Friday, February 26, 2021

It's kind of less "versus" than "babysits" this time around...

I usually read the first Batman vs. Predator maybe once a year, but I hadn't gotten to this one: from 2007, Superman and Batman versus Aliens and Predator, written by Mark Schultz, art by Ariel Olivetti. 

By this point, I think there had been three BvsP series, Superman vs. Predator, both of them separately versus Aliens, and a JLA vs. Predator; so Supes and Bats are kind of "ugh, these guys." A volcano in the Andes is about to blow, but it's also secretly the home to a tribe of Predators that had crashed on earth during the ice age, and hating cold they set up shop in the volcano. These Preds are kind of throwbacks: while they still have the ship and the weapons, they do not appear to have completely fetishized the ritual of hunting like the other ones we've seen. Don't read too much into their anthropology, though, the Preds still had an Alien hive, for weekend hunting or whatever. Maybe they were milking them, I don't know. 

With a paranoid government agency throwing a fit about it, Supes and Bats (and Lois, who is delightfully chill with her husband's weird work friend) get the Predators and the Aliens into the Fortress of Solitude, so they can get them on their way back home. Somewhat predictably, none of them co-operate in the slightest. Batman may have lost a bit of patience here: he tells Supes at one point, he's sworn never to take a human life. He may be snarking a little, but that may be a dick thing to say to Superman with his wife right there. Superman, who claims to have maybe lost a step a couple times here, is largely on top of things; freezing the xenomorph eggs for transport: he doesn't like them, but feels they must play a part in the grand scheme of the universe. Or something. I respectfully disagree; but they get the job done. And with Ariel Olivetti art, it's a pretty book: I got it on a buy one/get one deal, I wonder what the other book was...

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Shit, I...may need to read this now if it's that good.
I know I LOVED the Batman/Aliens story, especially where Batman has a nightmare about his parents dying due to face-huggers busting out of their chests. That HAD to creep him out for years.

Never read the Superman/Aliens one though I did see the ad for it in an old issue of Wizard. Looked good, and he was basically powerless due to being so far away from the sun.