History ComicBook / AliensVsPredator

* AnimalStampede: Machiko stampedes the irritably rhynth to take out scores of Aliens and Predators duking it out in Prosperity Wells' main street.

* ActionPrologue: PlayedWith. Fox wanted one "Aliens" story and one "Predator" story to proceed the first "Versus" story. So one issue focuses on the Alien Queen (held captive by Predators, though no actual Predators appear in the issue), and the next shows a bunch of Predators fighting over potential hunting grounds, before we finally see Predators actually (successfully) hunting Aliens, to create a contrast for how dramatically the hunt in the main story is about to go awry. These first three issues (chapters in collected editions) feature basically narration by Conover and Strandberg debating the merits and flaws of humanity's high-tech, corporate lifestyle, the nature of manifest destiny, and so on. While there's plenty of action in two of the three prologues, there's also a lot of non-FauxlosophicNarration counterpointing it.

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: {{Discussed}} in the second, Predator-centric prologue. Tom Strandberg advances the idea with his copilot, Scott Conover, and Scott starts deconstructing it. Tom points out that human political infighting is NotSoDifferent. And of course, the discussion is counterpointed by showing the Predators operating on literal Asskicking Equals Authority.

* EnemyMine: Machiko and Broken Tusk must team up to take out the Alien hive, as it's already grown far to big for either of them to deal with alone.

It doesn't take long for things to go completely pear-shaped. The facehuggers infect the rhynth of one of the settlers' herds, and he covers up that his rhynth might be infected with something so he doesn't loose money on the roundup. The infected rhynth are loaded aboard the freighter ''[[MeaningfulName Lecter]]'', where the aliens hatch and get the two pilots. The freighter is docked in the middle of the colony, meaning the aliens can come barging out at any time to attack the colonists, and the Predators have to go through the humans to get to their prey. And the colony's doctor, intrigued by the facehugger the rancher's assistant gave him, heads to the totally wrong spot to look for them, encounters the Predators, and accidentally puts the hunt's leader in a coma, leaving a large group of effectively unruly teenage Predators on a world with humans and Aliens with no adult supervision. The colonists have to fight for their lives against the Aliens and the Predators, the Aliens have to try and fight off the Predators while attacking humans to build their hive, and the young, inexperienced, more-balls-than-brains Predators have to try and take on an entire Alien hive and some badly overwhelmed but extremely pissed-off human colonists. Needless to say, HilarityEnsues.

This first story set the stage for all other Aliens vs. Predator stories to come, and is actually a pretty fine piece of comic book writing in and of itself. Several more comics series followed. The comic story itself was adapted into a novel by Stephen Perry, entitled ''Aliens vs. Predator: Prey''.

* DefrostingIceQueen: A non-romantic example. Machiko is initially a tough, no-nonsense, by-the-book Company woman, but is growing frustrated that her approach with the colonists and Company staff isn't bringing her the results she wanted. She takes Hirkoi's advice to loosen up and "get some rhynth shit between her toes." She makes some surprising inroads with colonists and staff. . . in the day before all hell breaks loose.

* BigDamnHeroes: Subverted. When Machiko first walks unaware into the Alien hive in the ''Lecter'', she kills only a handful of them before her gun runs dry. Just as they're about to swarm her, a Predator blows the head off one Alien with a laser gun, before leaping into battle against his foes. The subversion is that the Predator wasn't acting to save Machiko, he just wanted to kill a bunch of Aliens, grab some nice trophies, etc., and the Aliens quickly swarm and slaughter him. Then subverted again when Machiko leaves the Predator to his fate.

* PreAsskickingOneLiner: One of Broken Tusk's borrowed phrases from Machiko becomes this as he takes one of his errant hunters to school:
-->'''Machiko''': ''(to Miriam Revna)'' You know rhynth temperament, right? I've got three thousand head that have been crammed into holding pens since last night -- what kind of mood do you think they're in right now?\\
\\
'''Broken Tusk''': ''(to wayward Predator)'' What kind of mood do you think they're in right now? ''(cue MegatonPunch)''

It doesn't take long for things to go completely pear-shaped. The facehuggers infect the rhynth of one of the settlers' herds, and he covers up that his rynth might be infected with something so he doesn't loose money on the roundup. The infected rynth are loaded aboard the freighter ''[[MeaningfulName Lecter]]'', where the aliens hatch and get the two pilots. The freighter is docked in the middle of the colony, meaning the aliens can come barging out at any time to attack the colonists, and the Predators have to go through the humans to get to their prey. And the colony's doctor, intrigued by the facehugger the rancher's assistant gave him, heads to the totally wrong spot to look for them, encounters the Predators, and accidentally puts the hunt's leader in a coma, leaving a large group of effectively unruly teenage Predators on a world with humans and Aliens with no adult supervision. The colonists have to fight for their lives against the Aliens and the Predators, the Aliens have to try and fight off the Predators while attacking humans to build their hive, and the young, inexperienced, more-balls-than-brains Predators have to try and take on an entire Alien hive and some badly overwhelmed but extremely pissed-off human colonists. Needless to say, HilarityEnsues.

* ContrivedCoincidence: Roth finds a bunch of Ackland's rynth sick, with dead facehuggers scattered around Beriki Canyon. Ackland tells Roth to take the things to Dr. Revna, but tell him she found them in Iwa Gorge. Revna goes to Iwa Gorge to look for more of them. Guess where the Predators decided to land their ship?
* DefrostingIceQueen: A non-romantic example. Machiko is initially a tough, no-nonsense, by-the-book Company woman, but is growing frustrated that her approach with the colonists and Company staff isn't bringing her the results she wanted. She takes Hirkoi's advice to loosen up and "get some rynth shit between her toes." She makes some surprising inroads with colonists and staff. . . in the day before all hell breaks loose.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: Roth. She works for Ackland, whose rynth have been infected by the facehuggers. Ackland doesn't want to risk his rynth (and thus, his money) being tied up in quarantine, so he tells Roth to tell Dr. Revna that she found the specimens in a completely different place, [[ContrivedCoincidence which just happens to be where the Predators landed their ship.]] Revna ends up accidentally blowing up the ship and knocking the Predator leader, Broken Tusk, into a coma, which leaves the rest of the adolescent Predators to their own devices.

It doesn't take long for things to go completely pear-shaped. The facehuggers infect the rynth of one of the settlers' herds, and he covers up that his rynth might be infected with something so he doesn't loose money on the roundup. The infected rynth are loaded aboard the freighter ''[[MeaningfulName Lecter]]'', where the aliens hatch and get the two pilots. The freighter is docked in the middle of the colony, meaning the aliens can come barging out at any time to attack the colonists, and the Predators have to go through the humans to get to their prey. And the colony's doctor, intrigued by the facehugger the rancher's assistant gave him, heads to the totally wrong spot to look for them, encounters the Predators, and accidentally puts the hunt's leader in a coma, leaving a large group of effectively unruly teenage Predators on a world with humans and Aliens with no adult supervision. The colonists have to fight for their lives against the Aliens and the Predators, the Aliens have to try and fight off the Predators while attacking humans to build their hive, and the young, inexperienced, more-balls-than-brains Predators have to try and take on an entire Alien hive and some badly overwhelmed but extremely pissed-off human colonists. Needless to say, HilarityEnsues.

The story is set [[SchrodingersCanon nominally]] in the Aliens universe, with a far-flung future with space travel and distant human colonies, and a corrupt corporation overseeing almost everything. In this universe, the small planet Ryushi is just exiting its "first phase" of colonization, preparing to deliver their first roundup of rynth (something like a cross between a cow and rhinoceros) to a Company freighter. Because the first phase is ending, the previous colony administrator is leaving, and a new boss, Machiko Noguchi, is taking over. She's initially cold and distant, trying to run the colony tight and by-the-book, but is finding her approach is not earning her respect from the rough-and-tumble colonists.

* WillfullyWeak: ''War'' shows that Predators actually have more conventional weapons like rifles and grenades that they reserve for serious circumstances, such as warfare or extracting Queens from hives, where they don't need the fight to be even ''remotely'' fair.

* {{Jerkass}}: Conover. He's rather abrasive at the best of times, and when he's drunk, comes on to Machiko ''way'' to strong, and won't take "no" for an answer, causing her to throw him across the room. Also, Ackland, for being an abrasive tool who basically lets the whole mess happen in the first place.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Machiko Noguchi is the highest-ranked corporate executive on Ryushi, and quite the Action Girl.

!! This Comic includes examples of:

This is where it all started.

The original Alien vs. Predator comic book miniseries by Dark Horse comics. The idea came about when some Dark Horse comics creative types were sitting around, talking about other comics companies doing "versus" titles to boost sales, and started brainstorming their own "versus" title. Suggestions got increasingly ridiculous, before someone finally said [[EurekaMoment "Alien versus Predator,"]] and everyone looked at each other, shocked that it hadn't been the first thing they thought of. Not only was the pairing completely natural, but Dark Horse Comics already had the license to print comics for both the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise (at the time, only consisting of [[Film/{{Predator}} the original movie.]]) Fox licensing was all over the idea, a writer and artist was attached, and it was full-steam ahead.

This first story set the stage for all other Aliens vs. Predator stories to come, and is actually pretty fine piece of comic book writing in and of itself. Several more comics series followed. The comic story itself was adapted into a novel by Stephen Perry, entitled ''Aliens vs. Predator: Prey''.