Big, brassy science and a chase that ranges through all of space and time—what’s not to love?
Creative Staff:
Story: Fred Van Lente
Art: Clayton Henry
Colors: Brian Reber
Letters: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Prehistoric empires! Dystopian futures! And everywhere in between! The past, present, and future of our universe are about to meet an untimely end, and only the mysterious Ivar Anni-Padda can prevent all three from collapsing in on themselves. Unstuck in time, and pursued by enemies simultaneously across every moment of his time-lost life, can the man called Timewalker save everything that ever was, is, and will be? Get ready for a clock-stopping odyssey into the distant past and far future as the most unlikely Valiant hero of all leaps into his first history-ripping adventure!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Ivar may be a timewalker, but this first issue runs. It’s big, brassy science coupled with chase shenanigans set against the backdrop of all of time and space. What’s not to love?
Doctor Neela Sethi works as a particle physicist CERN in 2015, only minutes away from inventing time travel. Unfortunately, this draws the attention of the Prometheans, “artificial suicide life from the fifth dimension” working under the orders of Oblivi-1, a living city that desires the secrets of Neela’s discovery and will do whatever it must to acquire them.
Enter Ivar Anni-Padda, the eponymous timewalker. Using a tachyon compass, he’s able to find and use timearcs, or transverse wormholes—naturally occurring rifts in space and time that appear for only nanoseconds at a time. He uses the timearcs along with pilfered future technology, a daring attitude and a vague moral compass to protect Neela from the Prometheans. As one might expect, though, Ivar may possess other reasons for protecting her, just as Oblivi-1 may possess ulterior motives for kidnapping her.
Ivar, Timewalker is a fun, superscience story in the style of Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison, except without the cynicism of the former or penchant for rambling stories of the latter. While Van Lente does play with big ideas here, he does so with a sense of joy and abandon, grounding everything in clear, human motivations so that even if you don’t quite understand all of the science involved (Lord knows my eyes went crossed once or twice at some of the jargon), you don’t need to because all you need to understand are Ivar and Neela.
Van Lente stays in his wheelhouse of possibly immortal, roguish, charming characters, but there’s nothing wrong that. He’s always had a knack for that particular character, and he always manages to make them their own people. While he does share some similarities with them, Ivar stands apart from Hercules and Armstrong, two of my favorite characters that Van Lente has written.
He does compare to two other fictional characters, though—perhaps unfairly. When I read this, I couldn’t help but think of Doctor Who and Jack Harkness. This is partially because that’s where my mind goes when I read adventurous time travel stories, but also because there are superficial similarities. Ivar stands as a man out of time, possessed of knowledge beyond human ken. He travels time and space at will, never settling, always running (there’s a very Who scene where Ivar takes Neela’s hand and tells her to “run,” in fact). He teams up with what seems to be a normal, everyday human, but who possesses one or two extraordinary qualities, and the two work against a huge machine collective bent on doing some dastardly deed. The main difference between Ivar and the Doctor lies in his attitude and moral compass. Ivar may possess knowledge and ability comparable to the Doctor, but he acts far more like Captain Jack.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are no new stories under the sun. As a famous writer once said, nothing is ever written, only rewritten. Shoot, the creators of Doctor Who didn’t invent the idea of time travel or the need for an audience surrogate. One could look at this as Van Lente’s take on the Doctor Who idea, or just his playing around with these tried and true science fiction concepts. In fact, Van Lente didn’t even create Ivar, Barry Windsor-Smith did in 1993. Having never read those comics, I can’t speak to how much Van Lente kept in terms of tone, plot, and so forth, but what matters is that he makes this story his own, and it is great fun.
Returning to the characters, while Ivar threatens to steal the show with his daring ways and roguish attitude, Neela stands as an interesting co-protagonist. She reacts better than I would in this situation, and I find her dialogue very interesting. There are times when she affects “dudebro” talk, like when she knocks out Ivar: “Bro. Never threaten a physicist in her own lab. Bro,” or when she says, “Get off my jock, man!” I find it an interesting character quirk and I wonder how it will play out in the rest of the series. My guess is that it’s a coping strategy she picked up from working in the mostly male-dominated STEM community, but I could be overthinking it.
Moving on to the art, Clayton Henry (who worked on Archer & Armstrong with Van Lente) brings Ivar and Neela’s adventure to life. He does a great job—aided Reber’s colors—of depicting action but also does well with body language and facial expressions. His backgrounds are also spot on, which is important considering he hast to establish credibly where and when the two are in their journey. He also does a great job of panel layout, creating an issue that sweeps you along for the ride, mirroring the hectic pace of the protagonist’s flight.
In Summary:
Fred Van Lente may be the best thing to ever happen to Valiant. He already scored a hit with Archer & Armstrong, and Ivar, Timewalker promises to be just as fun and exciting, but in its own way. This is an solid first issue that hooked me from the start and I’m going to be back for issue two. Check it out.
Grade: A
Age Rating: T+
Released By: Valiant Comics
Release Date: 21 January 2015
MSRP: $3.99
