Friday, September 7, 2012

Prophet Trade 1: Remission


What benefits sprout from a trade collection of monthly comic books? Comics best thrive in a serialized format, a publication sequence that allows time to digest and ponder the story and its possibilities between issues…a  publication regime that doesn’t overwhelm or burn out the reader…20 pages of Justice League Dark parceled out once a month are fine…200 pages of Justice League Dark all at once would be too much. Hence, the allure of a trade collection of monthly comic issues never converted me.

All has since changed.

Prophet showed trade collections exist as a second coming, a reissue of good news, for those of us who missed the first opportunity at experiencing a rapture (plus there excerpts from Brandon Grahams sketchbook with his initial Prophet designs are included).

I’m converted.

Initially the cover of Prophet 21 intrigued, but I neglected to follow the series because a cursory glance illicited a negative reaction to the art (the same disdain occurred when looking at the first issue of MIND MGMT…surely some lesson should have been learned by now) and boredom arose at another tale of a lone man wandering an apocalyptic landscape. Reading the tale in trade revealed that there was much more lurking in the story than a man and his apocalypse. The trade transformed that reaction. The Prophet story reads well collected, and the experience of reading the issues back to back allow for an immersion into this strange world that won’t allow readers to reach escape velocity.

And what a world! I realize I’m boarding the Prophet bus (or rocket) late, yet still Prophet shatters any jaded desensitization to tumbled earth empires with its redefinition of strange.

Aside from torquing one’s mind and weaving a captivating story (as if these two points aren’t reason enough), what other machinations could the oddness of Prophet exert on the human mind? In an excerpt from John Dewey’s Art as Experience, the Vermont philosopher/educator writes “The moral function of art itself is to do away with prejudice, do away with the scales that keep the eye from seeing, tear away the veils due to wont and custom, perfect the power to perceive.”  Dewey here leans on “adherence to a preliminary opinion or feeling without thought or experience” for an understanding of “prejudice.” While someone may obtain some odd looks (and provocative solicitations) if others hear them espousing appreciation for the moral function of Prophet that banishes stale depictions of a ravaged future earth. Part of the allure of the story that simultaneously orients and disorients is Simon Prophet’s knowledge of this future earth. Prophet holds more knowledge than readers, and we’re able, slightly, oh so very slightly fellow and future-fellow Prophet followers, to glean some knowledge of location and the new species that have evolved and some causes, or hints of causes, at the state of this future-present earth. Yet, there is much that Simon Prophet doesn’t know, or doesn’t reveal in his refreshing and much welcomed and appreciated lack of laments or brooding on solitude or the harsh changes that beset his home planet. The details occupying the background banish the prejudice of an overexposed future earth’s devastation and offer readers a fresh visceral experience of running free like a virgin in an alien-highjacked world.[1] The organic mixtures of the non-human with the human and biological bondings give a strange air to the book. The definition of humanity has slackened from the physical and individual, and grasps at something else for the future of the species. Simon Prophet’s bonding with the Dolmantle and an alien sex fiend, consumption of human flesh, and utilizing a regrown-alien arm disrupts the notions of humanity. Be warned however, if a Prophet Cookbook should ever be released, one would be wise to pass on the gastronomical grimoire.

Oracles often precede prophets, so please treat the gathered “Sayings for the Prophet” on each issue of Graham and crew’s collected six issues as a call from the converted to follow this Prophet.

A
A lyrical ballad altering the familiar to the strange for a copied laconic questing knight birthed from a mechanized buried womb that emerged from Mother Earth  and unleashed its spawn in a Darwin-ransacked land. Simon Prophet returns like a genetic remembrance manifests in a world of crashed space ships and four-jawed Talnakas before brown, red and blue color schemes.

B
Grey, tan, and brown color the Taza Caravan’s trek beneath the power shell repelling flesh-hungry desert insects. Bug-evolved Oiiz and time-altered caravaning elephants perform sacrificial kingly rituals while a trophy-hunting sportsman bugs yields to a killing whim.

C
Tower reached.  Quest complete. Clones awake. Veil lifts. Story arc ends. The given conclusion generates greater queries. The new earth empire rouse from its slumber.

D
Same name, different clone.  New place, and a new plot within the plot accompany the new artist. Radiation-rich atmosphere slowly balds and poisons the hero as it corrupts his flesh, and the close simultaneously triumphs and fails in a fight with himself after traversing the corrupting innards of an orbiting robot city. Neonaught skin protects the lapsarian slip to an earth-empire mother.

E
A Jaxson robot (?) wanders for its Jung brother in a minimalist-hard-line background while the empire ceaselessly beckons. Worm-hole rings usher the wanderer to the light for transmission of the message: “John…It’s starting again.”

F
An armed clone trinity defend an Arch Mother amidst chromatic wizardry of browns, blues, and oranges. All die from the swift fingers of a John Prophet who ascends to the Womb Ship and usurps the Arch Mother’s crown. It has started again.


[1] Possibly the first Iron Maiden/Madonna allusion back to back in the history of comic book reviews!

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