Warning: Spoilers for Predator vs Wolverine #2 written by Benjamin Percy and published by Marvel Comics

After setting up what looked to be a pretty fun and brutal brawl between a group of Predator and Wolverine and Team X at the end of the first issue, honestly, Issue #2 kind of let me down.

It was still a good, fun issue with some great art by Ken Lashley (Present Day story), Andrea Di Vito (the main Team X story), and Hayden Sherman (Weapon X teaser) and an intriguing opening set in the present day with Wolverine at the bottom of a river.

That said, the action felt a little rushed, which is understandable considering there is only so much you can cram into 28 pages (which is less than the first issue’s oversized 48), especially with three different storylines, but I would have liked to see more of Team X, especially Sabretooth who is just fun to watch fight and take on the Predators. The few panels we get of him impaling a Predator are stunning and cool to see

  We do get a fair amount of Maverick, who even mortally wounds one of the Predators, but Jackson is quickly dispatched and decapitated, while Kruel is all but forgotten in this issue, appearing in the background of a panel after making an appearance at the end of Issue #1.

While the idea of following Wolverine’s rivalry with the Predator throughout Wolverine’s history is a good one, the whole Team X storyline could have easily been its own miniseries. It feels like the Predators were dispatched too quickly, and the uneasy alliance between Team X and the South American General they were sent to assassinate seems rushed. Perhaps if this issue were given a few more pages like the first issue, the storyline would not have felt so rushed, but it was still fun to see and had its moments.

Once again, as in Issue #1, the art was divided up between three different artists and art styles that represent a different time: an opening teaser in the Present Day, the main Team X showdown, and an epilogue set later during Wolverine’s time with Weapon X. Unlike the first issue the transition between artists was less jarring and noticeable.

Issue #2 left me a little less excited at the end than Issue #1, mostly because I would rather see them explore a different era of Wolverine’s history than his later Weapon X days, especially because they are somewhat covered in this issue. What about the New X-men era when he first joined the X-men with cameos by Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus?  Of course, if you add too many characters from X-men, it would become X-men versus Predator, which also is not a bad idea.

Perhaps too many characters are one of the main problems with this issue. In some of the fights, Wolverine feels like an afterthought. Team X fighting Predators in the jungle is a pretty on-the-nose homage to the original Predator movie but tries to put that story into just a few pages as opposed to a full movie, making things feel a little rushed to me. The fact its multiple Predators is a cool idea, but if it was just one predator taking out Team X one by one, I think it would have more impact

With just two more issues left, I am interested to see where this series goes from here, but awkward pacing and a lower page count make this an inferior issue to the debut one.

What did you think of Predator versus Wolverine #2? Let us know in the comments.