The Phanes (2017)
Artwork by Rory Donald
Lettered by Robin Jones
Written by James E. Roche
The Phanes, a Noah’s Arc-like spaceship, flees a dying planet with its small crew in search of a new home. After an asteroid shower damages the ships cryo-chamber, a sole astronaut is forced to remain awake for The Phanes’ entire four-year journey. After witnessing the destruction of his planet, he is forced to deal with the overwhelming solitude of being the only waking human in the universe. In the end, he must make a split-second decision to sacrifice himself for his species, getting The Phanes to its final destination.
In ancient Greece, Phanes was the deity of procreation; the generation of new life. I saw it fitting to make this the name of the ship which carried mankind’s last hope; one with the goal of seeding a new planet. The idea of panspermia (planets being seeded by microorganisms traveling on meteoroids) has always interested me, and I wanted to play on that idea and twist it to create an “origin-story” for Earth as we know it.
