(courtesy Aftershock Comics)
Who of us hasn’t wondered, in ways endlessly big or thoughtfully small, what it would be like to jump into a time machine and see what the past looks like?
To walk among the dinosaurs. See the Romans battle and subdue another city or state. See the Mayans at the height of their power and glory. Or watch Dodos alive and kicking on their island paradise.
It’s a wholly beguiling idea, and one that entertainingly and cleverly drives The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time by John Layman, Karl Mostert and Dee Cunniffe, a five-part Aftershock Comics release which takes the temptation to step into the past, anywhere you want to go, and go wild and wide with it in ways that are hilariously funny, emotionally intimate and blockbuster epic.
It frankly has it all, and while it could be easy to get lost in the logic-defying timey-wimeyness of it all, as writer John Layman admits in a foreword, somehow The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time doesn’t do that, and even when it looks like it’s going to swallow its narrative whole with a mess of contradictions and doublebacks, it somehow doesn’t, at least, not fatally or completely, serving up a story that feels richly involving and very authentically true to lived ordinary human existence.
Keeping a focus on good old garden variety human wants and needs in a story where Neanderthals become cops and Abraham Lincoln and his descendant are brutalist dictators simply because someone goes back in time, steps on the proverbial butterfly and yes, f**ks up time, is impressive work when you consider how expansive the story in The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time is from start to surprising finish.
The key to keeping its humanistic boots on the ground, whatever time they may be in, and oh lord, does The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time roam like crazy, is the protagonist, Sean Bennett, a lab assistant who yields to the temptation to take a prototype time machine for a ride when a future version of himself urges him to see what might happen if he ignores a professor’s entreaty to not not even slightly disrupt the timeline.
Feeling aggrieved and put-upon for a host of reasons, Bennett does as he tells himself to do, and launches himself into the past by just one week, figuring that not much can happen in such a short amount of time, right?
After all, all he’s going to do is telling his ex he still loves her, place a bet or two and take back what he’s been taken from him – how bad could be muck things up? Surely not much at all, right?
Well, as it turns out, it’s amazing what a few small acts in one small part of a timeline not that far removed from the present can do, and as The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time really gets going, it becomes clear to Bennett that everything his professor said should have been heeded.
(courtesy Aftershock Comics)
Why? Well, because all of time, as the title promised, is well and truly f#&%ed up, and Sean is given just two days from some very powerful figures to set it all to rights or suffer some pretty final consequences.
But here’s the thing – when you’re not entirely what you did to wreck things, how in the time-screwed up world do you even begin to fix it? Can a step you take to fix things actually make them even worse?
It will not surprise to learn that it’s a big “YES!!!” to that last question, and that even when you are working with all your might to fix what you have unwittingly but inadvisedly broken, how much more damage you can do.
As time travel tales go, The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time is engrossingly clever, serving up a cautionary tale that is equal parts existentially alarming and comedically vivacious, and which doesn’t pause for breath for a second, its witty, clever writing bolstered by artwork and lettering that brings this extraordinary tale alive in ways that are outlandishly out there and yet feels intimately real and true.
In a story which depends on seeing the damage and mess Sean has wrought, the art is fully half, if not more, of everything, and pleasingly, no matter how imaginatively batsh*t crazy Layman’s ideas might be, Mostert is able to bring them to mind-scouring life, representing how easily the world can be changed by one ill-thought-out, emotionally driven decision.
As reality bends and warps and ducks and weaves, and twists itself out of all recognisable shape, Mostert doesn’t skip a beat, imbuing The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time with a visually rich immersiveness that amplifies Layman’s story to the point where it consumes you wholly in the very best of ways.
It would be super easy to get so tied up in the bigness of the storytelling, which goes to some really huge and fun places, and to be so busy wondering what might happen if you step on some form of primordial life billions of years ago that you lose sight of the basic humanity of it all.
But The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time doesn’t do that for even one second, and while its tale is extraordinary, it remains resolutely and ordinarily human in its emotional impact, remembering, as not all blockbustery stories do, that while narrative shock and awe definitely lands some significant storytelling punches, that its worth nothing if, at the end of the day, whatever form that takes (and remember Sean isn’t quite done screwing things up), that you feel nothing.
But feel something you most certainly do, thanks to Layman’s keen eye for full-formed charactersation, and as The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time careens through time with a breathless alacrity, you come to realise the power of the decisions we make and the fate we try to wield and that maybe, just maybe, while taking risks and being adventurous, is fun, perhaps just holding what you value most close is all you really need to do to be happy.
(courtesy Aftershock Comics)