamas joined Lansang and Kemp on that cover. The first issue's editorial material already pointed ahead to Overkill II, so the second book was the planned close of one story, not a later sequel. Mindhunter followed in 2000 and 2001.
Behind The Scenes
The backmatter says Overkill came out of Top Cow's working relationship with Dark Horse and an interest in further crossovers. Matt Hawkins raised another crossover with Paul Jenkins and suggested putting Predator and Alien into a story with Top Cow characters. Jenkins first took the idea as a joke. It became Overkill. Jenkins later said he was not an Alien or Predator specialist when he wrote it. He knew the films and the basic ideas, and he built the book around Sara Pezzini and Jackie Estacado so the four properties would share one investigation instead of sitting next to each other as guest fights.
Sara and Jackie had to stay recognizable as their Top Cow versions, and the licensed creatures had to stay recognizable as Alien and Predator. The art went through reference and approval before the finished pages. Overkill II includes a feature called Probing Top Cow Talent, with interviews and development drawings. Clarence Lansang said the Predator was especially good to draw because of the anatomy, armor, weapons, and gear. Brian Ching spoke well of that material too.
The backmatter reprints head studies, mandible sketches, armor and full-body poses, weapon poses, and Alien studies, plus roughs that push those designs toward Top Cow's heavier style. The artists used the 1987 film, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, as a visual reference so the hunter would still read as a film Predator. The feature ends on a crude joke sketch labeled as a first pinup, with handwritten tags for a bored Jackie, Sara in a Witchblade bikini, and a "mean Predator crab guy."
Conclusion
Overkill: Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator is Paul Jenkins' two-issue Top Cow and Dark Horse crossover from late 1999. It follows Sara Pezzini and Jackie Estacado through warehouse murders in New York that turn out to be a Yautja hunt built around a Xenomorph. Sara cuts off the hunter's arm, Jackie kills it after the abduction, and the dying hunter's beacon brings a recovery party that takes the body and shows Sara a vision tied to the Witchblade.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Avp Comics | Alien And Predator Crossovers