While the worlds of Alien and Predator crossed over many times, Dark Horse’s Fire and Stone event brought took those aliens to the world of Prometheus.
During their lengthy tenure at Dark Horse, the worlds of Alien and Predator have collided more than once in crossovers like Alien vs. Predator. And starting in 2014, those two franchises crossed over with their cinematic cousin, Prometheus, in Dark Horse’s Fire and Stone event.
Masterminded by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Paul Tobin, Juan Ferreyra and David Palumbo, the event takes place over 18 issues, at roughly simultaneous junctures in the same overarching story. Throughout the four miniseries that make up the event, we follow two vessels and their crew as they explore a world that combines all three franchises.
The series starts on the very moon in which the first Prometheus film is centered around, LV-223. The black substance that was stored in the Juggernaut has since seeped into the desolate moon after the fateful crash occurring at the end of the film. Now, a flourishing ecosystem has developed, bringing along with it an atmosphere much easier to breathe in. The creatures that now inhabit the moon bear a striking resemblance to the Xenomorph and the Deacon, the Xenomorph-like creature created at the end of Prometheus.
There are two vessels and their journeys that this series follows. The first vessel is the Onager, a vessel fleeing from Hadley’s Hope on LV-426. The crew members just narrowly escape the Xenomorph outbreak, but several of the Xenomorph have hidden on the vessel. When the crew lands on what was thought to be an inhabitable rock, they are attacked by the Xenomorph and must escape off the spacecraft. They quickly realize that there are heavy signs of life on the moon LV-223, and it is there where Derrick Russel discovers an Engineer in stasis, which he awakens.
The second vessel is the Geryon which served as an engine core, meaning it carried a group of mini-vessels within it. On one of those small vessells is a crew filming for documentary purposes. The leader of this crew, Angela Foster, is less focused on the documentary at hand and is more focused on recovering the USCSS Prometheus with the intent of solving the mystery of what happened to Peter Weyland. Both crews must face the moon’s new and vicious wildlife, consisting of the Xenomorphs, the Deacons, and in Alien vs. Predator: Fire and Stone they are introduced to the Yautja, the alien Predators. In Prometheus: Fire and Stone-Omega, the series comes to a close with the crew narrowly escaping danger one last time.
As the newest part of this universe, the world of Prometheus provides much of the environment that the characters navigate through the series. Prometheus: Fire and Stone does a good job of using its past content to expand into a world suitable to contain three crossovers. Without that black substance, which is referred to as an ‘accelerant,’ the creatures that the crew encounter would simply not be there. The first installment of the series sets up the main conflict by elaborating on the importance of the black substance found originally on the vessel. It also introduces the Engineers, the creators of mankind, to the Alien and Predator world.
With Marvel set to take over the licenses to Alien and Predator next year, there’s no telling if or when these properties might crossover again, or if they’ll return to the world of Prometheus anytime soon.
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