The Foundation (Graphic Novel)

The Foundation

Created by Kody Chamberlain

Written by John Rozum / Art by Chee

124 pages

Published by Boom! Studios (July 2008)

The Foundation is a global secret organization responsible for interpreting Nostradamus’ prophecies and then covertly working out their best to prevent the prophecies from taking place for real.

Steve Valentine was one of the organization’s best and most seasoned field agents, but he felt that the job had slowly destroyed his soul. He was planning to leave the organization soon.

On his most recent assignment, The Foundation was to prevent one man from boarding Flight 157, which had been destined to crash. Based on the interpretation of Nostradamus’ prophecy, Flight 157 will meet its doom on that certain day, but one man should be saved because he was destined to become a great man serving the society in the future. Steve and his team planned an incident that made the man missed his flight on the doomed plane.

Flight 157 was the final straw for Steve. He thought that if The Foundation had already known that the flight will end with a fatal crash with no survivors, then why did they not asked to prevent the whole accident from happening at all? Why select only one man to save when they could, probably, save everyone else on the flight?

***WARNING!!! SPOILERS BEYOND THIS LINE!!!***

Steve had also questioned the fact that Nostradamus’ prophecies were actually being interpreted by the Foundation’s Prophetic Enhancement Team, which can only be an educated guess. How could they be sure what Nostradamus was actually referring to? (Although they were, most of the time, correct on their interpretations).

After the Flight 157 incident, Steve confronted his superiors, Mr. Waters and Amanda, to inform them of his intention of leaving the organization. But they already had another mission for Steve to work on: there was an imminent threat on the water supplies of New York City. Terrorists are expected to contaminate the water supplies with poisonous chemicals and thus endangering the lives of thousands of people who sourced their water from that location. The Foundation was tasked to prevent the terrorists from acting on their plan. Mr. Waters promised that he will let Steve leave The Foundation after he completed this one last mission for the organization.

For this one mission, The Foundation had dispatched almost all of its field agents to help out. They camped nearby the water reservoir as well as other possible locations where the terrorists might dump the poison. Based on the organization’s intelligence, the terrorists will strike at around 4.00 p.m on that day. However, the time passed and nothing had happened at all. The field agents were beginning to get restless.

Calvin Thomas, a new field agent whom Steve had to train for the mission, managed to bring up the issue of why so many had been assigned for one mission. Thomas had also pointed out that there seemed to be ‘bad intel’ on the parts of The Foundation.

Before Steve had any time to ponder on the facts that Thomas had pointed out, the team of field agents were ambushed by unknown enemies and gunned down instantly. Only Steve managed to escape the deadly attack. He quickly phoned Amanda to tell her what he discovered based on (the now-dead) Thomas’ musings: Mr. Waters was behind this double-crossing attack on the organization! Waters had mislead the Prophetic Enhancement Team into interpreting the last prophecy according to his plan: from the very start, there had been no terrorist threat on the water reservoir at all.

As Steve revealed the news to Amanda, a bomb suddenly detonated inside The Foundation’s headquarters in Connecticut and damaged half of the building, killing some its staffs as well. Amanda quickly ordered surviving staff members to evacuate the building and later rendezvous in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, both Steve and Amanda are now hot on Mr. Waters’ heels. After he planted the bomb at The Foundation’s headquarters, Waters left for New York City to attend a charity concert in Madison Square Garden. Waters actually intended to cause harm on the Vice-President and the Secretary of Defense whom will be attending the concert. He already planted several time-bombs on location which will detonate when his targets arrived.

Steve arrived at the concert venue before the Vice-President and Secretary of Defense did. He confronted Mr. Waters, who revealed his intention of double-crossing The Foundation. Waters had also felt the same thing towards the organization as Steve did: working for The Foundation eventually rots the soul. Instead of just intending to leave the organization – like Steve did – Waters wanted to destroy the organization from its core. He planned the killing off of the organization’s field agents, and then he planned the attack on the Vice-President and Secretary of Defense in order to damage the organization’s reputation in the eyes of the government as well.

Now that Steve had found him, Mr. Waters wanted to kill Steve too. But before he managed to shoot Steve, Amanda arrived at the location and shot Waters dead on the spot. Steve and Amanda then shut down the bombs planted by Waters at the concert location. After the threat was neutralised, Steve left Amanda, telling her that he was done with The Foundation.