TOMORROW IS FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!!!

Tomorrow is that most wonderful day known as Free Comic Book Day (and Comic Giveaway Day, for reasons).

The day when comic book publishers (large and small) try to tempt you to try their wares - or hook existing readers in for the next "must read" story arc - with free sampler comics at your friendly local comic store.

Remember, the books may be free to you - but the store still pays for them, so don't be greedy!

I've already revealed several of the titles that have caught my eye this year, such as the two Conan comics and Marvel's "apes and aliens" book, but there's also a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe/Dungeons & Dragons offering from Dark Horse that will scratch a certain itch.

More Uninvited Guests Drop In On The Planet of The Apes

Cover art by Stonehouse

Rather than giving the classic Planet of The Apes its own ongoing series, Marvel continues to push it as the perfect tourist destination for crossovers with its other properties.

The planet is currently enjoying a visit from the Fantastic Four, and in July the Yautja (aka Predators) are dropping in for a five-issue miniseries, Predator versus Planet of The Apes, penned by Greg Pak and illustrated by Alan Robinson.

"Worlds collide when a deadly Yautja crash-lands on the legendary Planet of the Apes!

"After a rescue mission gone wrong, astronaut Arch finds herself embedded in a hostile ape society where humans are subservient. But the hunters soon became the hunted when the apes find themselves being stalked by Predators!

"A three-way war is about to erupt between humans, apes and Yautja – who will reign supreme?!…

"Blending the mythology as well as the themes of both universes, the revolutionary saga pushes both Yautja and ape to their limit in a brutal battle for dominance!"

A prequel story to this series will appear in Free Comic Book Day Comics Giveaway Day's Alien, Predator & Planet of The Apes #1 (available on Saturday, May 2).

Variant cover by Tim Seeley

Movie cover variant art by Chris Campana

Predator: Badlands Comes To Disney Plus Next Week

Creepozoids (1987)

My best friend - and fellow crappy horror movie aficionado - Paul popped down from London the other day for one of our semi-regular film nights.

His viewing suggestion, 1987's Creepozoids, turned out to be an hilariously awful, low-budget, Alien  mockbuster-style B-movie treat.

Set in a "futuristic" 1998, six years after a nuclear apocalypse, war is still raging and five of the most useless military deserters find themselves hiding out in a mysterious, abandoned laboratory, unable to leave because of a sudden downpour of acid rain.

Remember when "acid rain" was ubiquitous in sci-fi and post-apocalyptic movies, as shorthand for manmade environmental destruction? Ahh, those were the days!

The "big name star" of Creepozoids is the delightfully scruffy Linnea Quigley (of The Return of the Living Dead and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers fame) as Blanca, who pairs up with a walking slice of ham called Butch (Ken Abraham).

They are accompanied by the nominal leader of the pack, Jake (Richard Hawkins, who would go on to play an air traffic controller in Close Encounters of The Third Kind), his girlfriend, Kate (Kim McKamy aka adult movie star Ashlyn Gere, whose character quirk appears to be an inability to sit down during meal scenes), and anxious, tech "wiz" Jesse (Michael Aranda). You know he's the "brains" of the group because he wears glasses... and looks a bit like Shane Black's Hawkins from Predator.

Except for a short spell of exterior work to get the characters into the underground bunker, Creepozoids is shot entirely in a warehouse, with a budget of around of £15 (none of which, seemingly, went on the script).

Very quickly our heroes realise they are trapped in the laboratory complex with a large humanoid monster that is clearly a man in a bargain basement xenomorph Halloween costume.

As amusing as that creature is, it's nothing compared to the giant rats that are obviously oversized stuffed toys which the poor actors are having to shake around to simulate the vicious attacks from these killer rodents.

Impressively plotless, what passes for a story in Creepozoids (and, no, I don't know why that's the title) is a series of random encounters that rapidly whittles down our protagonists without really explaining what the creature actually wants.

Bizarrely for a film that barely clocks in with a 72 minute runtime, there's also a lot of padding in writer-director David DeCoteau's film (co-written with Dave Eisenstark under the pen name of Burford Hauser). 

Paul and I lost count of the number of times various characters crawled up and down the same, short, piece of gunge-splattered passageway.

Then the final showdown between the last man standing and the big bad monster just felt interminable. 

This climactic confrontation also took a strange turn when the monster was injected with a randomly acquired syringe of something-or-other, seemingly killing it only for - moments later - a freakish puppet baby to sprout from its head and continue the aggression.

To add insult to injury, Creepozoids doesn't even deign to have a proper conclusion - instead just suddenly ending on a freezeframe of the mutant baby. Presumably this was to set up the proposed sequel that never materialised.

Perversely, this isn't the worst film we've ever seen - that honour belongs to either Shark Exorcist or the entire Camp Blood franchise - Creepozoids almost gets a pass because it's really an extended vignette rather than an actual movie. 

And you can't really knock anything that stars Linnea Quigley.

Witness The Ultimate Hunt Next Month

Predator: Badlands Movie Gets Comic Book Prequel

In the one-shot, a young Yautja warrior is given a seemingly simple task by his father: retrieve a piece of technology from a derelict spaceship that crashed years ago. Inside, however, an ancient and deadly threat lies in wait.

This one-shot comic book prequel to the forthcoming movie, Predator: Badlands #1 - written by Ethan Sacks with Elvin Ching on art duty, and inks from Oren Junior - will be released by Marvel on November 12. The cover art is provided by Juan Ferreyra.

The movie's director, Dan Trachtenberg, will write a foreword to the book.

Legless Elle Fanning Helps Young Predator Seek Ultimate Prey

First hunt. Last chance.

From the director of Prey, watch the brand-new trailer for Predator: Badlands, in theaters November 7.

Predator: Badlands, which stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, is set in the future on a remote planet, where a young Predator, outcast from his clan, finds an unlikely ally in Thia (Fanning) and embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.

The film is directed by Dan Trachtenberg and produced by John Davis, Dan Trachtenberg, Marc Toberoff, Ben Rosenblatt, Brent O’Connor.

Badlands Turns A Predator Into The Protagonist

The director of Prey welcomes you to a world of hurt. Experience Predator: Badlands on the big screen, in cinemas and IMAX November 7.

In the future on a remote planet, a young Predator (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), outcast from his clan, finds an unlikely ally in Thia (Elle Fanning ) and embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.

Is it just me, but I'm getting serious Harry Harrison Deathworld vibes from the planet the Predator appears to find himself on? Haven't read those books since I was a teen, but that's where my mind immediately went when I saw this teaser.

Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), the young Yautja

Prey (2022)

Set in 1719 on America's Northern Great Plains, Prey follows eager young Comanche warrior Naru (Legion's Amber Midthunder), who struggles for acceptance by the male warriors in her tribe, despite her formidable tracking and herbal medicine skills.

Even her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers) can't fully acknowledge her prowess.

However, when she spots a fiery "thunderbird" in the skies, she takes it as a sign that it's time for her "kuhtaamia", a coming-of-age ritual where you hunt something that can also hunt you.

When an enigmatic creature, presumed to be a lion or a bear, threatens her community, Naru goes off on her own to prove herself.

Only, it turns out that the big beastie in the woods is actually an alien Yautja (Dane DiLiegro) aka a Predator, who has come to Earth for some sport.

Escaping the alien killing machine, Naru and Taabe fall into the hands of a veritable army of brutish French fur trappers.

Even tooled-up with (admittedly primitive) rifles and pistols, the French prove to be little more than target practice for the heavy-armed, high-tech alien as it cuts a bloody swathe through their numbers on its hunt for more challenging prey.

Rhythmically paced, with no time for padding or slack, Prey is a lean, stripped back to basics, entry into the Predator franchise.

Taking place several hundred years before Arnie faced a Predator in Central America, this prequel engages a willing audience from its opening sequences - introducing us to the Comanche way of life - through to its kinetic, blood-soaked final act.

On one hand, it's a slow burn as the diametrically opposed hunters - human and alien - work towards their eventual confrontation, but on the other the film is beautifully and dramatically composed, making great use of the Canadian wilderness in which it was shot.

Assisted by her (thankfully) indestructible canine companion, Amber Midthunder is a charismatic action lead, although her Naru segues a bit too comfortably from hunting animals and fighting the Predator to out-and-out murdering Frenchmen.

Writer-director Dan Trachtenberg's script, co-written with Patrick Aison, does a great job of foreshadowing important elements that will eventually contribute to Naru's inevitable victory over the seemingly indestructible Yautja.

In the latter half of the 99-minute movie, however, it does tend to lean too heavily on emulating the original 1987 Predator and having Taabe actually say "if it bleeds, we can kill it" is a real cringe moment in an otherwise solid script.

What I'd like to see now is more of these "historical Predators": how about one set a hundred or so years later in the Wild West, or feudal Japan (Yautja vs samurai and ninja), or Medieval Europe (as depicted in the Kickstarter-funded Predator: Dark Ages, back in 2015), or during The Battle of The Somme (or some other grim First World War setting), or Victorian London, or the Stone Age?

The possibilities are endless. Although, if humanity wins every time you have to wonder why the Predators keep coming back!

Predators (2010)

The biggest surprise in this addition to the Predator franchise is how well Adrian Brody can pull off the 'hard man' act. Beyond that, no matter how exciting the film is, and it is, we've seen it all before.

Brody is Royce, a tough mercenary, who awakes in freefall over - what he soon discovers is - an alien jungle. He's been dropped in among a group of similarly bewildered and confused strangers, who all turn out to be soldiers, psychos, gangsters or criminals.

They have been snatched from Earth to be hunted by the Predator aliens on a planet-wide 'game reserve'... and that's about it as far as plot goes.

There's running, there's fighting, dodging traps, tangling with Predator-hounds and Predators, references to the original Predator movie, more running about, more fighting, a surprising cameo, some more running and finally some more fighting.

Of course, there's also a bit of crafty trickery along the way, but from the opening scenes it's pretty easy to single out which of the gang of hard nuts will survive until the final conflict and which will be fodder for the planet's killing machines.

Never dull, Predators is competently directed by Nimrod Antal, and the script by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch takes a stab at expanding the culture of the Predator aliens, while using them as dark mirrors for the 'predatory' nature of the humans, but it's simply not meaty enough to generate more than a shrug of passing interest.

Disappointingly forgettable, with no memorable set pieces, Predators - pedestrian as it may be - is perfect beer and pizza fodder for an undemanding audience who just want to wallow in some mindless, and ultimately pointless, sci-fi violence.