Prophet #24

History

The 2012 Prophet revival was announced at the 2011 New York Comic Con as part of Image's resurrection of Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios line, with Brandon Graham taking the writing reins and the series continuing the numbering of the previous volume, launching at #21. Graham conceived a four-artist rotation — Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, Giannis Milonogiannis, and Graham himself — with each artist permanently attached to a different Prophet clone so that the art style itself carried narrative meaning; Dalrymple's first assignment in that system began with issue #24. The series' practice of running unrelated sci-fi backup shorts starting with issue #22 was a direct editorial precursor to Graham's later anthology magazine Island, making Prophet's backmatter historically significant beyond the main story.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published April 18, 2012 by Image Comics (Diamond order code FEB120516); 30 pages, full color.
• Written by Brandon Graham and Farel Dalrymple; interior art by Farel Dalrymple — his debut on the Prophet revival series.
• Cover by Giannis Milonogiannis (per Previews World and MyComicShop solicitation data).
• This issue marks the first appearance and first sustained focus on the 'tailed Prophet' clone — the specific clone variant Farel Dalrymple was assigned to draw for the duration of the run.
• Main story: a Prophet clone must cross the continent-sized corpse of the starship 'Sleepingman' on a mission to rescue a crashed creature while surviving deadly radiation and a trapped, strangely familiar entity.
• Backup story 'Shock Post' by writer Matt Sheean and artist Malachi Ward — part of the ongoing anthology-style sci-fi shorts that ran in each issue starting with #22, which one contemporary critic described as the most culturally pointed of the series' backup features to that point.
• The issue is collected in Prophet, Vol. 1: Remission (Image Comics, September 2012), which gathers issues #21–26 and was named one of Amazon's five best graphic novels of 2012.
• Brandon Graham's design philosophy for the rotating artists — articulated publicly to Newsarama — held that Dalrymple would draw all tailed-Prophet issues, Giannis Milonogiannis would draw Old Man Prophet, and Simon Roy would return to his original Prophet; #24 is the first issue to put that plan fully into motion.

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