I have always been a fan of sci-fi stories. I love Star Wars. I love The Terminator series. I love Futurama. Simply put, I love anything that has to do with space, or a really far out science story. I have mentioned before that I’m a huge Jonathan Hickman fan, he’s one of the biggest sci-fi writers that I can think of right now. A few months ago, when I picked up my books at my local comic shop, I only had a few books for that week. So, instead of being wise with my money and saving it, I decided to splurge and look around for a good sci-fi book that I hadn’t read yet. That’s when I found PROPHET by Brandon Graham. Just flipping through the pages was enough to grab my attention. Some of the pages were extremely detailed and then others were very minimalistic and simple. I liked the fact that the main character (at times) is a humanoid type figure with a tail, what’s not to love about that?
For those of you that aren’t familiar with the series, different has a really good description of the book: “On distant future Earth, changed by time and alien influence, John Prophet awakes from cryosleep. His mission: to climb the the towers of Thauili Van and restart the Earth empire. News of the Empire’s return brings old foes and allies out of the recesses of the vast cosmos.” This was totally enough to get me to buy the book, and for $9.99 you really can’t go wrong with this book.
The book takes place 10,000 years into the future and it resembles a Fallout 3/Mad Max/Mos Elise Cantina type civilization so artistically it’s absolutely beautiful. In the first issue John Prophet has to blend into an alien city, that is actually a living rocket ship (not to be confused with the tree-ship from Saga), and later there is a pretty weird/awkward human and alien sex scene. And the entire time John is pushing forward to Thauili Van he is under the watchful eyes of two observers in space suites following him through the land. At the end of the first story arc, we find that the men following John Prophet are in fact, clones of John Prophet. Think Oblivion but WAY better.
There are a couple other stories in Volume 1, but I don’t want to go into too much detail because I really want you to go pick this book up and enjoy it as much as I did. I think this was honestly one of the best sci-fi stories that I have read in a long time. The story was refreshing and an interesting take on a far off earth story. The fact that the book consists of 4 different artists really makes each story unique to itself and each artist tells the story of a different Prophet since there are hundreds scattered all around the universe. In an interview with Newsarama the creative team mentioned that each artist will draw Prophet in a unique way to match his idea of how the character will perceive the world around him. The different artists each offer a different point of view for the character, and that’s something to truly make this a unique story that is different compared to most everything you will find on the shelves of your local comic shop. If you read this book, let us know what you think of the series, we love getting feedback.