Aliens vs Predator: Deadliest of the Species

I twice read Aliens Vs Predator: Deadliest of the Species this week. It's a huge, weighty graphic novel in which the remaining humans have escaped the now alien-infested Earth to live in giant skyliners hosting entire cities, floating above the planet's surface.

On one of these skyliners is trophy wife Caryn, whose nightmares are causing great concern for her conglomerate husband. On the arrival of a bunch of intergalactic trophy hunters, she realises these nightmares are closer to reality than she thought. Siding with the hunters, she has no choice but to fight the scourge of the universe- the xenomorphic aliens- along with her tribal hunter friends- if they can be called that.

For a graphic novel, this was weirdly highbrow. I don't know whether I'm just not as smart as the average comic fan, but I found this harder to follow than the original AVP release. What was real? What was a dream? Why do people turn into other people? The book was not only heavy in the sense that it was twice as thick as its two predecessors- AVP and AVP: War- it was a cerebral challenge too. Does the average comic fan know the definitions of words like occlusion, vaunted, amanuensis, patella, progeny, ingress, primo, alecto, maegaera, tisiphone, chattel (I've since come across this word this week) 'didi mau' (Vietnamese for 'go, go quickly,' something American GIs brought back from Vietnam), mondo (perhaps Italian for 'cool', or 'extreme') and sophistry? I know I didn't. I had the Dictionary.com app open the whole time I was reading Deadliest of the Species.

But yeah, it had a load of humans, aliens and predators beating the crap out of each other, and that's what we read AVP stuff for, right?

Still, there were a few contentious issues: Why was the predator alert system in English? Why would an alien born by a chestbursted predator have more diluted acid blood than an alien born by a chestbursted human? The soldier who is sprayed suggests it doesn't bun as much as usual, but then in addition there's no mention of him being sprayed with alien blood before. Also, how could a character use the predator-tech invisibility shield to sneak up on... another predator? Don't they use heat vision? Come on.

Great fun but the hardest graphic novel I've read by a long way. I got it discounted and second hand at Manchester Comic Fair, taking place again this coming Saturday at Sachas hotel in the Northern Quarter.