Obscure Comic of the Month is a column where I take a look at a comic or series that hasn't really been talked about. This covers independent comics, zines, weird spin-offs, webcomics and more.
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Prism Stalker: Volume One by Sloane Leong - Image Comics 2018
Contains Mild Spoilers
Most of the comics I tend to review here are independently published or from minor, lesser known names. Every now and again, however, I end up reviewing a comic from a major publisher. The kind of comic that, despite having the weight of a heavy publishing house behind it, never becomes known by the mainstream.
Prism Stalker is one such comic. The collected edition broke onto the scene in 2018, yet despite it's magnetically designed cover, embossed silver foil and all, and accolades from many big comic websites and writers, the series remained in obscurity. Indeed, when I picked it up off the shelf, I had never heard of it, assuming it to be an up-and coming-series that was brand new, not half a decade old.
The story itself follows the character of Vep, a human from a tribal planet that falls prey to ecological disaster. Rescued from catastrophe by a confederation of alien races, Vep is expected in return to serve her new masters as an indentured worker. A chance manifestation of psychokinetic power sees her admitted into a military academy, and trained to fight against a vague but ominous enemy.
If, from that brief description, you have an idea in your head of what Prism Stalker is going to be like then let me just stop you there and tell you that you are wrong. Leong is not interested in presenting us with a familiar sci-fi society like that of Star Trek or Mass Effect. The worlds and characters we are introduced to here are truly, in the exact definition of the word, alien.
Even before her journey begins, Vep is part of a universe fundamentally unrecognisable to our own. The various alien races she meets each have their own unique biological functions, ideas of morality and states of being. So too is the society she finds herself thrust in to. This is not a familiar place. There are no beds, there are no bathrooms, there are no bars or space TVs. Leong presents us with a place that has no feet in the world we know, and so like us, so to Vep, a strange and confusing one to navigate.
This is what makes Prism Stalker so wonderful and unexpected. On every page, around every corner, there is some new and out-there idea. Some weird kind of alien, some baffling but fascinating type of culture. Despite the difficulty of writing a coherent story with such a high concept, Leong seamlessly moves things along at a swift pace, while at the same time explaining even the most bizarre of ideas in a way the reader can understand.
If that wasn't enough, Leong also pulls artwork duties, rending each and every part of this strange alien world with psychedelic visuals. As with the writing, there is no interest here in depicting an easily recognisable world, yet each place and location still follows a logic that makes sense. We may not know exactly how everything works, but we trust it all has a purpose.
There is more to Prism Stalker than just the weird and wonderful. Leong was motivated partly by her own background to tell a story about indigenous culture and encroaching imperialism. Vep herself represents a person between two worlds. She is not accepted by the fellows of her own species because she never lived in that culture long enough to complete her coming of age, yet at the same time the alien species she has spent so much of her adult life alongside remain, well, alien.
The story itself brings up questions of freedom and servitude. Vep would indeed be dead if it were not for the intervention of the alien collective, yet upon being subsumed by it she is expected to give them absolute deference. Indeed, while Vep's induction into the academy grants her a greater degree of autonomy, she is also expected to commit to a greater degree of sacrifice, all in the name of a civilisation she has no love for to fight an enemy she has no real knowledge of.
Prism Stalker uses the sci-fi genre to put you in the mindset of a free man seeing the world enveloped by an empire. In Vep there is the Gaul being claimed by the Romans, the Native American being moved onto the reservation, the Aboriginal Australian being treated as a nuisance, and so many more. The aliens themselves are not evil in any real sense, indeed many of them are treated just as badly as Vep by their superiors, all victims of imperialism's blind march of progress.
Prism Stalker draws so many concepts from classic sci-fi, and remixes them into something more current, something more vital. It's a comic that makes us question how moral our own societies really are, and how many are being ground up under it's boot-heel and expected to be thankful.
Despite all this, Prism Stalker has yet to break into the mainstream. Yet, it is not too late, as a collected edition of it's second story arc is due to be released this very year. I hope this review at the very least encourages people to check it out, and I'd love to see the second volume become a bigger hit, and finally bring the series to the forefront.
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Jack Harvey 2023. Prism Stalker is (c) Sloane Leong. Images used under fair use.
