Predator: Bad Blood

Predator: Bad Blood was a four-part miniseries published by Dark Horse Comics from December 1993-June 1994. But the story was actually started in a three-part prologue in the company's self-titled anthology series Dark Horse Comics #12-14 immediately prior to the release of the four issue series from August-November 1993. The events in the prologue lead directly into the events of the miniseries.
Bad Blood was written by Evan Dorkin, drawn by Derek Thompson, inked by Thompson, Keith Aikin and Chris Warner, and colored by Chris Chalenor. The series was edited by Chris Warner, Edward Martin III and John Weeks. Thompson provided painted covers for each of the four issues and for the first issue of the prologue.
The entire story, including the prolgoue, was eventually collected and reprinted in Predator Omnibus: Volume 3, published in June 2008.
This story deals with a wildly psychotic Predator who breaks the species' hunter code, who is in turn hunted by another Predator.
In the Predator comics line, Bad Blood was published concurrently with Predator: The Hunted City (Dec. 1993-Feb. 1994) and Predator: Blood on Two-Witch Mesa (April-May 1994) and was followed by Predator: Invaders from the Fourth Dimension (July 1994).
==Plot (Warning: Spoilers)==
Official description of individual issues:
Predators are lots of things -- mean, nasty, and cruel to name a few. But there are things that make even the meanest Predators twitch and one of them comes to Earth in part 1 of Evan Dorkin's new "Predator: Bad Blood," premiering in this issue of Dark Horse Comics!
It's just a paintball game, right? Nothing to cry over. In "Predator: Bad Blood," part 2, Chris discovers that not all the players are obnoxious city slickers. Nor are they all human. Also in this issue...
Also this month, in the final installment of "Predator: Bad Blood," the Predator decides it's time to really go to town... with a vengeance. It comes to a stunning conclusion this month with Chris single-handedly facing the Predator down. Things might look bad, but Chris knows of even worse things than an angry Predator. Now if he can only make it...
The New Jersey Pine Barrens have become a slaughterhouse, witness to a hideous spree of murders and mutilations. Ex-CIA operative John Pulnick is accused of the gruesome crimes, but he knows the true identity of the slayer: a creature from another world -- a Predator. But unlike others of its species, this alien intruder is no sport hunter, but a blood-crazed psychotic, a butcher of its own kind, an unhinged killing machine. While a massive manhunt sweeps the Barrens, a stalker of a different kind searches for the killer -- a second Predator, bent on bringing down the rogue monster.
 
A special task force sweeps the New Jersey Pine Barrens in search of a psychotic Predator, a blood-crazed butcher bent on killing any living creature it encounters. While the government craves the beast's technology, a team of ex-CIA rogue agents have different plans for the extraterrestrial monster and its human hunters. And if this cast of spooks and psychos weren't enough of a potential powder keg, enter another Predator, here to wreak vengeance upon its unhinged brother -- and anything that gets in its way.
The CIA's special task force searches the New Jersey Pine Barrens, hot on the trail of a Predator cutting a bloody swath through the area. Someone else is on the trail too: a team of ex-CIA agents with their own agenda. It's a ferocious pitched battle as the two teams encounter each other, each armed with enough heavy weaponry to take on a Predator. And as the humans square off, so does the Predator -- against another Predator, that's tracked its quarry through the depths of space to earth. Will anyone survive the ensuing insanity?
The New Jersey Pine Barrens echo with the roar of a rogue, serial-killer Predator. He's just taken on another Predator sent to kill him -- and now he's gone berserk, attacking anything he encounters. Now, ex-CIA agents Poppa John and friends face a horrific extraterrestrial and the wrath of the U.S. military. Wounded, trapped, with no way out -- it's a one-way ticket to hell as they face a Predator who is willing to kill his own kind!
==Behind the Scenes==
Chris Warner, who doubles as co-inker and co-editor in this series, started as an artist on the first Predator comics series in 1989. He would go on to work on art chores on various Aliens and Predator series, write a portion of the Aliens: Colonial Marines series, and eventually become the editor of both the Predator and Aliens comics lines at Dark Horse in 2009, his current position.
The CIA Special Task Force depicted hunting the Predators in the Bad Blood may be members of the OWLF Task Force shown in the film Predator 2, or the Task Force shown hunting Predators in Predator: Race War. In fact, Bad Blood's task force commander Claude Loudermilk may be the same blonde, be-suited special agent known only as "Blondie" in Race War.
At the end of Race War, Blondie mentions that next time it things will be personal between him and the Predators, and Loudermilk expresses the same sentiment during the showdown at Bad Blood's climax.
Bad Blood writer Evan Dorkin previously served as artist on Dark Horse's second popular Predator miniseries Predator: Big Game.
==See Also==
Dark Horse Comics
Predator (Comics Series)
Dark Horse Comics (series)
OWLF
Predator: Big Game