The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 956: Prophet - Earth War #6, November 2016

Endings are funny things, aren't they?

And endings of superhero stories are the funniest sort.

The Earth War ends by reminding not only we, the readers, but also our focal characters, that nothing really ends, and that there's always an aspect to conflict that we're simply not aware of. There are yet more bittersweet farewells here, more steps to cease the endless expansion of the Empire, but in the end (whatever that might mean), things continue, as they always have. There's a fantastic section, right at the very end of the story, that reminds us of the passage of time, of the neverending battle to which we consign these modern myths, a section that tells us where we've been, what we've seen, and, both chillingly and comfortingly, where we're going.

I don't have too much to say about this comic right now, but I really feel like Prophet, in this iteration, is one of those books I'll be going back to, time and again, and in which I'll be finding new things to talk about each time. I'll let you know what I have to say, when I have to say it, I suppose.

Back to The Avengers tomorrow. To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 955: Prophet - Earth War #5, July 2016

Hopefully I'm not jumping the gun by saying this, but I'm really glad that this reboot (and, I think, most of the reboots from around this time) avoided bringing Rob Liefeld in as a guest artist, simply by dint of the fact that he "created" these characters. He's just not a good artist, and his style would have been utterly utterly awful in this comic, in Glory, in Supreme. Now, having said that, I'm sure the next issue all Liefeld.

I know I said it yesterday, but I have no idea where this series is going. Obstacles have been overcome, allies are dying, and the enemy seems to have grown more powerful than our intrepid heroes can imagine. Are we heading for an unhappy ending? Will the Earth Empire, or Red Exmere and Multi-Muitox (those two up on the cover), triumph, putting down the free armies' rebellion once and for all? It's possible, and would actually be a really wonderful ending for this story, if only because it would be so unexpected. Superhero comics rarely end in the defeat of the hero. Go ahead. Someone prove me wrong.

After tomorrow's issue, it's going to be slightly jarring to move back into the melodrama of the 80s Avengers. But given that Prophet himself is seen as a thinly-veiled Captain America type, imagining the Prophet series as a possible future for Cap in the Avengers (Diehard as Iron Man, perhaps?) is actually kind of neat.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 954: Prophet - Earth War #4, May 2016

I'm starting to get a little concerned. There's only two issues left of the series and I just can't see how it's all going to wrap up. Though, admittedly, that's also a little exciting. I hate reading a story and knowing how it's going to turn out. Worse is reading a story and figuring out how it's going to turn out. I cannot figure out how all this is going to turn out.

There's some weird dimension-hopping in this issue that I can only assume is going to come back and bite the heroes in their collective butts, but in recognizing this, I'm starting to see the series in very different light. For a long while I'd seen it as the story of a man fighting, literally, against himself for the future of the universe. And that's still a major component of the series. But there's also a subplot that might actually be the main plot of an incursion into Prophet's dimension by an alien entity, one that is corrupted by its presence in our reality. Interestingly, this is quite similar to the story of Secret Wars that we've just finished tangentially reading in The Avengers. I find this a curious story to tell - what is it about our reality that corrupts something not from our reality?

And then, of course, I start thinking on a more Biblical level. Because, really, isn't the story of Jesus the story of a creature from another reality coming to our reality and getting corrupted? And before you point out to me that Christ doesn't actually get corrupted in his story in the Bible, I'd like to point out the corruption of his teachings that fuel much of our current strife in North America, if not around the world. Perhaps the big mythic story that superheroes are trying to tell, the one that Superman starts us out with, isn't about a strange visitor coming to save us, but rather about a strange visitor who could save us, if we weren't so fucking stupid.

Oh. I think I'm feeling a bit pessimistic today.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 953: Prophet - Earth War #3, April 2016

Unsurprisingly, things don't go particularly well for the would-be assassins that Old Man Prophet sends to cement his alliance with the Crystal Blessed.

You know, really, only when talking about comics can you say things like that.

This mini-series is not turning out like I imagined it would at all, and I'm so very glad. I really thought that it would be a full-on epic war comic, like the last big battle in the Lord of the Rings films, but what we're seeing instead is actually moments in between these battles. Since the end of the main series, Old Man Prophet and his allies have reached Earth and gathered together an army, though not one strong enough to defeat the Empire. Hints are dropped that there have been large-scale battles, but none of these have been depicted. Instead we're seeing the intrigues behind the war.

I shouldn't be surprised that the comic is doing things I wasn't expecting, really. It's basically done that all along, and had it descended into predictability, it wouldn't have been staying true to the ethos its demonstrated all along: make something weird, wonderful, and utterly different, and you'll make something great.

To be continued.