Today we are having a look at Prophet #21 by Brandon Graham and Simon Roy.
Firstly an explaination: Prophet (along with a bunch of other soon to be ressurected titles) started life as one of Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studio titles. If you are familiar with comics of the 90's or a comics nut like myself you will be painfully aware of Liefeld's work.
For the uninitiated:
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| just let your brain try and deal with the shit-storm it is seeing...... |
(I could post bad Liefeld pics for hours and hours....maybe another time)
In the dying months of 2011 Image announced that it would be bringing back some of these Extreme Studio titles. The first title I heard about was Prophet, what piqued my interest was that it would be written by Brandon Graham and, crucially, Liefeld would have NO INVOLVEMENT WHAT-SO-EVER!!!!!!
So instead of this:
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| ..........sigh......... |
We now get this:
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| Javier Bardem on the toilet beats a Liefeld muscle-man any day of the week... |
Now, Brandon Graham is the writer/artist of King City and Multiple Warheads (neither of which I have read, i'm awaiting the reprint of King City with baited breath) and he is extremely talented, the only thing of his i own is an eight page short story in one of the recent issues of Dark Horse Presents (i'll post about that at some point) and it was a beautiful, quirky and touching story that was illustrated perfectly. So when i heard he was writing this sci-fi comic i was very much on board.
So John Prophet emerges from the ground in a hyper sleep pod into a seemingly alien world and we emerge with him. Right off the bat we are immersed into Graham's narrative style, simple, terse text peppered with beautifully descriptive and inventive sci-fi terms. It really feels as though we have woken bleary eyed and fuzzy headed from stasis and are bombarded with alien creatures, far-future technologies and new systems and strata of life.
The opening few pages are brilliantly paced, Prophet awakens from his hyper-sleep, emerges into a new world, takes various pills to kick start his body and mind after hibernation and is attacked by a tulnaka (imagine a cross between a wolf and the creature from The Thing). He kills, butchers and preserves the meat from the tulnaka and we are off! mission start! Prophet is full of little things and touches here and there that really get my sci-fi juices flowing; there is a amazing panel early on where Prophet lays out the contents of his survival pack on the ground (including his bloodied knife he used to dispatch the meanie) each item is labelled.
There are some amazing gizmos, like Prophet's DolMantle (a sort of luminous, sentient slug/poncho/flak jacket) and the G.O.D satellite that he is tasked with re-starting. Graham populates every single inch and corner of this world with alien and freakishly familiar aspects that make it so refreshing to read. It comes off like a sci-fi Conan or something like that. Its a hard sci-fi approach but with a soft gooey centre of awesomeness.
So John Prophet emerges from the ground in a hyper sleep pod into a seemingly alien world and we emerge with him. Right off the bat we are immersed into Graham's narrative style, simple, terse text peppered with beautifully descriptive and inventive sci-fi terms. It really feels as though we have woken bleary eyed and fuzzy headed from stasis and are bombarded with alien creatures, far-future technologies and new systems and strata of life.
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| good doggy, good doggyOHSWEETFUCKINGJESUS! |
The opening few pages are brilliantly paced, Prophet awakens from his hyper-sleep, emerges into a new world, takes various pills to kick start his body and mind after hibernation and is attacked by a tulnaka (imagine a cross between a wolf and the creature from The Thing). He kills, butchers and preserves the meat from the tulnaka and we are off! mission start! Prophet is full of little things and touches here and there that really get my sci-fi juices flowing; there is a amazing panel early on where Prophet lays out the contents of his survival pack on the ground (including his bloodied knife he used to dispatch the meanie) each item is labelled.
There are some amazing gizmos, like Prophet's DolMantle (a sort of luminous, sentient slug/poncho/flak jacket) and the G.O.D satellite that he is tasked with re-starting. Graham populates every single inch and corner of this world with alien and freakishly familiar aspects that make it so refreshing to read. It comes off like a sci-fi Conan or something like that. Its a hard sci-fi approach but with a soft gooey centre of awesomeness.
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| and by 'live ammunition' he really means live, like alive alive! thats how amazing this comic is! |
The story reminds me of Dune in some respects. We are thrust into a story with no spoon-feeding of information or hand to hold and guide you through. It feels like we are in constant peril and Prophet is our guide.
I have to mention the awesome pencils by Simon Roy and the orgasmic colours by Richard Ballermann. Roy's pencils are detailed and beautiful and very European in style. Each panel is a masterpiece and his spreads almost reduced me to tears, look:
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| that, right there, is a fucking beauty! |
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| sorry to repeat this pic but just look at the reds and the glowing blue......IM AROUSED!!!!! |
Graham, Roy and Ballermann have created a genuinely alien world, full of unknown (to us at least) peril and a story so addictive and intriguing any fan of sci-fi would be foolish to jumo on board with these guys. I've read this comic three times now and i'm so excited about the next issue I just might read it again!!
Special mention: in the back pages of this comic Graham himself pencils a very sexy map of the world Prophet wakes up in:
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| buy the comic for a better look at it! |
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| (slow clap) |
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