It’s been a slow month for superhero news, thanks to the pandemic, and it’s been a slower time for anything comic book-related. Publishers have stopped publishing, stores are shuttered, and times are generally tough. But Deadline has one bit of fun news to offer some sort of hope in these dark days, and it should make anybody who grew up in the ’90s grim n’ gritty comic book world chuckle. Former Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim will be penning a big-screen adaptation of Rob Liefeld’s Prophet. This is some pretty fantastic news, honestly.
Here’s how Deadline summarizes the project:
“The aim is to build a franchise around John Prophet, a DNA enhanced super-soldier placed into a cryogenic freeze for a future mission only to awaken prematurely in the present, searching for a mission that does not exist. The ruthless berserker must find his humanity.”
Sounds pretty cool!
Hot take time: We’re Liefeld apologists, somewhat (god forbid a man has a style that both works for the era he’s penciling in and isn’t totally limited to the real in an art form concerned with men who have knives coming out of their hands fighting corrupt alien reality TV producers), and it’s pretty cool to see one of his non-Deadpool projects in development, at least. He’s spent so long being the butt of jokes in the comic community that people seemed to forget that the books he worked on were, oftentimes, pretty good. Hell, the guy co-founded Image Comics, which is the favorite comic book company of both your cooler-than-thou cousin and your bespectacled crush.
Still, we really, really hope that Guggenheim takes some inspiration from the iconic alternative artist and writer Brandon Graham’s reboot of the series, which hit shelves in 2012 and is perhaps one of the most metal comics be rack-ready since, well, Heavy Metal. It involved numerous artists, told wacky Frank Herbert and Robert E. Howard-styled epic sci-fi fantasy stories, and, as outlined in this Paste article, was one of the most interesting books of its era. Seriously, if you’re looking for something to do in these last weeks of isolation, we hope you’ll order some of the trades from your local comic book store: They could really use your help right now.