Predator vs. Wolverine

With a title like that, you probably already know whether or not this story is going to be for you.  “Predator vs. Wolverine” is exactly what it says it is.  The only thing you might not expect is that it’s a story of the title characters fighting each other over the decades.  From the post-”Origin” era where a young Logan encountered the alien hunter in the frozen Northwest, to his time in Team X, and then the Weapon X project, and beyond.  This Predator and Wolverine have been trying to kill each other for a very long time and now they’re determined to put an end to it.

Does the span of time give the story the epic sweep that writer Benjamin Percy is clearly trying to inject into it?  Not really as the various encounters tend to be fairly generic in terms of their telling and adding anything to Wolverine’s history.  If anything, I wish Percy had gone as over-the-top as he did in the Weapon X-era which is appreciably ridiculous in detailing the fight during that era and how it ties into the character’s legend.  At least the writer does a decent job of eventually illustrating the edge our hero has over the alien, and everything wraps up tidily enough at the end.

This and the art, provided by individual artists – Ken Lashley, Greg Land, Andrea DiVito, Kei Zama and Gavin Guidry – for each of the different eras spotlighted here, makes for a perfectly decent take on the core concept.  Still, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s arriving around 30 years after what would’ve been the ideal time to do it (in the wake of the classic “Batman vs. Predator”).  You get the feeling that this was done simply because someone at Marvel thought people would want it, and because they finally had the license for it, rather than a genuine desire for this to exist.  While I’m glad that this didn’t cost the initially advertised $25, it still feels like an okay version of the story that should’ve been better than it is.