Promethea

Promethea
Promethea Volume 1 TPB, copyright DC Comics
Publication information
Publisher	America's Best Comics
Format	Ongoing series
Publication date	August 1999 – April 2005
Number of issues	32
Main character(s)	Sophie Bangs Promethea
Creative team
Writer(s)	Alan Moore
Artist(s)	J. H. Williams III Mick Gray
Letterer(s)	Todd Klein
Collected editions
Volume 1 HC

Promethea is a comic book series created by Alan Moore, J. H. Williams III and Mick Gray, published by America's Best Comics/WildStorm.

It tells the story of Sophie Bangs, a college student from an alternate futuristic New York City in 1999, who embodies the powerful entity known as Promethea whose task it is to bring the Apocalypse.

Originally published as 32 issues from 1999 to 2005, the series has been re-published into five graphic novels and one hard-back issue. Moore weaves in elements of magic and mysticism along with superhero mythology and action, spirituality and the afterlife (in particular the Tree of Life) and science-fiction. Promethea includes wide-ranging experimentation with visual styles and art.

In the 5th century AD, a Christian mob threatens the home of a magician in Hellenistic Egypt. He tells his daughter Promethea to flee into the desert, hoping the gods of the ancient world will preserve her. The story shifts to New York City in the late 20th century. Sophie Bangs is hoping to interview a woman named Barbara Shelley for a college paper on "Promethea", a character who seems to recur in literature and pop culture through the centuries. Shelley is hostile to her and warns, "You don't wanna go looking for folklore. And you especially don't want folklore to come looking for you." After departing, Sophie is tracked and attacked by a creature known as a Smee. Just as things look bleakest for Sophie, she is rescued by Barbara, who has mystical powers and is now dressed as Promethea. She informs Sophie that the only reason she would be attacked is if someone suspects she will become the next vessel for Promethea (Barbara is the current). It turns out that Promethea is called to the world when someone uses their imagination to make her real. As they hide from the pursuing Smee, the weakened and fatally injured Barbara instructs Sophie to write a poem about Promethea hoping Sophie is indeed the successor and the creative expression is a way to get Sophie in the correct state of mind to allow herself to become Promethea. Barbara's idea works and from that night Sophie, having defeated the Smee, becomes the next Promethea.