I recently had the chance to preview the first issue of Prometheus, an indy comic from writer Ryan Little, with pages provided by Chris Sheha and Yuan Cakra. This is intended to be a 5 issue limited run, which you can sign up for via their Kickstarter here:
Just a little bit of Wikipedia-style disambiguation here: this is not to be confused with the villain from DC Comics and the Arrow TV show, also called Prometheus. This is a continuation of the story of the original character of Greek legend, who stole fire from Mount Olympus to give it to mankind. We find our hero having just escaped imprisonment for this transgression, and wandering into our modern world. This first issue concentrates largely on Prometheus orienting himself with this new environment, before going to call on some old friends to begin a revenge journey the writer promises will put us in mind of John Wick.
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| If you're going to draw parallels with John Wick, there's one very important change to be made. Nailed it. |
It's not difficult to draw some parallels with American Gods in the basic idea and premise of this book, but to do so would not be unkind, and this comic, so far, seems to be able to stand on its own in the lengthy catalogue of mythology-inspired comics. The story is straighforward and is well set up by the end of this first issue. My one quibble would be the convenience of him running onto a Greek man who knows who he is so soon after escaping captivity, but if you can get past that it compresses the inital setting of the scene considerably, and means more pages can be devoted to more interesting stuff.
The artwork is approriately gritty, and the colouring is bleak in a way that suits the story and at times reminded me of a John Carpenter movie (One of the good ones. Not Ghosts of Mars. We don't talk about Ghosts of Mars.) Flicking through it felt very much like the current run of The Punisher drawn by Kris Anka, which is not a bad parallel for this book to be able to draw on. It avoids my pet peeve of throwing too much dialogue at the reader, and the art is drawn with the intention of letting you inside Prometheus' head, which it does extremely well.
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| What? He's been in prison for 5,000 years wearing the same clothes, where would YOU head first? |
I really enjoyed this first issue, and would check out issue 2 off the back of this one. Sometimes the problem with picking up indy comics for a lot of readers is that they are already spending money every week on comics that are interconnected with each other, but a limited run with a contained story like this can easily be added to your pulls without much commitment. If you're largely a Marvel and/or DC reader but want to explore the wider comic world, books like this offer a good place to start.
Lots of potential here, and I hope it gets the traction it deserves.
3.5 / 5
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