This is going to hurt your brain.
Creative Staff:
Story: John Layman
Art: Karl Mostert
Colors: Dee Cunniffe
Letterer: John Layman
What They Say:
Time’s up for Sean Bennett, the very unfortunate man who f#%&ed up time and now has a death sentence handed down by the dreaded cyborg Future Police. The past has been f#%&ed up, and it looks like irrevocably so. What does this mean for the future? Nothing good!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While it still seems like six issues are how most series are designed around these days, I’m definitely glad when we see a four or five-issue run. John Layman has had a crazy run of events and experience for our leading character in this run and five issues definitely helps it to feel like it’s a natural ending point. I’m sure it could have been stretched out a bit more to showcase extended parts of what goes on here, but I like that it barrels toward the conclusion with Sean making things clear. Karl Mostert has done a solid job throughout the run to handle the weirdness of it all and that basically continues on here, though we get more “normal” than we have in a while with it all going back to the beginning.
With so much of what’s having gone on related to Lincoln’s not-assassination event, it’s no surprise that this is where Sean starts his journey in trying to properly fix things now that he has the Future Police gear. Going back and seeing how Lincoln was saved is fun to watch only for Future Sean to pop in not long after and finish the job while beating on Past Sean. But all of this is just to help settle some of the other issues that will crop up and still have to be dealt with, leaving us with the main focus of bringing the Future Sean back to when the test run was being done for the time machine to see what would happen. It’s definitely an innocent time here in how Sean as a lab tech is seeing how it’s all unfolding only to have this Future Sean show up full of energy and information.
As Future Sean mentioned in the previous issue, this is a big whodunnit and bringing us back to the lab provides for the payoff moment. It’s one where you do wonder for a moment but the reveal that everyone was in on it and we started the series after the machine had already been used in secret upends everything. You have to feal for Past Sean as he starts to grapple with everything but it turns into a lot of crazy fun with the Future Police showing up to eliminate them all and for what’s gone down, making it clear that it’s their sole purpose. It’s a lot of fun watching how Future Sean prepared for this, the chaos that ensues, and the minor epilogue that wraps things up. We do get our happily ever after and Sean most assuredly deserved it after what he was put through by everyone and the simple cruelty of it all.
In Summary:
The Man Who Effed Up Time was a very fun series that hit all the right marks. Time travel is always enjoyable when you play it with comedy and work some crazy scenarios and Layman did just that and Mostert kept up with it beautifully. It was a lot of fun watching as Sean worked out who it was that actually screwed him over and how it was done, leading to a big and splashy finale here. It’s a solidly self-contained work overall and made for a lot of fun as singles and I’m sure it will as a collected edition down the line as well.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: August 26th, 2020
MSRP: $3.99
