Story: Rob Liefeld
Script: Robert Napton
Penciler: Mark Pajarillo & Rob Liefeld, Pajarillo & Paul Scott (issue #2)
Inker: Norm Rapmund & Jonathan Sibal
Letterer: Kurt Hathaway
Colorist: Laura Penton & Andrew Troy
Enhancement: Drew
Separations: Extrem Color
Editors: Jeph Loeb & Eric Stephenson
Special Thanks: Bob Harras and Mark Powers
Firsts and Other Notables
Continuing the tradition of the earlier crossover between X-Force and Youngblood, this is another crossover involving a pair of Rob Liefeld creations from across different publishing companies. Unlike that series, which gave each company responsibility for producing an issue, each of these are put out by Liefeld's Maximum Press, the imprint he used for stuff that didn't fit the traditional Image brand (presumably Marvel licensed the use of Cable, Domino and Kang, making it unlikely these'll ever be reprinted/collected).
Prophet debuted in Youngblood #2, though Liefeld had originally created him for use in X-Force, to debut circa issues #6 or 7. But once Liefeld started making plans to jump ship for Image, he held back his original creations for stories there. Prophet is basically an EXTREME Captain America who has swords instead of a shield, a World War II era volunteer for a super soldier program who ends up getting put in stasis and waking up a man out of time (and in Prophet's case, a childlike sensibility).
Though Liefeld created the character and launched his first ongoing series, Prophet is a character more closely associated (at least by me) with artist Stephen Platt, who made Moon Knight a perennial ranker on Wizard's hottest comics lists back in the day before leaving for Image and ending up on Prophet with issue #5.
Liefeld pens an opening letter in issue #1, talking about the origins of Prophet. He also draws a few pages therein.
Prophet supporting character Kirby, who like Cable is a mutant from the future who takes a shine to Prophet (and is named for Jack Kirby), and villain Crypt, who, as an evil clone of Prophet, is basically Stryfe Redux, appear in this story as well.
On the Marvel side of things, Cable is joined by Domino, who basically gets slotted into a damsel-in-distress role, while the futuristic time traveling warlord Kang the Conqueror serves as Cable's antagonist.
Though cover dated January and March of 1997, issue #1 of this series was on sale in February of '97, the same time as comics cover dated April 1997, and issue #2 in April of '97, the same time as books cover dated June of '97.
Both issues of the series are labeled as #1 on the cover; the second issue is declared as such in the indicia.
A Work in Progress
I'm not sure how someone can train to protect themselves from a TK blast which is basically just getting shoved by someone's mind.
The MacGuffin that the villains are after is the Cosmic Cube, though of all the various cosmic powered MacGuffins out there, that's never been one Kang has been particularly interested in before.
Most of the "plot" and resolution of this two-parter is predicated on an entirely untold (and, as far as I know, never referenced again) past encounter between Kang and Cable in which Cable stashed a Cosmic Cube at the End of Time, and then at some later date, learned that if Kang retrieved it, he'd be sucked into the cube.
The Grim 'n' Gritty 90s
Prophet's full name is Jonathan Taylor Prophet, suggesting he missed a calling as a teen heartthrob.
Austin's Analysis
These are not good comics. That said, there is something almost admirable about how unabashedly straightforward they are in terms of being exactly what they say they are on the tin. You want some mindless action featuring Cable and Prophet spouting generic action movie dialogue with a pair of cackling villains drawn from each hero's universe, drawn by Rob Liefeld imitators (and the Rob himself, briefly)? Then that's exactly what you're going to get in these two issues.
Now, it's hard to imagine there's many people looking to scratch that particular itch now, or even in 1997, when the "Heroes Reborn" experiment had already proven a failure (at least in terms of getting regular Lee & Liefeld art on Marvel books again). But it definitely would have been like printing money a few years before that, when Image was young and its new characters hot and the memory of Liefeld on X-Force less distant. That lends this two-parter another air of indirect charm, a sort of nostalgia for simpler times when the industry was booming and Liefeld and his fellow Image founders were both central architects and beneficiaries of that boom. To be clear, Liefeld has his fans — then and now — who surely unironically enjoyed this plenty. But even in 1997, the comics industry was already in a much different place relative to his heyday, which makes this story look and read like it was delivered via time warp directly from 1992.
Also to be clear, nothing about this story is required reading, for fans of Cable or as a part of the ongoing X-Men narrative. Without knowing too much about him outside this story, I suspect that's true of any fans of Prophet out there. If you haven't read this, I by no means suggest you should seek it out to do so. But that said, I also can't help but smile at how unabashedly true to itself this story is, not in spite of the craft involved but because of it.
Next Issue
The MLF and Dani Moonstar return in X-Force #67!
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I had no idea that was Prophet’s backstory. I thought Prophet was simply Liefield redoing Cable again. The only Prophet I have read is the revamp of the character by Brandon Graham and Simon Roy, where they turn Prophet into an homage to Druillet's Lone Sloane. A series which is definitely what Marvel should have done with the character of Cable around that time, when no one wanted to read a Cable comic any longer.
ReplyDeleteSo, there were elements of Cable in Liefield’s Prophet, only not the character of Prophet.
Enough (arguably more than enough) has already been said about Leifeld's art and the art of his imitators, so I'll leave that alone. What really gets me about Leifeld-written comics is how so little actually happens in them. The entire two-issue supposedly-epic miniseries was summarized in 200 words. Bendis' infamous decompressed storytelling style ain't got shit on those early Image guys' ability to stretch out a single plot point over an entire issue via splash pages and training sequences.
ReplyDelete