The year is 2015 and a team of time travelers has been trapped in this dangerous and primitive era in “Past Aways”, the latest series from the unique mind of Matt Kindt.
Written by Matt Kindt
Illustrated by Scott KolinsFrom the brain of MIND MGMT’s Matt Kindt! 2015: the distant past. A crash landing strands five deep-time explorers in a primitive world of internal-combustion engines and Internet 1.0 and tears a rift in space-time that spouts dinosaurs, giant robots, and other strange phenomena! Only the marooned “Past Aways” can defend the twenty-first century, unless the tensions of their unexpectedly prolonged mission tear them apart!
Comic book characters love to team up. Whether it’s to fight the latest intergalactic warlord that’s threatening Earth or just to change a light bulb in the team jet, they’ll seize just about any opportunity to get a bunch of peculiarly dressed people together on the same page. Team building gives the characters more personal obstacles to overcome, and a big happy moment when they see past their differences and permanently come together for the greater good. “Past Aways” is not a series where any of that happens. The teammates don’t like each other and don’t care about the rest of humanity. And it’s really entertaining to read.
The latest sci-fi opus from the team of Matt Kindt and Scott Kolins opens with a 2400-year old building being crushed by an alien dragon from the future. Or at least a miniature model of a 2400-year old building getting crushed by an alien dragon from the future. It’s the first in a series of humours fake-outs as we are introduced to the tag team of time travelers. An unfortunate accident has left them trapped in 2015, which for them is 1.2 MILLION YEARS in the past. They have now spent a year in the 21st century and they are not happy with this situation. To the point where the vast majority of their time is being spent trying to kill each other because, as the rules of time travel state, they can’t be killed when they’re stranded in the past.
It’s easy to understand their frustration. Just imagine how you would feel if you had spent the past year running from sabretooth tigers, with nary an iPhone or smartwatch around. While this seems like a pretty bleak set-up for a new series, Matt Kindt fills every page with his trademark twisted humor. Even as the aforementioned future alien dragon starts to melt people and two characters fight each other while standing over the precipice of a volcano, the tone never feels too serious or heavy handed.
Kindt made the interesting choice to start the series months after the accident that stranded the team in the past and, while there was short prologue in a recent issue of “Dark Horse Presents”, the backstory is only briefly touched upon in the text. Kindt devotes the majority of the dialogue to character development, while he uses information boxes, ostensibly from the team documentarian, to provide the exposition. Not that there’s much exposition to be had. Kindt doesn’t fill the page with unnecessary clutter, letting the character speak for themselves, and he resists the urge to make a bunch of lame pop culture-based jokes about 2015.
Kindt’s artwork in his other series, “Mind MGNT” has been critically acclaimed, so idea of him working on a creator-owned series with another artist might raise a few eyebrows with fans. Fortunately, Kindt has found a great artistic partner in Scott Kolins, who creates detailed and engaging images on each page. The story leapfrogs from character to character, giving Kolins ample opportunity to show off a little. There are scenes at ancient monuments, on top of volcanoes, underwater, in apartments, dive bars, and futuristic helicopters, just to name a few. Kolins makes all these disparate locals fit together perfectly, and none of them look rushed or out of place.
Kolins also plays a big role in keeping the level of humor in the book fairly high. Even his cover is in on the joke, where the team is portrayed in almost stereotypical superhero poses. Art, the team leader, almost jumps off the cover, with his perfect hair and shiny teeth, but his first appearance in the issue finds him sitting on the toilet looking as shaggy as Tom Hanks in the last half of Cast Away. Which, come to think of it, was probably on purpose.
Continued belowAs the introductory issue, Kolins does a great job give each character their own visually distinct look, and the reader should have no trouble telling them apart by the last page. These are a stoic bunch of characters, and Kolins avoids telegraphing what the characters are feeling with big facial expressions. His style is much more subtle, choosing instead to focus on the glimmer in Marge’s eye as she starts a fight, for example. The characters look bored most of the time, reinforcing how trapped they are, and Kolins uses smaller twitches and physical tells to make their few moments of contentment stand out even more.
As a first issue, “Past Aways” #1 does everything correctly. Matt Kindt introduces the entire cast of unique characters, establishes the parameters of the world and its unique time-travel rules. Scott Kolins doesn’t show any hint of growing pains, and creates page after page of detailed and energetic art. And on top of all that, it’s pretty funny. There is definitely a little bit of darkness at the core of this series, but it’s a testament to the skill of the creative team that they manage to prevent the readers from becoming as laconic as the characters. It’s easy to imagine what the super-serious version of this story would be, but this book avoids all those potential potholes of despair and creates something that feels different and engaging.
And did I mention there’s an alien dragon from future? You definitely want to see how that turns out.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – “Past Aways” #1 is a very successful first issue, as Matt Kindt and Scott Kolins collaborate to create an entertainingly irreverent story of bored time-travelers trapped here with us cavepeople.