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Prometheus: Fire And Stone TPB
Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: April 8th, 2015.
Written by: Paul Tobin
Illustrated by: Juan Ferreyra
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Written by Paul Tobin and illustrated by Juan Ferreyra, the first issue of Prometheus: Fire And Stone starts off with a quick text intro that tells us how Doctor Elizabeth Shaw found a star map to LV-223 that she took as a literal sign from God. When she and the crew of the Prometheus arrived to explore, they found that they we are not alone in this universe and that maybe God isn't such a nice guy after all. Shaw and an Android named David survived the ordeal and took off, hoping to find some answers unaware that what they left behind could turn into something far more horrifying than they could ever imagine.
Cut to the first page of the comic proper and it's April 4th, 2090 and a small drone type ship attempting to land on the surface of LV-223 is crushed under the heel of something that looks like a robot. Meanwhile, aboard a ship called the Helios, Clara Atkinson talks about their mission to document a landing on LV-223. She's to record the salvage mission along with Captain Angela Foster. These two, and a few others, have just awakened from two years in cryo and Foster has high hopes for the payout on this salvage mission. Also on board is a medical officer named James Weddel, an astro-biologist named Francis Lane and some constructs such as Eldon who have been taking care of things while the humans slept for the last two years. And then onboard the accompany warship, the Perses, are guys like Galgo, Piper and Higgins. These guys are soldiers and they've come out of cryo just in time for the landing. Angela heads back to her room to record a video log and confesses to the camera that while the salvage mission aspect of all of this is legit, there's more to it than that - she knows that in 2090 someone named Sir Peter Weyland sent a team to LV-223 looking for an alien race he called The Engineers and that four years later Weyland himself arrived on the planet and that contrary to popular belief, the man never left. She wants to finish his mission because she knows it has ties to the origins of mankind.
The crewmembers land and where they expected a wasteland they find a rainforest. They head in, looking for the salvage, and find more than they bargained for…
On the first page of the second issue, Foster and her team enter a compound on the moon. They assume it's empty but we can see what they cannot - a familiar reptilian tail with a very pointy end. The aliens and chest-bursters attack and the crew open fire but they're in bad shape. They retreat, Foster radioing Traynor to alert him to the situation and to request he help get them an EVAC unit. She wants the wounded taken to the Helios hospital as it's better equipped but given that some of the wounded have parasites on their faces, that's not going to happen. As the EVAC unit comes in closer, the pilot realizes there's nowhere to land just as the edge of the cliff the survivors are on starts to tumble. Making matters worse are some large 'fish' in the water beneath them, fish with very large teeth. The survivors make it back but there are dead and wounded to deal with and Francis and Elden split off from the main group during the attack and are still missing. Foster asks for volunteers to help her find them and then spills her guts about the real reason they are on this moon in the first place. An argument ensues but it's interrupted by Traynor who tells Foster that Francis and Elden have been found and they're not only alive, but they discovered a cave with relics from the previous expedition, relics that prove they are most certainly not alone and that provide clues as to how the barren moon became the jungle planet that it is.
Meanwhile, the expedition team out to rescue them from the cave comes across a crashed alien ship while Francis and Elden decide to look into the accelerant that they've discovered. Hordes of aliens are roaming the area and the human population is quickly dwindling. Francis, suffering from a terminal illness, decides he might be able to save his own life by filtering the newly discovered accelerant through Elden's biomechanical systems, all while Captain Angela Foster and what's left of her team try to find man and machine before it's too late.
As Angela closes in on the cave, we see that Francis' efforts to filter the accelerant through Elden's systems for his own gain have had a tremendous effect on the android: his skin is peeling off and he's not only more aggressive but he's somehow become much smarter as well - and he's not happy with Francis, not at all.
Back at the Helios, effectively operating as the crew's base of operations, seven aliens show up. Foster radios Angela who tells him to seal the ship and not let anything in until the threat has been taken care of. They oblige, and they also prepare for takeoff. Angela's search and rescue team find Francis and he tells them that Elden is trying to kill him and when he tells Angela why, she disciplines him for misconduct. They head back towards the Helios hoping that when they arrive, they can distract the aliens but when they arrive, the ship is covered in them. So Angela's team splits up, one group heading off to use the second ship, the Perses, to open fire and get the aliens off of the Helios so that the others can get inside. On their way to the Perses, however, they realize that Elden is still very much alive and still very upset about what Francis did to him…
Elden is running rampant, the Helios ship is overrun with those aliens, and Captain Angela Foster is trying to do whatever she can to get the survivors off of the planet to safety.
Right from the first page, Elden is basically in 'kill all the humans' mode and the aliens are, well, they're aliens so they kill anything that moves. Traynor is above the planet on the Helios while Foster calls in for him to send an EVAC. Some of the survivors try to outrun the aliens using their dune buggies, but not everyone is able to succeed in with that plan and they take refuge inside one of the abandoned shipwrecks.
Traynor attempts to bring in the EVAC are cut short, but we're not going to spoil how or why, and the dune buggy crew, with no other choice, head deeper into the strange alien ship only to find that it was used as some sort of laboratory and that the aliens aren't as hesitant to go inside as they first thought…
This ends the four issue Prometheus: Fire And Stone mini-series but what happens here builds and then continues into the other Fire And Stone four issue runs (Aliens, Predator and Aliens Vs. Predator) so while we do get a finale of sorts here it serves as less of a conclusion and more of a stepping stone into what will inevitably play out there. Tobin writes the characters well and comes up with some pretty creepy situations here, the kind that are complimented quite well by Juan Ferreyra's moody, atmospheric and nicely detailed artwork. These two work well together, future collaborations should definitely be a consideration. David Palumbo once again contributes a great painted cover.
So yeah, it's over, but it's not over, not by a long shot. The Prometheus run was very well done, let's hope (and it is a fairly safe assumption to make) that the other three series in the story match its level of quality in both writing and artwork. Included here (and not included in the four single issues) are a dozen or so pages of Juan Ferreyra's sketchbook material, which is interesting to see as it gives us some insight into his creative process and character design process.
