3 out of 5

A Predator roams the streets of late 19th century London, its gruesome assaults falling under the blame banner of Spring-heeled Jack.  The secretive but respected Diogenes Club have recruited the mustachioed Mr. Soames to handle the creature, with much suggestion that Soames’ past dealings with something similar may come into play…

I’m not an avid Predator comics reader, but the historical setting comes across, to me, as pretty original.  Rennie also doesn’t cheat it: the Spring-heeled Jack reference isn’t meant to make this into an alternate history, it’s truly just name-dropped as a cover for events, and there’s no sneaked in alien weaponry to fight with: Soames goes with elephant guns and the like to bag his prey.  The final showdown – the latter half of issue two – is fantastic: breath-taking, exciting, well-paced and with good stakes; all the good stuff.  But in order to leave Soames’ background as something of a reveal, Rennie takes the long, mysterious way around in giving us his character’s motivations (and Diogenes’ possible reasons for recruiting him) and so by the time we get there, the few pages allotted in this two issue mini aren’t really enough.

But he’s a compelling enough narrator, voicing the story via cursive panels, and this early art from Colin MacNeil – much more hatched than his latter day stuff – gives us wide open panels and an appropriately dreary London.  Tom Taggart also provides a pair of stunning covers.

Better than the average Predator / Aliens / etc. comic, though needing an extra issue or so to develop our lead a bit more.