Prophet #29

Written by Brandon Graham, Farel Dalrymple, and Andy Ristaino
Art by Farel Dalrymple and Andy Ristaino

It must be a lot of fun to write this comic.  Since Brandon Graham resurrected Rob Liefeld's god-awful comic from the 90s, each new issue has been a bit of an adventure, as Graham has introduced a wide variety of characters, settings, and strange situations.

For this issue, Graham returns to the John Prophet clone we last saw in the other issue illustrated by Farel Dalrymple.  Prophet is with a group of his clone brothers, escorting an Earth Empire Mother through space towards her home.  These Earth Mother's are powerful psychics, who control the clones.

Their route takes them through a centuries-old battlefield, and our tailed Prophet ends up being captured on a ship, where creatures control their prisoners and force them to work as slaves.  Prophet becomes involved with a group of rebels, and fights for his freedom.

Each and every page drips with creativity, as Graham and Dalrymple create a variety of races and strange creatures.  None of these are throw-aways for Graham; there's a sense that a lot of thought went into each and every story element, no matter how briefly they grace the pages of the book.

Dalrymple's work is always lovely, but I particularly like the way that colourist Joseph Bergin III's limited palette on the pages where Prophet is under mind control really accentuate Dalrymple's skills.

The back-up, by Andy Ristaino, features similar themes to the main book.  It's about a man who is the caretaker of a large colonist spaceship filled with people in suspended animation.  The ship is badly damaged, and the man has to decide what to do with his brethren.  It's a powerful little story.