Predator Versus Wolverine #2 pays tribute to the original Arnold Schwarzenegger movie
Oct. 26, 2023Wolverine and Sabretooth go on a rumble in the jungle
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Now, with this week’s #2, the comic is calling directly back to John McTiernan’soriginal 1987 action classic.Spoilers ahead.
The first issue ended with Wolverine seemingly besting the Predator thanks to the intervention of a hungry bear. He left the alien for dead and went on with his life, little realising that the Predator had actually killed the bear and escaped.
Cue a flashforward to South America many years later. Now Wolverine is a member of Team X working with fellow mutantsSabretoothand Maverick, plus newbies Jackson and Kruel, to take out a guerrilla force plotting a coup. What they find instead is a whole squad of Predators.
That in itself is a situation very reminiscent of McTiernan’s movie, which saw Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch lead a team of hardasses into an unspecified South American country on a rescue mission, only for them to get slaughtered one-by-one.
Wolverine still carries a Yautja (the canonical name of the Predator race) weapon that he took back in Alaska and which he uses here to injure one of the hunters before ordering his team to fall back. Sabretooth has a different idea however…
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Yep, there he is furiously unloading a minigun, just as Mac (Bill Duke) does in the first film. Unfortunately, like in that film, all he succeeds in doing is mowing down a lot of foliage.
From there the rest of this section of the issue sees Team X picked off by the Predators until only Wolverine and an injured Maverick are left (Sabretooth appears to be killed in the issue, but we can safely assume that his healing factor will patch him up) and forced to join forces with the human enemy they were sent to wipe out. Eventually a big explosion seemingly puts paid to the Predators once and for all while Wolverine and Maverickget to da choppaand escape - but of course one of the aliens has survived.
The last few pages of the issue take place in Alberta some time later at the Weapon X facility, where the surviving Yautja appears to have tracked down and found an unconscious Logan. Cliffhanger!
Predator Versus Wolverine #2 is out now fromMarvel Comics.
OK, so none of them feature a Predator, but this list is full ofthe best Wolverine stories of all time.
Will Salmon is the Comics Editor for GamesRadar/Newsarama. He has been writing about comics, film, TV, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he has previously launched scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for over a decade. He sometimes feels very old, like Guy Pearce in Prometheus. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places and he runs the micro-label Modern Aviation, which puts out experimental music on cassette tape.
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