Prophet

Storytellers:  Brandom Graham with three other writer-artists
Publisher: Image
Year of Publication: 2012
Page Count: 6 issues, collects Prophet 21-26
What I learned about writing/Storytelling

1. I enjoyed this bit that uses text and pointers to show the protagonist’s  scifi gizmos:
weapons with text in propht comic

2.  These alien robot things are humanized though the first person narration, which I guess shows you can play around with what is human and what is not through text scifi tropes (you still have the problem of the lack of relatable body language though):
robot has narration in prophet comic

3.  There’s some interesting scifi concepts, like living spaceship mother AI things. (Which I think I’ve  seen before in an Outer Limits episode, but it’s still cool.)

4.  Scifi terminology can get really offputting.

What I learned about art/storytelling:
1.  There’s a visual alien, possibly due to the coloring.  I’m talking about this thing:
alien thing in Prophet comic

To me the coloring of the girl makes it look like she has a different art style than the rest of the book, which would make her a visual alien.  Looking at this art, it’s clear the coloring choice brings three dimensionality to the image.

2.  There’s definitely contrast in lighting between indoors and outdoors.  It would be interesting to see if a movie like Prometheus uses pronounced lighting differences, or that’s just a comic thing…

Recommendation: D

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:
This book has good internet buzz.  That said… I have no idea what I just read. It was incomprehensible to me. My eyes kept glazing over at the alien jargon.  I was a bit tired when I read it, admittedly, but I don’t think that was the problem, but who knows. Even the credit page is causing my eyes to glaze over right now:
clip_image004

Written by Simon Ray, with writer Simon Ray, and drawn by Simon Ray!

The first storyline was comprehensible, in a post apocalyptic Conan The Barbarian in Space sort of way, but after that there’s all these clones running around or something. The third person narration and lack of dialogue made my eyes glaze over, especially as the narration is riddled with incomprehensible made up scifi gibberish terms.

Most of the reviews on Amazon seem positive, though it seems one positive reviewer is familiar with the earlier series, which apparently might help a little, even though this is largely a fresh reboot?  These two Amazon reviews are closer to my view:

This is going to be a short review as I plan on keeping it short. The volume confused me. I really had no idea what was going on. Apparently each “chapter” a new John Prophet would appear and start the story all over again waking from stasis from under the earth’s surface to complete a mission in this new dangerous Earth. This took me some time to figure out so I didn’t have a clue what was happening with each issue shift. … This GN is not for me, nor would I recommend it. However it generally seems to be getting excellent reviews. I enjoy science fiction but I am not hard-core, perhaps this would appeal more to those associated with that term

Another one star review:

“Prophet has been hyped up by comic blogs for months which made it sound really interesting and the concept is. However the execution of it dragged literally prophet dragged himself around from one point to another. The writing was pretty confusing and could probably have been so much better. If you find this at a library check it out. If you are really curious about the relaunch of a Prophet go for it but for any real substance skip this.”

So yeah, I don’t recommend getting this book.

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