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Life and Death #1-5
Aliens Predator Prometheus AVP: The Complete Life and Death
It's a battle for survival against the three deadliest species in the galaxy!
For Captain Paget and her platoon of Colonial Marines, a routine mission for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation becomes a running battle that will carry them halfway across the galaxy in a fateful four-way war.
A fateful encounter with a tribe of the interstellar hunters known as the Predators--who are after the same prize as a seemingly derelict spaceship belonging to the god-like Engineers from the film Prometheus.
But the ship is far from abandoned, and the Engineers move the battle to LV-223--where Paget and her team encounter the survivors from Dark Horse's Fire and Stone story cycle (2014), which leads all of them to a collision course with an army of Aliens!
From sci-fi military action, to a confrontation with the most personal horror imaginable, Life and Death delivers all of the excitement fans of 20th Century Fox's monster franchises demand!
For Captain Paget and her platoon of Colonial Marines, a routine mission for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation becomes a running battle that will carry them halfway across the galaxy in a fateful four-way war.
A fateful encounter with a tribe of the interstellar hunters known as the Predators--who are after the same prize as a seemingly derelict spaceship belonging to the god-like Engineers from the film Prometheus.
But the ship is far from abandoned, and the Engineers move the battle to LV-223--where Paget and her team encounter the survivors from Dark Horse's Fire and Stone story cycle (2014), which leads all of them to a collision course with an army of Aliens!
From sci-fi military action, to a confrontation with the most personal horror imaginable, Life and Death delivers all of the excitement fans of 20th Century Fox's monster franchises demand!
440 pages, Hardcover
First published September 25, 2018
9 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 3, 2023
Prometheus: The Complete Fire and Stone was a good fun with some interesting ideas thrown in. It's sequel... Well, it's a typical Hollywood blockbuster sequel. More xenomorphs, more guns, more marines, more Predators... More everything. But more doesn't always equals better. Writing job is now given to one man only, Dan Abnett and he's doing ok with material tying together new stories with previous issue. Sure, book is full of archetype characters and clichés and ending is seen from far away, but that was expected.
However, art is... Lazy would be one way to put it. Sometimes it looks like a child comic book, sometimes like artists were bored with their job. One thing that was really annoying is lack of consistency and blatant insult of reader by artists. In one issue, character will have dark hair and a beard, in another he will be gray and beardless even though there was no time lapse in between. Just artists being lazy. And it happens to a couple of characters.
However, art is... Lazy would be one way to put it. Sometimes it looks like a child comic book, sometimes like artists were bored with their job. One thing that was really annoying is lack of consistency and blatant insult of reader by artists. In one issue, character will have dark hair and a beard, in another he will be gray and beardless even though there was no time lapse in between. Just artists being lazy. And it happens to a couple of characters.
January 19, 2023
This was a pretty straightforward Aliens Vs. Predator story, with Prometheus mythology tossed in as well. I think this would make a good movie putting the three universes together, with humans caught in the middle as usual. Cool to see Colonial Marines battling Predators and Engineers rather than just Aliens.
Nothing ground breaking here, but a great sci fi/horror/action story.
Nothing ground breaking here, but a great sci fi/horror/action story.
April 28, 2020
Picking up directly after the very good Fire and Stone Alienverse event that Dark Horse did a few years back Life and Death aims to continue and expand that story. It’s a decent story which sees a group of marines travelling across worlds discovering, fighting and being killed by Xenomorphs, Predators and Engineers. Again the stories all intertwine and create a story of strong scale. It’s not quite as solid as Fire and Stone but the story progresses along naturally and comes to the exact conclusion you’d expect.
February 19, 2019
They do love a cliff hanger don't they.
This was a great improvement on Fire & Stone, although if I hadn't read that first I would have had no chance of keeping track of all the characters. Abnett does a much better job of stringing together a coherent plot-line and with his signature writing style the plot has personal, global and universal reach and consequences. If there is a sequel to this, I very much hope that he is involved.
This was a great improvement on Fire & Stone, although if I hadn't read that first I would have had no chance of keeping track of all the characters. Abnett does a much better job of stringing together a coherent plot-line and with his signature writing style the plot has personal, global and universal reach and consequences. If there is a sequel to this, I very much hope that he is involved.
June 8, 2024
Quick, how do you follow up one of the best crossover events this franchise has ever seen? You ask the exact same team to come up with a sequel?
Oh no, of course not. You call a completely different writer, a hack who has no idea what he's doing, a bunch of artists who seem to be making illustrations for children's books, and there you go.
Life and Death is a fucking mess. The character designs are inconsistent. One character changes hair and beard colors in one of the chapters, and is magically wearing a completely different set of clothes. Ahab, our returning predator from the previous story, is supposed to be missing an eye and a fang. Guess what? There's several panels, and I do mean several, where he magically regrows his eye. Or his fang. Or both.
In the previous story, the characters spoke in their actual dialects. As in, the speech bubbles for the predators would have predator letters, engineer speech bubbles would have engineer letters, you get the point. Here? They just growl. Graaah and kkrk.
There's two scenes in particular in this graphic novel that actually managed to piss me off. In one, a character manages to convince the Xeno Queen to go attack an engineer by.... Talking to her. Actually talking to her. In another, this exact same character goes on a 10-page rant that just goes on and on and on while adding absolutely nothing to the story.
Oh no, our 400 page novel is almost over, how do we get rid of the two engineers that have been killing everyone all across this story, while being basically indestructible? Oh, that's easy. We'll just kill them both immediately and easily in 3 pages. That's it.
The story is extremely basic. The art is terrible, besides the second chapter that actually has outstanding art. Why they got one good artist while the rest are horrible is beyond me. Some of the scenes are so badly drawn that I actually had trouble understanding what was actually going on.
We would be better off if this hadn't been made. The second chapter is pretty good though, I'll give them that.
Oh no, of course not. You call a completely different writer, a hack who has no idea what he's doing, a bunch of artists who seem to be making illustrations for children's books, and there you go.
Life and Death is a fucking mess. The character designs are inconsistent. One character changes hair and beard colors in one of the chapters, and is magically wearing a completely different set of clothes. Ahab, our returning predator from the previous story, is supposed to be missing an eye and a fang. Guess what? There's several panels, and I do mean several, where he magically regrows his eye. Or his fang. Or both.
In the previous story, the characters spoke in their actual dialects. As in, the speech bubbles for the predators would have predator letters, engineer speech bubbles would have engineer letters, you get the point. Here? They just growl. Graaah and kkrk.
There's two scenes in particular in this graphic novel that actually managed to piss me off. In one, a character manages to convince the Xeno Queen to go attack an engineer by.... Talking to her. Actually talking to her. In another, this exact same character goes on a 10-page rant that just goes on and on and on while adding absolutely nothing to the story.
Oh no, our 400 page novel is almost over, how do we get rid of the two engineers that have been killing everyone all across this story, while being basically indestructible? Oh, that's easy. We'll just kill them both immediately and easily in 3 pages. That's it.
The story is extremely basic. The art is terrible, besides the second chapter that actually has outstanding art. Why they got one good artist while the rest are horrible is beyond me. Some of the scenes are so badly drawn that I actually had trouble understanding what was actually going on.
We would be better off if this hadn't been made. The second chapter is pretty good though, I'll give them that.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 20, 2019
The Aliens/Predator connected universe has birthed many terrible films, comics and other fiction over the years, but I'm still a sucker for the grim dystopic setting depicted in Alien/Aliens. As such, whenever a writer I enjoy gets a crack at writing something set in that universe, I tend to give it a shot –like Charley Brown attempting to kick a football.
I know Dan Abnett from reading the Horus Heresy novels when I was a kid. He has a knack for tackling projects in dense, well-trod settings. He's often able to display some real creativity without destroying conical lore that fans of such fair hold sacred (no easy task).
The Life and Death story is, well, workmanlike in quality. The story was compelling enough to finish and full of the fan service readers of in-setting fiction have come to expect. Like many of the licensed AVP comics, Life and Death features many new characters who are clearly stand-ins for those in the original films. There's not-quite-Paul-Riser company man, a faux Sigourney Weaver and a Hicks-like USMC grunt. Abnett is far from the first writer to pluck and a character from Aliens and give them a minor cosmetic makeover; there's a reason those characters are archetypal even outside of the Aliens franchise. Still, there are a handful of new characters introduced that break the mold and used to meaningful effect.
All in all, it's a fine comic. It never rises to the level of required reading – even for fans of the franchise, but you could do far far worse when looking for fiction set in one of the most well-realized sci-fi settings Hollywood has ever produced.
I know Dan Abnett from reading the Horus Heresy novels when I was a kid. He has a knack for tackling projects in dense, well-trod settings. He's often able to display some real creativity without destroying conical lore that fans of such fair hold sacred (no easy task).
The Life and Death story is, well, workmanlike in quality. The story was compelling enough to finish and full of the fan service readers of in-setting fiction have come to expect. Like many of the licensed AVP comics, Life and Death features many new characters who are clearly stand-ins for those in the original films. There's not-quite-Paul-Riser company man, a faux Sigourney Weaver and a Hicks-like USMC grunt. Abnett is far from the first writer to pluck and a character from Aliens and give them a minor cosmetic makeover; there's a reason those characters are archetypal even outside of the Aliens franchise. Still, there are a handful of new characters introduced that break the mold and used to meaningful effect.
All in all, it's a fine comic. It never rises to the level of required reading – even for fans of the franchise, but you could do far far worse when looking for fiction set in one of the most well-realized sci-fi settings Hollywood has ever produced.
December 8, 2018
Not quite up to the same level as the previous compendium, Fire and Stone, but still pretty satisfying for the Alien universe fan, since it tells one massive story across several connected mini-series. Also, the focus on the Colonial Marines is a plus in this one, as they were one of the best things to come out of the sequel, Aliens. The artwork in particular is very variable in this one, ranging from quite developed to very sketchy. If they're going to do another of these, Dark Horse should "pony up" (ha, a pun) for better artists.
December 15, 2020
I have to admit that I liked Fire and Stone more than this one. The first mega-crossover had two things going for it that this one didn't. One, it got to create new and dynamic characters. And two, the art was so much more to my liking. And I admit that the second item there is completely subjective.
Still very much worth reading. I just read it faster because the art didn't keep my eye lingering very long. Ahab and Galgo were fun to follow and the action scenes were kinetic. I'd be curious to hear what characters others enjoyed following.
Still very much worth reading. I just read it faster because the art didn't keep my eye lingering very long. Ahab and Galgo were fun to follow and the action scenes were kinetic. I'd be curious to hear what characters others enjoyed following.
June 24, 2020
This is a decent enough book, but I found the artwork not to my liking. The story is also surprisingly bland. The terror that the different aliens create is not really present. Fire and Stone explored some new ideas, but I felt that these ideas were ignored and/or not followed up on very well. I was looking forward to more.
April 19, 2020
Like a blockbuster movie and i say it as a good thing. Dan Abnett crafted action sequences worthy of James Cameron´s Aliens. I enjoyed this book. I had a blast reading it. It took me back to the my childhood watching 90´s movies.
October 17, 2020
good, but basic
This collection is a good follow-up to the Fire & Stone series, but doesn't do anything new or exciting. The story seemed to set up a few things, but did not have a payoff.
This collection is a good follow-up to the Fire & Stone series, but doesn't do anything new or exciting. The story seemed to set up a few things, but did not have a payoff.
October 16, 2018
This book was massive and it was brilliant! I love how they bring aliens, predator and Prometheus together. Loved it!
March 17, 2019
Amazing book.
May 10, 2019
Not a great story. It didn't really give much detail in the plot or story line. The drawings were nicely detailed. I remembered the story line a bit differently.
Read
January 29, 2020It was pretty neat
April 26, 2020
muybueno!
May 4, 2020
Whatever you think of the more recent Aliens/Predator movies, Dark Horse still know how to tell these stories!
December 20, 2020
Pretty mediocre characters but some solid action. The predator stories are better than the others, with Prometheus being the weakest.
June 29, 2024
Quite an interesting second arc!
June 24, 2025
Great follow up to Fire and Stone, although not as good as that one. Still a must-read for any Alien/Predator/Prometheus fans!
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews