#616: Predator: Nemesis
There’s no horror more gory than Victorian England — especially when alien hunters stalk the streets of London
Initial release: Dec 1997-Jan 1998 (serialized, 2 issues)
Writer: Gordon Rennie
Artist: Colin MacNeil
If you’ve only recently gotten into the Alien and Predator franchises through stuff like Alien: Romulus or Prey, it may surprise you — or it might not — to learn that there is actually an extensive expanded universe. Two of them, actually, now that Disney owns the respective properties. Much as they did with the Star Wars expanded universe, all the old Dark Horse stuff was thrown out… but who cares, it’s still good. Take Predator: Nemesis, for instance — in just two issues, it introduces us to a rather cool character, links the gruesome horror of Victorian London to the kind of violence that attracts the Yautja (what the Predators are called in their own language) and is just generally a fun ride, with a few treats for Sherlock Holmes fans.
Edward Soames is a retired soldier in the British Army. One day he is summoned to the Diogenes Club of Sherlock Holmes fame, to speak with a group of wealthy deep state men including Sherlock’s government spook brother Mycroft. They’ve got a job for him: given his experiences fifteen years prior with a mysterious “Rakshasa” — a type of goblin or demon in Hindu myth — in India that was killing locals, they feel he’s the best choice for tracking down a similar creature that is stalking the streets of London. He’s not so sure, but after speaking with Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard at the site of what appears to be a submersible — something Lestrade laughably takes as proof of foreign spies — Soames heavily arms himself, seeking redemption for leaving his friend to die fifteen years back.
At just two issues, it’s not a long story, but it wastes no time in introducing the main characters to us, that being the “Rakshasa” (otherwise known as Spring-Heel Jack — and known to us as another one of the alien hunters known as the Yautja) and Soames himself. Starting right off with the massacre of an opium den, we move on to Soames walking to the Diogenes Club, his thoughts — presented here as text from his diary — serving as the story’s narration. While the Sherlock characters help serve as guideposts for the story, they don’t play any sort of major role, their presence more of a nod to popular fiction of the era; the story centers around Soames and his, well, nemesis.
Gordon Rennie is a well-known comics writer who has mostly done work for the British anthology comic 2000 AD, ultimately becoming a major Judge Dredd writer by the mid-aughts as well as writing Necronauts (here’s my review.) He’s been quite all over the place actually, getting into video games with scripts for stuff like Killzone, Rogue Trooper (a 2000 AD perennial, which tracks) and the 2010 Aliens vs. Predator game, which is an underrated gem in my opinion. It’s Rennie’s script that holds this story together, tightly written and executed, and it’s Rennie’s script that I think makes this one of the better historical Predator stories.
Like Rennie, Colin MacNeil is an AD 2000/Judge Dredd veteran, making him the obvious choice for this Rennie-penned story. I wish I could heap the same amount of praise on MacNeil’s art as I do Rennie’s writing, but I find it to be a bit ropey, relying too much on that British comics “house style” and having little character of its own. Even the prerequisite Predator gore feels sterile, like little bits of a clay model getting snipped off. Nevertheless it’s got good composition and a decent sense of dynamism, and I like how the India flashback is done in a slightly different, grainier style. The real problem is Gary Fields’ lettering; while dialogue is readable enough, Soames’ narration is done in a barely-readable diary script that I found difficult to parse much of the time.
Dark Horse’s Xenoverse comics can be hit or miss. Some of them are really good — and even better adapted into novels. There’s very few really bad ones, Xenogenesis being an obvious one, so bad it killed all three Alien and Predator lines for a decade. And then there’s some that are just okay. I think Nemesis probably fits in this third category — not the worst, and with some cute little nods to stuff, but certainly nothing that’s a must-read.
