Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Dark Horse (2003), Paperback
Description
Lo! A mighty prophet of the unexplained has come forward to search out the truth and light the way for mankind! It's the end of the 19th century and the city of New York has been plagued by fish falling from the sky, strange lights in the night, bizzare collections of microbial goo, and vanishing citizens! It's up to one man to expose the truth behind these events... Charles Fort! A mild mannered librarian by day, Fort seeks out the truth and exposes the bizarre to the light of day!
User reviews
LibraryThing member uvula_fr_b4
A four-issue comic book mini-series collected between the covers of a slim trade paperback, Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained is a lackluster, uninspired attempt to recast noted eccentric and collector of accounts of unexplained, scientifically improbable events, Charles Hoy Fort, as an action hero
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in a Hollywood-style FX extravaganza. Though the black and white art, by Frazer Irving, has certain virtues and is, in some places, atmospheric, the action sequences veer into unintelligibility: not necessarily a fault for a first person narrative, but a nearly a fatal error in a comic book (and a cop-out for an action movie, as opposed to a horror movie). Peter M. Lenkov's script is a far cry from the likes of Alan Moore, or even of Caleb Carr's The Alienist (a horror-mystery set in NYC of the 1890s, with Theodore Roosevelt serving as the police commissioner); Theodore Roosevelt shows up as the governor of New York, as does an ahistorical street urchin named H.P. Lovecraft (whom Fort calls "H.P."), while a handful of other luminaries -- John D. Rockefeller among them -- make fleeting, one-panel appearances. I'm not sure if Lenkov intentionally had some Christmas carolers sing "Troll the ancient Yuletide carol" instead of "Toll the ancient Yuletide carol;" if it was an attempt at comic relief, it failed. If you've any liking for Fort or "forteana," you're better off picking up one of Fort's books, or those of his numerous successors (such as Jerome Clark's Unexplained!) than this ill-advised mini-series, which has about as much relation to Fort as the Men in Black movies do to the urban legends of same common to the darker corners of ufology. Show Less
Language
Physical description
96 p.; 8.9 inches
ISBN
1569717818 / 9781569717813