Happy birthday Back to the Future!
The much-loved, near-perfect trilogy, crafted by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, about one young man, his idiosyncratic Professor friend and a time-traveling DeLorean, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year – the first film came out in 1985 – and to celebrate IDW is giving us more Marty McFly and Doc in comic book form!
Given there is no suggestion of any new Back to the Future adventures in movie form – both Zemeckis and Gale have categorically ruled that out while they live and breathe to which I say “Halle-freaking-lujah!” – the only way we’re going to get new material is in some other form.
And comic books, which lend themselves to all sorts of infinitely mutable imaginative options seems to the perfect way to go.
Especially when you have Bob Gale writing it and two sterling IDW writers John Barber (Transformers) and Erik Burnham (Ghostbusters) helping him out, with illustrations created, says io9, by “a rotating team of artists beginning with Brent Schoonover and Dan Schoening”.
Rather than a sequel to the existing trilogy, the comic book series will feature story that take place within the existing timeline of the three movies and even before, giving us some background on characters like Doc whose time at The Manhattan Project in the 1940s will be examined.
And it will have a rather interesting format too, notes io9:
“Back to the Future will also have a slightly unorthodox format, too—instead of being a continuous story told in an ongoing set of comics, each issue will have two separate tales, creating an anthology of short stories set in the BttF universe.”
It sounds like the perfect to pay homage to Back to the Future in its anniversary year, keeping the storytelling alive without creatively muddling the original genius of the franchise.
Back to the Future #1 releases october 2015.