Abhay Khosla has a really interesting essay on Brandon Graham et al’s recreation of Prophet up at Savage Critics:
But so, PROPHET: space opera– guys with swords fighting it out in a conveniently monster-filled expanse of outer space, plus the requisite amount of used-bookstore paperback covers sexuality (e.g. the last issue featuring one of the he-man protagonists straddled by some kind of cross between a salamander and a girl from the Freek-A-Leek video).
I’d throw on the word biopunk– not 100% sure if I’m using that term correctly, though. By biopunk, I just mean to say it’s more interested in wet things than sleek hardware, organic slop more than the ergonomic, erotic plugs and silicon ports of a William Gibson novel (the Sharper Image future Marc Laidlaw satirized in Dad’s Nuke way back when, before he became the Half Life 2 guy). (Yay, obscure references to books I read in high school! I’m building to a Robert Aspirin Phule’s Company monologue).
PROPHET’s built more on clones, monsters, slime, muck, decay, body horror than tech. The engine of each issue so far has tended to be a manipulated clone struggling to survive a hostile, alien environment. Actual, purposeful antagonists have tended to be rare– the only one that springs to mind had motivations as inscrutable as its surroundings; simple survival’s made for enough drama.
I found earlier issues of the relaunch to be too dry SF for my tastes, but this essay makes me want to go back and see what I missed.
