Chapter 117: Interconnected Interests

A lot of preparation led up to the release of Predator. It has 30 issues jam-packed in Volume Trilogy that explores the classic Predator after all.

Fortunately, Alexander and his second-floor comic-making team have been hard at work to make it happen.

They had to make use of a lot of soldier drama and brotherhood to make the story compelling whilst the one-hunter show of the hunting Yautja had to be pristine and terrifyingly effective.

It was a matter of finding the right balance on whose perspective the story could be told and also the grim representation of how the hunted are feeling as they felt themselves on the brink of dying.

The tough army men found that they weren't the top of the top species in the Earth food chain as just one lone Predator gave them the wake-up call of their life.

A lot of coloring work also needed perfection as the Predator's invisible state and mostly dark areas that he would hunt on would always require the right amount of balance with dark and bright tones.

The team even dedicated quite a lot of panels to show how the Predator morphs his visible form from invisibility and back.

In the end, their efforts paid off quite well with the October being the Predator month where anyone looking to enjoy their spook month was buying the Predator: Slaughterous Hunt Volume Book trilogy.

A direct-to-Volume Book strategy just fits perfectly for a "monster" alien story whose only goal is to hunt and follow the Yautja honor.

The ones to follow would also follow the same semi-one shot and graphic novel-esque direction as well to expand much on the Predator lore.

Predator, from the point forward, would not be an overarching and connected story but would employ separate narratives that would only enforce on what the Yautja are and the life they live.

Alexander could propose it to be a semi-documentary type of storytelling but with all the gritty goodness that one would expect.

He is trying to lull horror and Creed fans into an Octoberian tradition after all and what better way to do that than make it a specified annual release.

As they bought the 3 Volume Books now, it sure is a likely chance that they would be buying more in the future.

Alexander's Volume Book incremental money farming ambition has essentially moved forward into quite a few steps with just the scheduled future October release plans.

Not to mention all the other horror-related comic books that he would plunder and expand the diverse selections that they could choose from.

There was no doubt that horror was a niche in the niche industry but it was still a demographic that exist and could be grown.

-----

With being 'grown' and growth, the sales of the Predator Volume Books would probably peak just before Halloween.

But it came as surprise to the people in the industry when the final buzz of the last week of October wasn't the terror-popular freak face but from the already-peaked law enforcement cyborg.

When a film called Terminator was released, RoboCop may just have had an insurgence with its single-issue sales soaring high and Creed Comics upping their release quota to 350,000.

Alexander got some inspiration when he came to plunder the mechanical cop and the alien hunter after all.

The Alien hunter was from the actor that played a part in it while the T800 itself was a close parallel to the robot-human RoboCop.

The assassin "cyborg" from the future had already shown his stiff-faced and seemingly unkillable figure to American theaters.

It just so happen that there was another cyborg from a rising paper medium and everything just came together.

RoboCop fans from the comic book industry heard of the Terminator films while those that were wowed by the Terminator films heard the comparison and contrast from those chattering RoboCop fans.

It was not an exaggeration to say that the film and comic medium overlapped and the 2 different "cyborg" titles benefitted greatly from it.

Time-travelling Terminator became the dark horse of the slow October theater market while the already thought-provoking Alex Murphy just got much more popular than it already is.

Of course, there was still the Predator franchise and the other Creed titles sandwiched in between that film and comic synchronicity which practically ballooned Creed Comics and entire industry altogether.

Comic book store owners requested more copies and Creed Comics had no reluctance in complying with those requests.

Reprints were in order and the adaptation strategy was pulled up once again for the big crowd jump that the market experienced from just the release of one Terminator film alone.

Film was always the spearheading driving force in franchises and it just so happens that it was true all along.

Even Alexander, who was just expecting to latch on with Terminator's popularity did not anticipate such a development.

Nevertheless, it was an abrupt upgrade that was welcome anytime in Alexander's opinion.

As for how to find reasoning for it, then it would just boil down to powerful coincidences falling into place at the most opportune timings.

------

As Alexander was musing at the fact that RoboCop and Terminator have benefited from each other, a certain person was also enamored by the Cop and Terminator interconnectedness as well.

Terminator director, James Cameron has always been a big comic book fan with Spider-man being one of his top picks.

The fact that the comic book and his recently released Terminator movie have produced a synergistic effect has intrigued him greatly.

For someone busy with his directing career for the past few years, the rise of a new comic book giant within only a couple of months has been overlooked by him.

With the happy success of his robot movie, James Cameron finally had time to relax and find out why newspapers were attributing his success to RoboCop.

He wasn't mad at what he found out as he was much caught in on what he has read upon.

It was not a secret that Director Cameron was a sucker for things that embody themes of technological mechanics and futuristic dystopia after all.

If his Terminator was the current time's staple for that fascination, then his involvement with the live-action production of 'Ghost in the Shell' and 'Alita: Battle Angel' was the final nail in the coffin.

Both 'Ghost in the Shell' and Alita happen to embody themes of mechanics and futuristic dystopia that greatly correlate to his Terminator franchise.

Those two still haven't been made yet though, so Cameron's current attention was more on Creed Comics' mechanical story offerings that appeal to him.

If RoboCop was what drew him into the Creed net, then The Cybertronian Chronicles only served to lull him further.

James Cameron found engineering, technology, and dystopian futures interesting, so how could he miss out on what Creed Comics would produce next.

As a director with certain popularity now, he was even thinking of using his Hollywood privilege to flex on Creed Comics, so he could adapt his new favorite comic books into movies.

As for how that inclination would intersect the director with Alexander, it was only up for the future to know.

In essence, Creed Comics just made a fan out of Hollywood's future top director who would dominate box office grosses for many years.