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Prometheus: Life And Death #4
Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: September 14th, 2015.
Written by: Dan Abnett
Illustrated by: Andrea Mutti
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Having now been forced to land on LV-223. what's left of the humans in this storyline have managed to meet up with some other survivors on the planet who have teamed up with a predator that they've dubbed Ahab. The hope was that the Colonial Marine commander would follow the ship and, in turn, show up to rescue them but that didn't happen. Making matters worse, the Engineer has woken up 'another of his kind' and as such, they're out of time. Their last chance to get off of this rock alive? Make it to the Engineer's ship and steal it, use it to head off of LV-223 once and for all.
The Marines and the others know they have to travel light, take just the bare essentials. Jhalil lies injured, Galgo thinks they should leave him but Melville volunteers to carry him. Tensions are running high amongst the members of the group, but they are determined to make this work. Singer knows he can get the ship to fly so long as they can get past the Engineers in the first place. Just then, Ahab shows up, trying to tell them something… he's seen something. That can't be good. They decide to run in three groups - a diversion group, a main group with the supplies and the injured, and then a point group to scope out the ship. The teams are setup and
as daybreak sets in, they make their way towards the ship.
The point team spots one of the Engineers and tries to distract him. It seems to work, a well placed grenade launched to draw him away, and it looks like this just might work - until a small horde of aliens show up and it all hits the fan, leaving Ahab to square off against an Engineer and the humans, scattered about, with their communication systems down and only a Predator to depend on. Some of them will make it, and some of them will not.
This ends quite blatantly by literally stating that the story will be continued in Aliens: Life And Death #1 (out from Dark Horse later this month) so don't expect anything in the way of actual resolution. But if it doesn't resolve the story it does at least push it along in some interesting directions and set up some pretty intense events to come. There's a lot going on here - alliances are formed, there are betrayals, there's a fair bit of action and an equal amount of all too human squabbling over ethics and morals. What Abnett has served up here works just fine as a stepping stone to the next installment of the Life And Death crossover series.
Andrea Mutti's artwork has been a bit unorthodox for this series from the first issue as it's a little softer than you might expect, but it winds up suiting the material quite well. The human characters and non-human characters alike are well illustrated and the action sequences nicely put together. Rain Beredo's coloring work is also solid, resulting in an attractive looking book.
