Hard to follow the action since the artwork is b&w without any color. ( )

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 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. ( )