Faces of Evil: Prometheus Review
I remember when this evil character was introduced, back in Grant Morrison’s excellent Justice League of America run that re-vamped DC Comics’ legendary heroes just over a decade ago. The second DC character to use that name, Prometheus was touted as the anti-Batman during his debut, due to his mad fighting skills, ruthless attitude and tactical mind. He was a great bad guy and almost took down the JLA single handedly by effectively downloading his opponents weaknesses into his brain. He was handled very well by Morrison, and then not so well by a few other writers. However this new one-shot explains why. Apparently Prometheus’ regular beatings more recently are due to the fact that it wasn’t the real deal. Rather, when the Justice Leaguer Martian Manhunter last defeated him he also temporarily imprisoned his mind. making him a vegetable in a lunatic asylum and a drooling shadow of his former self. The man who has been running around in his costume for the last two years was a weaker impostor. Now that Martian Manhunter has been killed, the real Prometheus is free.
I really enjoyed this issue. It’s part of this month’s Faces of Evil series that spotlights villains in the DC Comics Universe. Writer Sterling Gates (Supergril) and newbie artist Federicho Dallocchio do some great work here. Perfect for new readers, or those who have been away from the DCU for a while, it explains Prometheus’ origin very well (son of a criminal couple gunned down by cops, who travels the world training and acquires a supernatural key from a Tibetan monk, and vast sums of money from his parent’s thefts) it also looks gritty, with very Jae Lee (Stephen King’s The Stand)-like artwork. Prometheus is truly menacing once more, and when he meets the pretender to his identity, plus C-list heroes Gunfire, Anima and Argus, you just know a brutal smackdown is on its way. Even the retconning makes perfect sense. I was more impressed with this issue than I expected, and am glad the DCU has another villain on the way to a grand re-entrance. Click below to see some of the great art from this issue.
Extra Sequential Podcast 