Aliens Versus Predator

(Graphic Novel with art by Phill Norwood, Chris Warner, Karl Story and Robert Campanella)

Frankly, someone deserves a medal for services to popular culture.  What an awesome concept!  The Predators are seeding worlds with Alien eggs in order to set up a good hunt, but they inadvertantly seed a world populated by a small colony of humans and the horror begins.  Somehow, Stradley manages to exactly capture the tense, almost gothic, feeling of both movie franchises and combine them into one of the best stories ever written for comics.  The beasties themselves are captured perfectly with the Predators showing their odd but inflexible sense of honour and the Aliens being the unstoppable and innumerable menace that they were in 'Aliens' the movie.  The main human character is also a perfect fit for the story, with Machiko being a strong and savvy business woman who rises to a challenge, even when there is little hope.  As far as I'm concerned, I've only ever read one graphic novel that was better (Dave Gibbons' 'Batman Vs. Predator').  It will always irritate and bewilder me as to why they didn't use this book as the basis for the 'AVP' movie.

5 out of 5

 

Aliens Vs Predator: War

(Graphic Novel with art by Jim Hall, Mark Heike, Phill Norwood, Mike Manley, Javier Saltares, Chris Warner, Jimmy Palmiotti and Ricardo Villagran)

The follow up to the original 'Aliens Versus Predator'.  The book begins by reestablishing the nature of the hunter/hunted relationship of the two main alien species.  It then moves on to tell the story of a squad of Colonial Marines who are sent to the abandoned planet Ryushi (from the first book) and find themselves caught between the Aliens and the Predators.  Then the story returns to Machiko Noguchi, the heroine of the first book, who is struggling to be accepted in the Predators' brutal culture.  When another human colony is infected by the Aliens and is then attacked by the Predators, Machiko decides it is time to intervene on behalf of her own species.  Much of what is on offer here is stuff we saw in the first 'AvP' book, however, where this book comes into it's own is showing us how Machiko handles the culture shock of life with the Predators.  I really like her as a protagonist as she's got a tough and stubborn charm.  Overall though, this is just an echo of the first book's greatness.

3 out of 5