X vs. Predator: Plot & Characters
X #18, titled Hell Night, is a 1995 Dark Horse Comics issue written by Steven Grant and pencilled by Christopher Renaud, in which a lone Predator stalked Arcadia while the city's masked enforcer was hunting a rogue federal agent. It was part of the Hunting the Heroes: The Predators Attack! event, which sent the hunters through four Dark Horse Heroes issues: Ghost #5, Motorhead #1, X #18 and Agents of Law #6. Among the many Predator crossovers, it is one of the few where the hero outthinks the hunter rather than simply outfighting it.
Plot Summary
The Predator Arrives
The issue opened on an Arcadia street where a crew of car thieves was breaking into a Porsche, joking about whether the job might bring X down on them. One of them scoffed that X did not care about some geek's car, while their lookout Randy waited with a pistol in hand. Seen through the heat-sensing vision of an unseen watcher, the thieves glowed yellow and orange, and the lookout asked if anybody else had heard something. Seconds later a plasma bolt tore through the car and killed Mikey behind the wheel, and Randy screamed his name before a blade ripped across his chest.
The killer then stepped out of the smoke, a heavily armored Predator holding its spear high in one hand and a net heavy with fresh heads in the other, while the burning Porsche lit up the street behind it. Under the title Hell Night, the hunter repeated a phrase it had picked up from the thieves in its alien script, ending with the words get the X. Like the hunters in the other issues of the event, it had come looking for worthy prey, and the name of the city's most feared vigilante was the first one it learned.
One-Shot Goes Rogue
In a city office, an aide named Timothy brought the Commissioner a fax naming the man behind seven robberies and four false identities as Douglas Winslow, known as One-Shot. Timothy explained that Winslow had been a federal agent on detached service who seemed to have gone rogue, drawn by the money in Arcadia, and that they were lucky he had not killed anyone yet. The Commissioner wondered whether the X-killer had panicked Winslow into looting the city, and Timothy agreed that would be his guess too. As the two men left the office, a gloved hand laced with red X marks picked the fax up from the desk.
One-Shot, a white-haired gunman with a blue lens over one eye, robbed a crowded business and walked out with a sack of cash, warning his hostages that he could hit a target from an awful long way off. Two small-time crooks watched him from the shadows and followed him to the Federal Building, where one sent his friend to call for help while he stood guard. The Predator, which had been tracking One-Shot with its thermal vision, appeared behind the remaining crook and cut him down with its wristblades, hissing the word hell in its own script.
The Predator Attacks The Federal Building
Inside, One-Shot walked into the office of a federal agent he had once worked with, where a uniformed operative named Stanton stood by with a metal case chained to his wrist. The agent told One-Shot that robbing Arcadia was not a federal crime as long as he left banks, postmen and civil rights alone, and added that word had come from Washington to let the city swing in the breeze. Since the X-killer had wanted the government out, they were out, and as far as the agent was concerned One-Shot was still a fed and welcome to crash there. Stanton doubted the city could survive on its own.
One-Shot suddenly asked if anybody had heard something, and a spinning smart disc flew at him as he opened fire on the empty air. A plasma bolt from the hunter's shoulder cannon then blasted through the agent at his desk, killing him on the spot. The Predator stepped into the room with its spear in hand, still wrapped in its cloak so that only a shimmering outline showed against the window. Stanton, who clearly knew what it was, grabbed One-Shot and shouted at him to move before it killed them both.
X Fights Back
At that moment X crashed through the window feet first in a storm of glass, his tattered red cape flaring behind him. While One-Shot emptied his gun at the cloaked hunter and demanded to know what Stanton knew about it, X threw himself at the Predator and grappled with it. The struggle carried them both back out through the shattered window, and they plunged to the street below, smashing into one of the police cars gathered outside and crumpling its roof beneath them. The hunter's spear clattered onto the pavement beside the wreck, while the two men it had been stalking were left alone in the ruined office.
Back in the office, Stanton realized that the creature must have tripped the alarms when it broke in, and urged One-Shot to leave because it was not safe there. One-Shot refused to travel without his loot, reasoning that the thing was dead, X was dead and he had no itch to start fretting over cops. Stanton told him it was his life, but said he could pretty much guarantee the thing was not dead, and if it was not, it would be coming for both of them. With that, the government man ran out into the night alone.
The Predator Turns On The Police
Below the window, the police found X sprawled across the crushed car and recognized him as the X-killer, with one officer ordering the others to shoot him if he so much as breathed hard. Before they could act, the Predator rose from the wreck and leapt at the officers nearest to it, swinging its blades in a wide arc. The police opened fire, but one of them shouted that this was not the monster they knew, that he did not know what it was, and that they would hit their own men. Another screamed for backup, a SWAT team and even the army as the hunter cut through them.
Stanton, meanwhile, radioed his superiors to report a live situation in Arcadia, only for X to smash the radio into his face and tell him to say no. When Stanton insisted that this was an official investigation and that he was the government, X kicked him down and tore the chained case from him, crushing his hand. Bleeding and terrified, Stanton explained that they called the creatures Predators, that they had appeared in Central America and Los Angeles, and that one had been reported in Arcadia a couple of weeks earlier. He had been sent to bring one back, and the case held a bomb as a fail-safe.
Ambush In The Streets
Elsewhere, One-Shot slumped against a wall after losing his nest egg in the chaos, muttering that he hated this town. A street gang closed in around him, and when he warned them that even the X-killer could not stop him, they decided that bringing his head to X would put them in real solid with the vigilante. Their leader added that this was Covert Nightmare territory, and One-Shot replied that it was ironic, because he had a nightmare for them. Right on cue, the hunter's thermal vision settled on the gang as the cloaked Predator moved in on all of them.
The Predator tore into the gang with its blades and plasma caster, hurling one man aside while bolts punched through the others as they swung bats and chains. One-Shot dived for cover and fired at the creature, but his bullets did little more than distract it from the slaughter. The hunter impaled another gang member on its wristblades and blasted a fleeing youth, leaving bodies scattered along the street. As One-Shot tried to crawl away, a huge shadow marked with red X laces fell over him, and X caught him from behind.
The Sewer Trap
X told One-Shot not to fight him, saying he needed him alive because the creature was after both of them and together they might stop it. When One-Shot pointed out that X's legend said he never made deals, X answered that legends did not say everything and pointed to a manhole, where they could rig a trap. One-Shot agreed it was worth a shot, and moments later the Predator's clawed feet stood over the open manhole with its spear in hand. Below, One-Shot complained about the smell, and X explained that he had opened the natural gas mains.
One-Shot pulled his gun on X and accused him of trying to asphyxiate him, but X warned that a single shot would set off the gas and blow them sky high. The hunter's spear then flashed out of the dark and tore through X's cape as he leapt away, while a thrown disc sent One-Shot scrambling up a ladder, only to find the exit blocked. He realized that X had marked him in their last encounter, and that under X's law whoever was marked died. As the Predator fired its plasma caster, One-Shot pulled the trigger, screaming that he wanted to live, and the gas exploded beneath the street.
The Final Duel
When the fireball faded, a charred body slammed onto the burning street, and the Predator crawled out of the rubble with its mask gone and its armor scorched. In its alien script it repeated the gang's words about bringing X a head and about this being Covert Nightmare territory, as if mocking the men it had killed. A bleeding green X slashed across its forehead showed that X had already marked it, and its red eyes searched the flames for the vigilante who had led it into the trap.
X struck from above, dropping from a burning building with the hunter's own spear raised over his head. He drove the blade down through the top of the Predator's skull, sending glowing green blood spraying into the air as the point burst out beneath it and struck the pavement. The creature's claws flailed and then went still, leaving it pinned upright by its own weapon in the middle of the street. X had set up the kill by using One-Shot as bait to lure the hunter into the gas-filled sewer.
Stanton's Last Gamble
Stanton arrived as X walked away from the corpse and ordered him to stand down, claiming the dead hunter as his own. A Predator corpse was the sort of thing careers were made of, he said, and the government could find out how its weapons worked and maybe make its own little Predators. When X told him he did not belong there, Stanton drew his pistol and threatened to take the price of his ruined hand out of X's hide, insisting that X would not stop him from taking the body. X simply told him to go ahead, since he was not planning to keep it.
Stanton gloated that X could not begin to imagine what they would get from the corpse, and promised to use it to plant him in the ground. Then he noticed the ticking case X had chained to the spear jutting from the hunter's skull, the same fail-safe bomb he had brought to Arcadia. He had time to curse before the blast engulfed him and the body. Walking away from the explosion, X said that he had heard Stanton, and that it was time the country heard him, setting up his trip to Washington in the next issue.
Key Characters
- X is Arcadia's masked vigilante, whose only power is a relentless drive, who used One-Shot as bait in a gas trap and killed the Predator with its own spear.
- The Predator came to Arcadia hunting, killed car thieves, a federal agent, police officers and a street gang, and survived the sewer blast before X speared it.
- One-Shot is Douglas Winslow, a former federal agent turned robber, whom X had marked and lured into the sewer as bait for the hunter.
- Stanton is a government operative sent to bring a Predator back, carrying a bomb as a fail-safe that X turned against him.
Behind The Scenes
The credits name Steven Grant as writer, Christopher Renaud as penciller, Andrew Pepoy, now known as Margeaux Pepoy, as inker, Dave Cooper as letterer, Cary Porter as colorist, Scott Tice as designer and Greg Vest as editor. The cover by Frank Miller shows the Predator looming over a crouching X under the event banner, and the indicia dates the issue September 1995. The story was later collected in X Omnibus Volume 2 in 2008, which reprinted X #12 to #25 for the first time.
The recap at the front explained that X had disgraced One-Shot by making his name meaningless, and that Headhunter and his entourage had gone back to Washington to repeat X's demand to stay out of Arcadia. Stanton's mention of a recent sighting came with a footnote pointing readers to Ghost #5, tying the two issues together. The X-Press Mail letters column recommended Agents of Law #6 and noted that Motorhead #1 was on sale, completing the rest of the Hunting the Heroes event, which added four issues to Dark Horse's Predator comics in 1995.
Conclusion
X #18 set a lone hunter loose on Arcadia on a night when its masked enforcer was already chasing a rogue fed, and the result was a bloody brawl across a federal office, a police line, a gang's turf and the city sewers. The Predator killed nearly everyone it met, but X used One-Shot as bait, survived the hunter's ambush and finished it with its own spear. He then chained Stanton's fail-safe bomb to the corpse, killing Stanton when he came to claim it, and said it was time Washington heard him.
External Sources
- X #18 product page at Dark Horse Comics
- X #18 at the Grand Comics Database
- X #18: Hell Night at Comic Vine
- X #18 at League of Comic Geeks
Tag Categories: Predator Comics | Alien And Predator Crossovers | Hunting The Heroes Predators Attack
