John Layman, most recently of the highly decorated “Chew” and “Farmhand” fame, launches a new series on Aftershock with artist Karl Mostert and veteran colorist Dee Cunniffe. It looks great even if it tastes like something we’ve had before.
Written by John LaymanCover by Karl Mostert
Illustrated by Karl Mostert
Colored by Dee Cunniffe
Lettered by John LaymanSean Bennett is just your everyday, ordinary lab worker in a high-tech lab with a proto-type time machine. And, yeah, he’s got the same temptations any of us would have about going back in time, just a bit, to correct mistakes of the past and right old wrongs. So, when he meets a version of himself from the future who encourages him to do just that, Sean takes the temporal plunge. Only…can you guess what happens next? Did you read the book title? Yup. All of TIME is f#%&ed up now, and it’s up to Sean to correct it–or else!
Time travel stories can be a mixed bag. On one hand, there’s a sameness to the proceedings, and that sameness can sometimes beget indifference on the part of the reader. Someone is either moving backward in time to right a wrong or for personal gain or forward in time, creating fish-out-of-water scenarios and comedic beats. The butterfly effect is almost always in play and often leads to a kind of time traveling prime directive not to disturb anything for fear of irreparably changing the very fabric of one’s current reality. There’s also the pretzel-like construct that fans of “The Flash” or “The Terminator” are probably used to wrapping their heads around where time itself is shifting sand, forever malleable, imperfectly traversable, and uncontrollable by all but the most skilled time travelers. On the other hand, time traveling is fertile ground for the wild narratives and alternate reality imaginings that veteran creators seem incapable of avoiding completely over the course of their careers. It’s too tempting, really. The question of what if? is like a tractor beam. “The Man Who Effed Up Time” doesn’t shy away from any of these tropes, and it feeds off of our collective familiarity with the rules of time travel (Avengers: Endgame notwithstanding). While Layman does spoon feed the uninitiated with a primer of sorts and leans hard into the hard luck protagonist Sean Bennett’s motivations and justifications for taking his past in his own hands, again, the premier issue’s strength is in the inventiveness of the aforementioned and unavoidable alternate reality. We won’t spoil those here because it’s in them that lies the worth of the price of admission into this sure to be wild series.
Karl Mostert’s linework in this first issue is a feast for the eyes. His relatively short list of previous credits belies his assured and elegant thin-lined approach that will remind readers of other contemporary European comic book masters like Frank Quitely. While there’s an element of verisimilitude, Mostert also has a cartoonist’s flair for stylization and an animator’s deftness at conveying movement. Dee Cunniffe’s vivid colors complete the package, favoring high chroma over murkiness and signaling a story (undergirded by Layman’s tongue-in-cheek script) that, while littered with peril, will not be without a generally lighthearted tone. That’s if a story that features the threat of infanticide to be lighthearted. Layman’s cultivated style is on full display in the issue’s scripting. It’s witty without being a mile-a-minute jokefest. In fact, much of the dialogue is played straight, and the almost deadpan humor is confined to Bennett’s narration boxes. The dichotomy between the two script streams provides nice comedic tension.
If the book has a narrative failing it’s not in the way it plays fast and loose with science or the suspension of disbelief required to buy into the premise. Rather it’s in the heavy-handed way that the protagonist’s circumstances for considering time travel play out in this issue. At this point at least, Bennett is not a sympathetic character even though Layman tries to pile on the series of unfortunate events and injustices he’s suffered in his young life. We’re asked to believe he’s a smart character and that he is underemployed and deserves better, but his acumen seems to be on par with what anyone could divine from watching Back to the Future. Layman certainly generates some empathy because who wouldn’t jump at the chance to change their quality of life with a little time hopping? It’s certainly not an altruistic angle to take, but it’s a relatable one. As with most quick fixes, this one seems destined to get much worse before it gets better.
This extra-sized premiere issue features some fun back matter, including an amended Wikipedia-style entry on a historic event as well as some other clever endnote material. While the read is quick and easy, readers won’t feel cheated if they take a chance on this new series. It’s certainly not reinventing the wheel when it comes to time traveling sagas, but it’ll be interesting to see how Layman is able to build on the drama he creates in the book’s final pages after he dispenses with the familiar and well-worn concepts. If we had to guess, some of the story’s uniqueness, the real hook as it were, comes not from a concerted attempt to fix something that happened in the past but rather in trying to figure out how the new present got so effed up by someone, like us, who knew the well-known rules. There’s something else under the surface here that makes the first issue more compelling than it might be otherwise.
Final Verdict: 7.5 – “The Man Who Effed Up Time” is a boilerplate albeit expertly presented time travel story on the surface, but if we know Layman, he’s got some other tricks up his sleeve for future installments. A relatively new artistic talent along with Layman’s past credentials and well-deserved successes should make this a draw.
