PROMETHEUS: FIRE AND STONE TPB
Writer: Paul Tobin
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
Cover Artist: David Palumbo
Genre: Action/Adventure, Horror, Science-Fiction
April 08, 2015
Format: FC, 104 pages; TPB, 7” x 10'
Price: $14.99
Age range: 14
“10 out of 10!”—Bloody Disgusting
When the Prometheus never returned from its 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 theoriginal mission, but possibly their own damnation. Collects the four-issue miniseries.
“A great start to this multi-series event.”—Unleash the Fanboy
“I'm really blown away by every aspect of this book.” —Bloody Disgusting
“Must reading for fans of the films, science fiction, or horror. Dark Horse is delivering the goods.” —SciFiPulse
Prometheus as a film was … frustrating. Visually stunning, sure, but it just came nowhere close to meeting expectations. It wasn't a write-off though, with enough residual interest to keep talks of a sequel alive, as well a comic book mini-series sequel-of-sorts that is part of a “Fire and Stone” crossover event, which includes the Predator and Aliens franchises. But I didn't read those, so let's stick with Prometheus and see where we end up.
More than a century after the confounding mission undertaken by the crew of the Prometheus, a salvage mission is called to recover the research vessel and anything else of value that was thought lost. Only that's actually just a cover for a covert operation to find the answers originally sought by Prometheus. And once they find the desert moon that plays home to the mystery is no longer a desert but a macabre jungle teeming with alien life, it doesn't take long for the crew members who've been left in the dark to realize they are up to their eyeballs in trouble.
Now, I wish I could tell you about which character was the most captivating, but I can't. The ensemble cast of Prometheus was not at all memorable outside of Michael Fassbender's android character, David. And that's pretty much how it shakes out with this graphic novel, with Elden the crew's android character stealing the show. Ulterior motives, rampant deception, unethical practices—oh, and xenomorphs. Yeah, there's a bunch of those making things difficult.
At least where the story begs me to give a damn about characters whose names I can barely recall by the time I've turned the page, the artwork is wonderful in capturing the desolation and the air of dread that comes from traversing this alien landscape with threats lurking quite literally just beyond every shadow. One scene showing a small horde of xenomorphs does one heckuva job at ramping up the tension when it's most needed.
While there are moments through the sporadic info dumping dialog that add a little clarity to certain aspects of the film, like the nature of the black goo, the peaks and valleys of the story feel like they run almost identical to the film. And by the end of the book I was left with an almost identical sense of frustration and exasperation, because things do not end on a satisfying note. Perhaps that's the nature of this being a crossover event, but I would have hoped this story would have had its own resolution, whether happy, sad, or soul-crushing. Instead, it feels like a lure to seek out the other books and hope for the best.
No thanks. A great story made good, by the looks of it.
