Note: this is the second part of my ongoing study of Prophet (2012 - 2014, Image Comics). For the first part, discussing the creative process behind the comic, please click here. For the sake of disambiguation, I will henceforth be referring to the different cloned John Prophets as “Johns” and use Prophet in reference to the comic itself.

Having previously discussed the material circumstances behind the creation of Prophet, our focus must now shift to the story itself. Like any good science fiction, Prophet takes its exciting imagery of deep space, technology, aliens and the people of the future and puts them to work in teaching us and speculating about ourselves. While Prophet often utilises the structure of an episodic adventure comic, this is no mere pulp adventure serial we’re talking about here. There are many underlying themes at work in the comic but, in my interpretation, the most immediate and important are its stance against fascism and its use of post-human and alien species to investigate the nature of humanity; this essay/article/blog post/thing is my attempt to look at the former, with the latter to follow in a later piece.

Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Benito Mussolini

There are many varying definitions of fascism - with variances often depending on the political affiliations, sympathies and distastes of those who seek to define it (i.e. capitalists may see it as anti-capitalist, Marxists may see it as the an extreme method of governance in defence of capital by the bourgeoisie) - but there are some clear principles by which a fascist state can be identified. Militarism, totalitarianism, xenophobia and racism, anti-intellectualism, elitist hierarchical society, rejection of democracy, a disregard for the value of the individual, an emphasis on ‘heroic’ leader figures and a sanctification of the state over the lives of its populace… disregarding any ideological or propagandistic justifications the fascists may use for themselves, all of these characteristics typify a fascist state and are shared by the Earth Empire we see in Prophet.



As revealed in the supplementary issue Strike-File #1, the Earth Empire, in spite of its surface appearance as a monstrous post-human construct, originates from a depressingly recognisable social organisation. A decadent, wealthy ruling elite consolidates it’s power over Earth and, unable to sustain their rapidly resource consuming economy without sufficient growth, uses slave labour and cloned soldiers (the proto-Johns) to expand outwards into the stars - conquering worlds, subjugating alien races, sending wealth, labour and resources home to the imperial centre as they expand ever outwards.



The collapse of the ruling class and subsequent dominion of the Johns over the Earth which bred them as slave soldiers is not their liberation. The logic of rapacious imperialism continues and the means of imperial expansion, it’s soldiers and their overseers, have returned to the centre to rule and occupy all levels of social strata; unable to imagine another way of being they simply continue the social structure which created them. From issue #23 onward, with the Earth Empire returned to the galaxy, we see a critique of fascism and empire implicit in its policies and in the missions of its Johns: stripped of the need for propaganda, no longer a means to enrich its former masters and devoid of art, philosophy and history, the Earth Empire is imperialism’s naked form laid bare; a totalitarian system existing only to further its own existence through continual warfare and expansion, a state populated entirely by beings whose lives are wholly defined by their service to the state. This Earth Empire is the consequence of a systems of power self-perpetuating to the point of replacing those who initially established the system, so all that exists is the use-functions of imperialism; an endless cycle of resource consumption, John production and military expansion.



What sets the Earth Empire apart from any historical dictatorship is in its comprehensive extension of totalitarianism to the biology of humankind.



The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.

B. Mussolini (again, urgh, but I think the quotes are useful)

Humans are no longer born but ‘birthed’ from an industrial scale cloning process; the only genetic variations permitted by the Empire are those which in some way aid the Empire’s purposes. The genes of those humans whose talents and psychology were unsuited to the perpetual warfare and aggressive galactic colonisation demanded by the Empire have been consigned to history. Johns are grown to suit different environments and different kinds of mission, some as extreme as the vacuum as space or semi-aquatic worlds like John-with-tail, and others for specific roles like leadership or scouting like John Ka. John Greenknife is bred to be a “pleasure caste” Parabalani John, destined to live a life of servitude to his more rugged soldierly brethren, while the Empire’s brain mothers are bred to act as overseers and enforcers with sufficient psychic power to control their Johns and crush any potential uprising or resistance. Thus in the Earth Empire we see a state that, through methods of mind control and sophisticated cloning, defines the entire lives of its people and a people whose entire lives are (supposedly) lived in service of that state.

While some post-human tribes have escaped the Empire’s reach and developed along their own path (most notably the all-female Babel-Horolegion and the children of Badrock), surely this is about as grim a picture of humanity’s future as one could possibly conceive? And yet, as strange as it may sound, I see Prophet as being rather optimistic in its response to totalitarianism.



Throughout the series, while we do see plenty of Johns fighting unquestioningly for the Empire that owns them, we see a great many examples of resistance and subversion against its totalitarian control. In some cases, like Old Man Prophet and his crew, the resistance is in an open conflict with the Empire but in others the resistance takes more subtle forms. The humanity of the Johns within the Empire can be seen to reassert itself on numerous occasions; in issue #25, for example, we see a group of Johns light a funeral pyre for their dead brother against the wishes of their assigned Mother who wanted them to cannibalise his remains, insisting - quite probably lying - that “his meat was tainted” by the weapon which killed him. A small victory against the totality of the Empire’s ownership of their bodies, born from the affection and respect felt by the Johns for the fallen brother. Similarly in issue #32, Simon Roy depicts John Ka’s encounter with a rogue John and his Neanderthal-like post-human tribe; we see Ka’s realisation that she has more in common with the primitives than her masters and. Ka’s subsequent decision to question the Mother’s orders and warn the tribe about the orbital bombardment by the Empire is, in the grand scheme, only a minor act of resistance before Ka returns to service in the Empire but it ensures the Empire’s grip over humanity is less total than it desires. The assertion of individuality by many of the Johns, such as Ka’s feminine self-identification, and the way that many, such as Greenknife, grow beyond their Empire-intended purpose are also acts of resistance against a system that seeks to own, use, control and ultimately consume them whole.



Old Man Prophet, John-with-tail and Newfather John, their comrades and indeed any John who manages to escape the psychic clutches of the mothers, suggest humanity’s innate capacity to defeat totalitarian control. Old Man Prophet’s historical defeat of the Empire utilising superior ingenuity and an alliance cobbled together from free Johns and the many alien species enslaved by the Empire is an explicit demonstration of this capacity to resist, out-think and defeat the brutality and limited imagination of totalitarian states.

As shown by John-with-tail exploits in the Ixtano Circus (issue #29), the Empire brain-mothers and the creeping galactic menace of the Red Pain (an all-consuming wave of psychic subjugation driven by a single organism) the ultimate horror in the pages of Prophet is the prospect of inescapable mind control. The loss of individuality, of self-hood, and the subsequent re-purposing of your body to a more powerful entity’s whims and objectives is a recurring motif which must be resisted at all costs; indeed death is universally recognised by all characters in Prophet who are given the opportunity to resist mind control as being preferable to submission.

What makes the Red Pain even more horrifying than the Earth Empire and the mind control seen in Ixtano Circus is the totality of its consumption of living beings and the seeming impossibility of resistance. Even the Johns who are fully immersed in the fascist logic of the Earth Empire find room for some degree of individual personality, for fraternity and for the pleasures and sensations of the body. The Red Pain makes empty carrier vessels of nearly all life it touches; throwing the surviving humanity in the servants of the Empire and Old Man Prophet’s freedom fighters into sharp relief. The Red Pain reveals to us the logical end-point of the Earth Empire’s desire to conquer biology and the minds of its subjects, further demonstrating through extreme example us how totalitarian control wishes to dehumanise humanity in order to make better servants of the state.

Another recurring motif in the course of Newfather John and Old Man Prophet’s narratives is the quiet moments between conflicts and adventures. We frequently see these men and their comrades sharing old stories, food or a drink of “firewater”, questions shared about the universe they inhabit, and shared moments of laughter, tenderness and love. Moments like Hiyonhoiagn enquiring about the mating habits of nearby worlds, Rein-East trying to hide a “biological mass” left in a hallway, Diehard playing music remembered from his past, Old Man Prophet’s pain at recalling his long-deceased lover Yilala, Newfather John and John Greenknife’s shared passions; it is here, in contrast to the mechanical, inhumane duties required of the Johns and the enslaved species by the Earth Empire, that we see true humanity (even when the characters aren’t human).



Throughout the course of Prophet, in light of the above - the oppressive horror of the Earth Empire set against the repeatedly echoed moments of heroic striving and simple human pleasures - one sentiment rings out loudly, to me, above all else:

The strength and ingenuity of one’s own mind, the compassion we are capable of feeling for others, the solidarity we can share, our capacity for love, our sense of loss when our comrades fall, and the sensations of our hungry, sweaty, sexy, diverse, broken and brilliant bodies; therein exists our humanity and our capacity for resistance against the forces which seek to dehumanise, control and reduce to mere machines in service of an abstract cause or institution. Be yourself, among friends and everything might just work out okay.

Hopefully this piece makes sense and isn't too disjointed a read. It may be that my reading of Prophet is misplaced but I hope my limitations and weaknesses as a writer and critic don’t stand in the way of you enjoying this excellent comic.

Next time on Preaching Prophet, a close reading of issue #37 by Giannis Milonogiannis.

Anyway, fuck fascism. Take it away, Charlie…