Take a trip back to LV-223 and see if any questions get answered this time, in “Prometheus: Fire and Stone” #1.
Written by Paul Tobin
Illustrated by Juan FerreyraWhen the Prometheus never returned from her fateful journey to LV-223, the questions surrounding the origins of man went unanswered. Now a new team of explorers seeks to uncover the dark mystery that holds not only the fate of the original mission, but possibly their own damnation.
Only two years after its release, Prometheus already has been regulated to the category of noble failure. There was a massive amount of hype as director Ridley Scott returned to the Alien franchise he began over three decades ago, with promises of giving an origin to everyones favorite slimy xenomorph. The finished product featured beautiful visuals, the amazing Michael Fassbender, a bunch of questions with no answers, and characters capable of running only in a straight line. The film was met with a resounding meh, and although a sequel is in the works, no one is that excited for it. Not to let a franchise go dormant, Dark Horse is launching “Prometheus: Fire and Stone”, a miniseries set between the beloved Alien and its less successful prequel, as part of a new brand of Aliens and Predator comics.
Set 130 years after The Girl With The Alien Chestburster and Magneto took on giant pale dudes, a new team has made the long trip to the Zeta Reticuli system. The group of scientists and soldiers prepare to explore new worlds and immediately strip mine them for resources. While everyone else on board can’t wait to land and start digging holes, the captain has a secret objective: to discover the fate of the first expedition, who have been missing for over a century. And things go bad and Aliens show up, but you knew that was going to happen.
Paul Tobin is best known for a diverse range of works at Marvel, Dark Horse and other publishers, and recently penned the “Adventure Time” comic book. The transition from Cartoon Network to Alien might seem a little strange, but from page one Tobin is sure to make it feel like a very hard science fiction story. The space navigation jargon does help set the atmosphere, if it is a bit over the top. This is the setup issue, and having crewmember Clara film the crew is a speedy way to introduce the whole cast and disguise the flagrant exposition; The Real World: LV-223 is going to be great. Tobin does enough to the main characters to offer distinct personalities, which is impressive considering they get no more than a couple panels.
The problems begin about a third of the way through the issue, when Clare and camera disappear and are replaced by Captain Angela, the expedition’s leader, who reveals her ulterior motives in an almost fourth wall breaking monologue. The switch in POV is really quite jarring, and throws off the flow of the issue. Soon the story becomes more of an assemble piece as the group explores the moon’s surface, and the perspective drifts from character to character. Perhaps it was intended to subvert audience expectations, as the Alien and Prometheus films both featured strong female characters as the central point of view, but it just comes across as kind of clunky.
Juan Ferreyra bravely takes on the task of recreating the distinct visual style of the Ridley Scott Alien films. The bulky, ungraceful appearance of the ship fits nicely into the future-realism style of the film. These aren’t the sleek starships of the Star Trek universe, and Ferreya gives them the appearance of mismatched pieces of other ships, fitting the scavenger role of the crew. The insides backgrounds are more inspired by Prometheus, with white rooms and relatively new appearances. It’s different than the rusted, held-together-by-duct-tape ship that Sigourney Weaver ran around on, but it’s not quite the germ-less rooms of the Enterprise. Ferreyra does fill the back grounds with details to flesh out the world, such as a cargo hold filled with Weyland-Yutani containers, and there’s even a Michael Fassbender cameo if you look hard enough.
Continued belowOnce the crew lands on the moon and stumbles into an unexpected jungle, Ferreyra gets a chance to show off even more of his background skills as he creates a dense layer of foliage. He style is made up of much softer lines, with little visible ink. The delicate touch makes the jungle blend together, making it look even more mysterious and ominous. Once the small alien creatures emerge (to which the crew seem to have an unnaturally blasé attitude towards), Ferreyra strikes that classic Alien balance between beautiful and deadly. The space monkey thing is downright cute, before its enormous jaws unhinge.
The problem with the art in this issue is the people. While Ferreyra’s soft touch goes well with a scary jungle, when applied to the characters the results are decidedly mixed. Depending on how close the characters are to the foreground of the panel, they can be incredibly blurry. Even when it is a close-up, they still appear a bit fuzzy. The lack of hard lines means that facial appearances can be ill-defined, and vary from panel to panel. And when characters move into the background, their eyes completely disappear. It makes it difficult to get a real handle on the cast of characters when they can look different from page to page.
“Prometheus: Fire and Stone” #1 is not a terrible comic, and it’s not a great comic either. The basic premises fits nicely into the familiar Alien mold: misfit crews investigate moon, mysterious creatures emerge, ulterior motives are revealed, and xenomorphs pop up. The problem is that the shift in POV, exposition driven dialogue, and softly lined art make it difficult to get a grasp on the characters. But let’s be honest: no one is going to buy this book because they want complex and multilayered space marines. What they want is more xenomorph action, and this book seems poised to deliver.
Final Verdict: 6.5 – Not terrible and not great. But there are seven movies featuring the titular Alien, and this story is already on more solid ground than four of them.
