This volume collects the Dark Horse comic book series Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death #1-#4 and the one-shot Prometheus: Final Conflict, originally published December 2016-April 2017.
The ending was pretty much the first ending of Aliens where they are waiting for the ship to land while they hold off the Aliens with some Predators thrown in to help. Brian Thies is terrible at drawing action scenes. I couldn't tell what was happening in the panels during the fights with the Aliens. For a series that should be full of excitement given the characters involved, I couldn't muster much enthusiasm for the book at all.
Just finished this and it was a doozy! I am ready to get back to some regular, non-illustrated reading for a few days. This one throws them all together, the Aliens heading to get the survivors thrown together on the planet they were abandoned on. The crew of the Engineer ship, hurtling through space to an unknown destination, and Ahab the lone Predator who fights with the survivors. The young lady amongst them is impregnated with a Queen and the bugs are there to gather their leader. Ahab has friends arrive, as his tribe of hunters show up and he has to prove himself to them in single combat against a champion. He wins and the hunting pack of Predators are talked into aiding the humans as the Aliens descend upon them in vast numbers. The days is won, barely and then the Engineer from the previous book, wounded greatly by his battle with the Alien Queen shows up, so we have all the factions in this four book series here in one place. They have to fight the Engineer and the ending of that conflict is epic! The book ends with the Engineer ship finding another world to land on. Who knows where the travelers have (or when) ended up. It is a mystery. This one rounded out the series and ended it right. My favorite author of all time, Mr. Dan Abnett of course penned a set of awesome tales here. Again, I hate to say it, but the art wasn't that good. I hate to beat a dead horse, but I am old and I simply don't understand where the good art has gone in comics and graphic novels these day. Maybe it will get better. Ok, back to my novels and "To Read" list! Woot!
Not a bad conclusion to this series, but it did have a bit of an "open" ending. The art was good, but to me it was the weakest of the Life and Death series.
So we see a big clash between Aliens and Predators in this one, with humans caught in the middle. To make matters worse, the Engineers are there also. This was more like the old Alien Vs. Predator comics with the huge battles between the two.
All in all this was a solid story, and the whole was better than the sum of its parts. I still would like to know more about the Engineers, but I never get tired of the Aliens and Predators throwing down.
If you're a big Aliens/Predator/Prometheus fan, you should give this one a read.
So, Aliens: Life and Death ended on a cliffhanger where Captain Paget was trying to contact her ship and couldn’t get a response. We find out why in the opening pages as the Company rep bursts into the brig and asks an imprisoned poacher if he can hack open the weapons locker. Before the panicked bureaucrat can get him to understand the situation, a Predator stabs him through the chest from behind and then we see him calmly walking down the hall holding both men’s spinal columns with their skulls dangling from the bottom in a scene that is simultaneously grisly and unspeakably badass.
I didn’t think I could love Captain Paget any more than I already did, but when she spends the first issue and a half keeping everyone moving with simple, decisive orders and then gets asked by a new arrival, “You in command here, Captain?” and she answers, “Only an idiot could claim to be in command of this situation.” I straight up swooned. I’m sorry. She’s just the best.
Poor Chris… her death was heroic and amazing and badass. She gave a rousing speech about how the only thing she knew was that she loved her wife, that that love kept her going through all of this no matter how horrifying it got. The last thing she said was “bow down to your queen” before the Xenomorph queen started to burst out of her chest and the grenade she was holding dropped out of her hand, killing her, the new queen, and most of the Xenomorphs around her. I still hate that after all everyone went through to rescue her, it came up short, but at least she went out as a hero.