We have to go back, Marty!
With companies like Pepsi and Nike churning out Back to the Future II-themed merchandise, it’s only right that a comic publisher would kick off a new series just in time for Back to the Future Day. This new IDW mini-series doesn’t attempt to deliver a full-fledged sequel to the original trilogy. Instead, it opts to tell fun little side-stories that fill in some gaps leading up to the original film. This first issue is entertaining and authentic enough to serve as a worthy companion to the movies.
It certainly helps that writer/producer Bob Gale is contributing to this series. Gale’s presence helps ensure that the characters and general tone of the book fall very much in line with the source material. Marty reads like Marty. Doc reads like Doc. Perhaps this issue is guilty of recycling the tropes of the films a little too much, but wasn’t that half the fun of the original trilogy – seeing those old patterns repeat themselves throughout time?
This issue delivers two standalone flashback stories. The first, from Gale, co-writer John Barber and artist Brent Schoonover opens with a look at Doc Brown and his family in the Old West but transitions into a story of how Doc and Marty met for the first time. This tale is entertaining from start to finish. What begins as a simple run-in between a younger Marty and a local bully (not Biff, surprisingly) quickly dovetails into a comedy of errors as Marty tries to infiltrate Doc’s house. This story legitimately adds to their relationship as well, not only explaining what brought the two characters together but why Doc would value Marty’s presence in the first place. The art is great about capturing the general feel of the movies without striving too much for accurate actor likenesses, though the inking can be a little aggressive at times.
The second tale, from Gale, co-writer Erik Burnham and artist Dan Schoening, centers around Doc’s early teaching days and his attempts to be invited into a top-secret think tank despite his reputation for eccentricity. Again, this story is a lot of fun, though it doesn’t necessarily add as much to the larger BTTF mythos as the first. It does leave room for a more long-form story if that;s the direction the creators want to pursue, though. The art definitely impresses here. Much as he’s done with his Ghostbusters comics, Schoening distorts this live-action universe through a stylized, cartoonish lens while still retaining the tone of the source material. My only complaint is that Schoening tries too hard to make Doc look younger when one of the running jokes of the movies is that the character barely ever seems to show signs of aging.
This new series may not be the full-fledged sequel some Back to the Future fans were hoping for, but it certainly does the trick as far as capturing the look and feel of the original trilogy and telling fun new stories set in that universe. The first story in particular shows how much potential there is in exploring the back-story of these characters and fleshing out the key relationships in the films.
