Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Time Share
WORK NOTES: illus by Dan McDaid
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
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https://www.amazon.com/Patrick-Keller/e/B01NA7OEB8/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 * http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/fun-times-talking-creators-paradox-packed-graphic-novel-time-share * https://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/07/12/scoop-judge-dredds-dan-mcdaid-and-patrick-keller-launch-time-share-a-new-graphic-novel-for-oni-press/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and graphic novelist.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Esquire, GQ, Time, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
SIDELIGHTS
Patrick Keller is a writer an author of the graphic, science fiction novel Time Share. The story revolves around a time traveling teenager named Ollie Finch and his efforts to counter a threat to destroy all of existence. In an interview with Syfy Wire website contributor Matthew Funk, Keller noted that he had pitched three stories to a publisher, one of them being “a sitcom about time travelers living together. (A time share, get it?)” Keller went on to note: ” My idea was to take the sitcom format and crank it up to eleven.”
Keller’s story ultimately took a somewhat different shape. In Time Share, Ollie has traveled back to the past to fix up some family problems. However, upon his return trip to the present in his uncle’s rocket car, things go awry; and Ollie accidentally starts a series of events that could lead to ultimate destruction. Fortunately, Ollie is not alone in his efforts to stave off disaster as he is joined by several time traveling friends.
The novel’s large cast of characters include a cyborg assassin with brain damage named Teddy and a soldier from a future post-apocalyptic world out to stop Teddy. Also on hand is a nineteenth-century inventor named Preston and a self-proclaimed Time Master named Curtis. Meanwhile, Ollie also has to deal with ex-girlfriend Roxy. “The combination of characters creates what feels like a parody inspired adventures in this graphic novel,” wrote Graphic Policy website contributor Christopher Scott.
Fortunately, the entire group team up to fight a super computer intelligence named Phil, who has taken over the world. “For Time Share, I had certain funny ideas I knew I wanted to incorporate — like the time-traveling kid failing to make that critical trip back to his own time, the killer robot with the mind of a child and the misunderstood supercomputer that likes to be called Phil — and kept recombining all the bits until they all fit,” Keller Wify Wire website contributor Funk. Throughout the novel Keller pays homage to various methods of time travel and to other time travel stories, including the movies The Terminator and Back to the Future.
“Much like the action, the humor never lets up for a second,” wrote Peter Blenski in Booklist, who went on to call the story “a crazy ride.” Fabienne Payet, writing for the Outright Geekery website, remarked: “It is fun to see what this rag tag gang of frenemies are up to, how they get challenged and what they decide to do to resolve those challenges.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 15, 2016, Peter Blenski, review of Time Share, p. 35.
Publishers Weekly, January 23, 2017, review of Time Share, p. 67.
ONLINE
AtomicJunkShopTravis , http://atomicjunkshop.com (February 8, 2017), review of Time Share.
Graphic Policy, https://graphicpolicy.com/ (May 27, 2017), Christopher Scott, review of Time Share.
Outright Geekery, http://www.outrightgeekery.com/ (January 30, 2017), Fabienne Payet, review of Time Share.
Syfy Wire, http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/ (January 25, 2017), Matthew Funk, “Fun Times: Talking to the Creators of Paradox-Packed Graphic Novel Time Share.”
Women Write About Comics, http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/ (May 9, 2017), Claire Napier, “Time Share: A Dirty-Joking Time Travel Adventure Worth Reading.”
Patrick Keller (1633 AD - 108 BCE) was born a small child and quickly grew larger and hairier. This trend continued until his mid-twenties, when the hair trend began to reverse itself, much to Keller's dismay. Today, he is larger than he was, though smaller than many and not as large as some. For more than a decade, Keller has utilized "keyboards" (the non-musical variety) to put letters into sequences that some found delightful, but others found tedious, and still others regarded as "not in a language I comprehend." These included humorous columns and articles for newspapers, websites, magazines, and the occasional napkin. His writing has appeared in Esquire, GQ, Time Magazine, and The Journal of the American Medical Association, though only when Mr. Keller inserted his own printouts into these publications for safekeeping.
He currently resides in a place, where he does things.
His first original graphic novel (OGN), TIME SHARE, was drawn by Dan McDaid and published by Oni Press in 2017.
Fun times: Talking to the creators of paradox-packed graphic novel Time Share
Contributed by
Matthew Funk
@Professor__Funk
Jan 25, 2017
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Ever since a poor Connecticut man got clocked on the head and sent back to Camelot, audiences have loved to laugh at time travelers. They provide a way to contrast modern times with the silliness of the past, or potentially equally silly future, and give us an outlet to explore forces we can't control.
Zoom In
That's why I was so excited to read Time Share, a new graphic novel from Portland-based publisher Oni Press, which stars a gang of lovably incompetent time travelers wreaking well-intentioned havoc across the timestream. Written by newcomer Patrick Keller and drawn by Dan McDaid of Doctor Who and Judge Dredd fame, Time Share is a wild and incredibly funny ride that pastiches and satirizes many of the most well-known time travel stories and characters in a style reminiscent of Douglas Adams and Monty Python.
Our protagonist is a young man named Ollie, who is a lot like Marty McFly ... if he were absolutely terrible at driving the time machine, which he crashes right into a muscly nude cyborg from the future on his return trip from the '70s. It only gets weirder and more bombastic from there but doesn't forgo heart or brains for laughs. Time Share will have you trying to fit the pieces of a complex chrono-puzzle together ... and have you cheering for the most unlikely of heroes.
I got to chat with Keller and McDaid about how the book came about, their favorite parts of Time Share, the time travel movies they’d stop from being made and what the future might bring for Ollie and his friends. Check out the interview below and scroll all the way to the bottom for a massive 19-page preview of the graphic novel, which slips out of chronal stasis and appears at comic book stores everywhere on January 25.
Zoom In
Patrick, I know this project has been in development for a few years now. Could you tell us a bit about where the project originated and how it evolved?
Patrick Keller: Well, I'd known Oni’s James Lucas Jones for a while, and he asked me to pitch him some funny book ideas, and so I gave him three — a dot-com satire involving ninjas, a romantic comedy about 1950s sci-fi monsters, and a sitcom about time travelers living together. (A time share, get it?)
They (wisely) picked the last one. My idea was to take the sitcom format and crank it up to 11. So the time travelers get jobs at a fast-food restaurant but wind up starting violent cults that worship soda flavors. And getting their brain-damaged killer cyborg elected mayor to avoid paying rent.
But while Oni sought out the right artist for the book, they also suggested linking the stories together. So I came up with the character of Ollie Finch, the teenager who flees to the past to fix his family but screws up the return trip. And the tone of the book evolved from goofy and broad to, well … still goofy, but less ironic.
Not only is Time Share raucously funny book, it's also an intelligent twist on time-travel plots that made me want to go back and read it again upon finishing. How did you approach plotting something with as many characters and timelines as this story?
PK: First of all, thank you for saying that. Honestly, I took a lot of inspiration from Douglas Adams' first two Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy stories. Neither of those books (or radio shows, if you're a purist) have an overarching plot; they just follow whatever concept Adams thought was funny at the time. So he went from a restaurant located at the end of time, to the loudest concert ever, to a civilization doomed by overzealous shoe companies.
For Time Share, I had certain funny ideas I knew I wanted to incorporate — like the time-traveling kid failing to make that critical trip back to his own time, the killer robot with the mind of a child and the misunderstood supercomputer that likes to be called Phil — and kept recombining all the bits until they all fit. Once I figured that out, then I had to make it all funny.
This is your first major comic book work, if I'm not mistaken. Was there anything you learned about the process of making comics that surprised you?
PK: Tons! The hardest thing for me was making sure everything was broken down enough. On occasion (especially early on), I'd get excited about what I was writing and forget that you can't show two successive events in the same panel (say, Character 1 hitting Character 2, who hits back).
I also learned how important being concise is. I stepped away from the book for a bit while Dan finished doing all his amazing art. When I came back I realized I could cut 30% or more of the speech and captions, and lose almost nothing. I was way too wordy!
Zoom In
Dan, you pay homage to several different methods of time travel in Time Share, was there one that you enjoyed drawing the most?
Dan McDaid: Hard not to love the TARDIS-like SPANDA, to be honest. It looks like a portaloo – but there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. And Uncle Jacques' amped-up VW Van is pretty sweet, too. I could see myself pottering around in that.
The graphic novel is packed with references to famous time travelers, but were there any that didn't make it in?
PK: Oh yeah! Back in the episodic version of the book, I wanted to have a time traveler from a utopian future and another time traveler from a post-apocalyptic future but have them both believed to be from the same year. This would drive the post-apocalyptic guy (who became Bax, the soldier from Phil's future in the final book) crazy trying to figure out if the other guy's existence meant he'd accomplished his mission.
I also flirted with the idea of having the antagonist be the kid who comes back from time traveling to discover his successful parents are now losers and his cool truck is gone.
Were there any historical eras you'd like to draw that you didn't get to visit in Time Share?
DM: I really wish we had done something prehistoric — I can't think of a single comics artist who doesn't love drawing dinosaurs. If we do a sequel, it would be cool to actually add a dinosaur to the gang. You'd read that, right?
Comedy in comics can be tough since you don't have the luxury of timing or sound like in movies, but your expressive characters and fluid storytelling had me laughing the whole way through. Were there any scenes in the book that you had a hard time getting the comedic energy just right?
DM: First of all — thanks! It's hard to get comedy across in comics, which is I guess kind of ironic? The only mainstream artist I can think of who always nails it is Kyle Baker. So if I'm able to get a proper 'laugh out loud' laugh from a reader, that's pretty cool to me. That means I've really done my job. But the answer to your question is basically "No." The acting side of things in comics comes pretty easily to me.
There's a lot of Jack Kirby influence in your art (as there should be in all comic artists) but are there any other comic artists you took inspiration from for this book?
DM: The late, great Darwyn Cooke, of course. And there's little touches of manga in there, little bits and pieces pinched from Wally Wood and Frank Miller. Whatever I'm reading or into at the time tends to make its way into my work, even if it's all "under the hood."
Zoom In
If you could time travel back and stop one time travel movie from being made, what would it be?
PK: That's a tough one, because I love bad movies so much. So why is Time Cop (which makes you believe that, yes, time traveling kickboxers is a valid use of our tax dollars) so much better than Star Trek: Generations, which feels like some sort of mandatory training video?
Maybe it's that one is dumb but ambitious instead of competent and boring? Or maybe it's that they took out one of the greatest sci-fi heroes of all time with a railing kill?
DM: The Nicholas Meyer movie Time After Time. Not because it's bad — quite the opposite, it's great — but it's such a fun idea I wish I'd come up with it myself. H.G. Wells hunts Jack the Ripper across time. If you haven’t seen it, track it down.
Is there any possibility of a second volume of Time Share? If so, what kind of trouble do you see Ollie and the gang getting into in the future (or past)?
PK: Heck yeah! I'd give an arm and a leg to work with Dan again. The man's brilliant! And, of course, I'd love to check back in on Ollie again. Maybe after he and Roxy have some suspiciously similar-looking kids?
I really can't get enough time travel stories. I love paradoxes and thought experiments. I’d like to see if I could do something even weirder for the next go-round. As a kid, I loved it when Kang would get into fights with his future self. So maybe I could do Time Share II: The Revenge of Time Master Curtis, with ten different iterations of Curtis! But first I just hope everyone enjoys the first book.
DM: If people love it, I can definitely see us coming back for more. And I'd love to see our boys getting into some prehistoric bother. Give me some dinosaurs, Patrick!
TIME SHARE is in stores on January 25. Check out the massive preview in the gallery and let us know what you think in the comments! Preview courtesy of Oni Press.
Time Share: A Dirty-Joking Time Travel Adventure Worth Reading
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By Claire Napier on March 9, 2017
Comics, Interviews
What’s that? Oh, its me! In mid-february, yours truly (on the right) guested on Allison Pregler’s entertainment review channel. Just take two gals, one huge mutual investment in Quantum Leap, and throw it all in a bowl with Quantum Creep, a “fun” comic from Parody Press and the early ’90s. What do you get? A diverting twenty-seven minutes. Oh boy! Please, do enjoy.
Towards the end of this episode, I make a recommendation for Oni’s Time Share. Any reader after a comic that combines time travel trope juggling with edgy jokes for grown-ups might find what they’re after there, I suggest (and much better there than in Quantum Creep). And ain’t I a sweetheart? Here I am with more info on that for you as I talk to Patrick Keller, who conceived and wrote the script for this comic, and Dan McDaid, who took on full art duties. But first, some of the dick jokes that had me rolling. Last year’s Ghostbusters did a lot with the name “Mike,” but Time Share does it better.
What a great note to end a page on!! Imagine you have to turn, here. So good.
Time Share is kind of a rascally book. It throws everything on your face and runs away laughing. Was there any moment, point, formal aspect, or concept that you worried an audience would or might have trouble with? Was there any point at which you thought, “Oh, I’ll lose them with this.”
Patrick Keller: Sure, there’s a lot of ‘em, maybe even the whole book itself. The story morphed so much from the initial pitch to the finished product that I ended up creating a lot of material that won’t see the light of day. So I tried to hint at all that and maybe give the reader the sense that each one of these characters could conceivably have their own story that we could follow, even if we don’t. Like, Bax’s mom, the agriculture secretary who becomes the leader of the resistance against the robots. Or Uncle Jacques’ gig as a special effects guru for Parliament-Funkadelic in the ’70s. But it’s the finale that I really wonder if people can figure out. It was originally written chronologically, with Ollie’s big confrontation played straight through. But it just wasn’t working. So I cut that version up. The confrontation scene is still in there, but out of order. Some people won’t like that, I suspect. But here’s the thing: the plot specifics aren’t really the important thing there. What is important is what Ollie’s learning and how he’s changed, in my opinion. Well, that and I got Dan to draw a Cadillac rocket car for, like, fifteen pages.
Dan McDaid: Not really, no. I’m pretty confident in my storytelling ability–maybe even a little over-confident at times–so I don’t tend to worry about that too much. My main problems were the same problems all artists have: how to draw a horse, how to draw a house, how to draw a crowd of people that doesn’t just look like a load of bubbles attached to sticks. I think I tend to become bored quite easily, so having a constant stream of picaresque concepts is almost necessary to keep me engaged. And Time Share really delivers on that front, I think.
It does. It also delivers on a lot of time travel fiction visual jokes. From background characters to the designs and concepts of the main cast, how much of that was scripted, and how much was Dan making his own fun?
McDaid: A LOT of it was in the script, but there was also a ton of room there to add little Easter eggs and fun jokes and what have you in the background. And I would–a little cheekily, I now have to admit–go off script from time to time if I thought a scene needed a visual punch-up. The whole project had something of a “fast and loose” ethos, which left a lot of room for the artist to have some fun.
Keller: Dan’s being modest. He added a ton. The scenes in the “time traveler jail” and the post-apocalyptic future, for instance, have a lot of his gags in there. I’d make suggestions in the script, and he’d pick and choose which to use or add his own. But it was other places where he’d toss in something like the running gag about Teddy having a black bar over his robo-bits that really killed it.
I mean I guess that could be Sam and Al, second from left? But it could also be a griller and a cowboy. NAME THE REST, IT’S FUN
Speaking of robo-bits, what really sold me on the book was “save my cock,” and the immediate flurry of supporting dick jokes. How did you (Patrick) walk the line of dirty-but-not-gross? Was there editorial input on how to stay ribald but appropriate, or do you have your own inbuilt gauge for what’s just far enough? Did your pitch have an age rating, or did you do it by ear?
Keller: As a preschooler, my siblings used to play this game with me where they’d coach me on some kinda dirty phrase I wasn’t supposed to know, and then wait for me to use it around Mom and watch the fireworks. Getting people to gasp and then laugh was like a sport around my house, but that gasp was the important thing. You have to go just far enough that it’s a little scandalous, but not so far that it’s not funny. So I pitched the book to Oni, and it had a lot of situational absurdities, but it wasn’t until I was writing that first script that I hit on the idea of giving the future’s savior a filthy pseudonym. I wrote that first volley of Mike Hawk jokes, stopped, and sent an email to my editor, Charlie. “Can I do this?” He bounced it off the rest of the Oni crew, and they said, yeah, go for it. I never really had an age attached to the pitch, I just knew the zone I was going for. I have to give a shout-out here to Judd Winick’s Adventures of Barry Ween, also published by Oni Press. Judd walked that ribald-but-not-dirty line like, well, like he’d grown up in my family. One of my favorite jokes from that book is when the title character rigs a Talking Elmo to curse in Italian. Vaffanculo!
Dan, you did the colours for this book, as well as the linework and etc., correct? Did you pull from the media being riffed on for inspiration? How did you decide on the punchy, vibrant result?
McDaid: I think it’s mostly the way I’m wired, to be honest. I like my comics to look poppy and fun and inviting, with a lot of bold colours and energy. So when I’m colouring, I like to bring some of that snap. I also felt that the book had a kind of “Magical Mystery Tour” vibe, a certain hallucinogenic energy, so it felt appropriate to go a little wild with the colour. But it’s partly down to the script, as well. For the Future War section, I switched it up to lots of browns and greys, a very muted palette. I like to see contrast on the pages, so you get a very strong sense of atmosphere.
Thanks guys!
Time Share is a comic that throws you right into the action. Think Marty in the rain at the end of Back to the Future 2 taken as your first taste of the McFly saga. Time Share doesn’t over-explain; it barely explains at all, and that’s exactly what I’m after in a genre-savvy work. I’m a modern woman, an entertainment critic, I know the heck out of time travel fiction. I’ve seen Terminators and flux capacitors, and (without even trying) doctors. I’ve read ages of Futures Past! I don’t need straightforward, step-by-step unfolding of chronomystery. Embracing the knotted chronology and not-explained-til-later throwaways of this particular tale is a natural and enjoyable step for me on life’s long journey of readin’ stories ’bout timelines. If you’re with me on this, if you too were a student with a couple of boxsets and wicked insomnia once upon a time, then Time Share might be something you’re looking for. It’s not perfect (there’s a bit about a robot prostitute I could have done without), but it’s structurally daring and delicious to look at. It’s not cruel; the killer future muscleman robot (original character, do not steal), whose injuries during an early action sequence reduce his cognition is a precious sweetheart, isn’t humiliated by the narrative or punished for being different. And man! I love that “my cock” joke.
dan mcdaid Oni Press patrick keller podcast quantum creep quantum leap time share time travel
Time Share
264.4 (Jan. 23, 2017): p67.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Time Share
Patrick Keller and Dan McDaid, Oni, $19.99 trade paper (168p), ISBN 978-1-934964-54-5
Ollie Finch is a teen who jumps through various timelines in an attempt to stop a threat that's never particularly clear. It's reasonable to expect the early pages of a madcap time travel caper like this to feel disjointed, but the confusion starts at page one and never really ends. Stories that introduce alternate time streams or parallel universes need solid internal logic. But debut writer Keller never establishes the rules governing his strange worlds, nor is it ever clear what the oversized cast of characters want at any given moment, or even what the stakes are. For instance, midway through an episode, a soldier on a postapocalyptic mission to save someone named Mike Hawk decides he needs to kill him instead. Why? Who knows. It's a shame that the storyline is so undercooked, because the book does have an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek humor, and the art by McDaid (Judge Dredd) is a lot of fun and perfectly suited for this type of material. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Time Share." Publishers Weekly, 23 Jan. 2017, p. 67. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479714207&it=r&asid=30579c645cadae16c04cea5f7dd2b09f. Accessed 23 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479714207
Time Share
Peter Blenski
113.8 (Dec. 15, 2016): p35.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Time Share.
By Patrick Keller. Illus. by Dan McDaid.
Jan. 2017.168p. Oni, paper, $19.99 (9781934964545). 741.5.
While traveling through time, Ollie accidentally starts a chain of events that threatens to unravel all of existence. Now his team of time travelers, composed of his jaded ex-girlfriend, a killer robot with the mentality of a toddler, and a twisted nineteenth-century inventor, have to undo the complex series of paradoxes they have set into motion. Time Share moves ridiculously fast, and there's little exposition along the way, so occasionally it's tough to keep up and understand what's going on. That said, the pace of the piece is made up for with the plethora of crazy settings and hilarious characters, which are easily the book's greatest strengths. This is genuinely funny stuff, packed with allusions and spoofs of nearly every sf staple, while clever one-liners and lewd jokes fill every page. Much like the action, the humor never lets up for a second. McDaid's dated character design and faded color imbues the work with a nostalgic, Silver Age comics vibe. A crazy ride, but one definitely worth taking.--Peter Blenski
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Blenski, Peter. "Time Share." Booklist, 15 Dec. 2016, p. 35. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA476563519&it=r&asid=293608cb5eed78046c3679c9c24f9f2b. Accessed 23 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A476563519
Time Share – Review
by Fabienne Payet · January 30, 2017
Written by Patrick Keller
Illustrated and colored by Dan McDaid
Lettered by Crank!
Published by Oni Press
Ollie Finch was set to return home after a time-warping journey in his uncle’s rocket car time machine when everything went wrong. Now he is at the center of a maelstrom of paradoxes that is set to destroy the multiverse. A few of Ollie’s friends might be able to save the day from a soldier of the post-apocalyptic future to a 19th century inventor. Can they bond together and stop Phil a power crazed AI before it is too late?
A fun and easy to read comic. It has a sprinkle of tribute to Back to the Future over it and it works. It is far more action packed with a lot more close calls than you’d expect for this type of comics. It is fun to see what this rag tag gang of frenemies are up to, how they get challenged and what they decide to do to resolve those challenges. And I am sure time travel fans will enjoy the little nod to Dr. Who in the story. It is a great story with action, complex situations and quite a few laughs. I loved it!
The art is on point, it really adds an extra dimension to the comic that would not be there had the art been of a lesser standard. It seems every few pages is dedicated to the environment they are in and that reflects itself in a major color. Some are set to varying shades of red or blue and it immediately changes the atmosphere of the story. Some dialogue pertaining to a specific character uses a digital type lettering that is an ingenious way of keeping tabs of said character. As you can tell I am doing my utmost best to not spoil the story too much because it would take away from the enjoyment of reading it as a whole.
Overall, pick this one up, you won’t regret it and at 170 pages you know you are in for a great read.
Writing: 4/5
Art:4.5/5
Overall: 4.5/5
Review: Time Share
Posted on May 27, 2017 by christopher scott author
After a time bending adventure, Ollie Finch was set to go home in his uncle’s rocket car time machine when everything went sideways. He’s at the center of a maelstrom of paradoxes that threatens to destroy the multiverse. Fortunately, Ollie’s fellow time traveling friends might just help straighten things out: Teddy, the brain-damaged cyborg assassin; Bax, the soldier from the post-apocalyptic future sent to stop Teddy’s mission; Preston, the 19th-century inventor; Curtis, self-proclaimed Time Master; and Roxy, Ollie’s scorned ex-girlfriend. Can this band of losers stop Phil, the world-conquering artificial intelligence… in time?
Writer Patrick Keller brings together possibly the strangest, crew for a time travel story. The combination of characters creates what feels like a parody inspired adventures in this graphic novel. When all that is put together it creates a story that’s entertaining and funny. Which makes it good read overall.
The art by Dan McDaid is oddly fluid, but given the time travel premise, it makes sense. It manages to distinguish the different time periods in a brilliant but subtle manner. Especially given the drastic differences between the time periods as a whole.
Story: Patrick Keller Art: Dan McDaid
Story: 8.5 Art: 9.0 Overall: 8.75 Recommendation: Buy
Oni Press provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
‘Time Share’ Reviewed in a Timely Manner
By AtomicJunkShopTravis
February 8, 2017
It seems appropriate that a comic about time travel doesn’t show up the week it’s scheduled to come out. However, this one appears to have come out early! Last week I picked up the new Oni Press 168 page book Time Share by writer Patrick Keller and artist/colorist Dan McDaid (and Crank! on letters and Fred Chao on book design).
Keller obviously grew up in the ’80s, with nods in Time Share to three big time travel movies from that era comprising the majority of the plot of this book. The overarching plot of Time Share is essentially from Terminator, with cyborgs and dudes coming back in time to kill the person who created the sentient computer running the world.
That sentient computer just goes on and on about the bad ratings the cyborg is getting….
But we’ve also got a character based on Marty McFly from Back to the Future as the main protagonist. And we also have nods to Bill and Ted as well as Doctor Who (and other cameos from things like Time Bandits and so forth).
It’s small and grainy, since it’s from my phone, but I swear those are cameos!
But that’s about as well as I can glean the story of Time Share from what I read. I like time travel stories, unlike our pal Greg Burgas, but if he’s reading these sorts of time travel stories like Time Share, I can totally understand why he doesn’t like them. You can reduce most time travel tales pretty well — Terminator is “cyborg sent to kill guy that will be humanity’s savior before he’s born, other guy goes back to stop cyborg”, Back to the Future is “guy goes back in time and has to ensure his parents actually get together so he exists”, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is “dopey high schoolers use time machine to ace history exam”. This book wants it all. It’s mostly the Terminator story, with a Marty that got stranded in time and grew up and sees weird time displacements around him. I guess. Throw in the dude’s ex-girlfriend, a 19th century inventor, and a Time Master, and you get… confusion.
Like how this guy…
…is played by this guy, essentially.
WAIT! DON’T PRINT THAT REVIEW!
Wuzzat?
ATOMICJUNKSHOPTRAVIS, I AM YOU FROM THE FUTURE!
Sure you are. Why should I believe you?
BECAUSE I COME TO TELL YOU OF…THE FUTURE!
That’s circular logic. Like Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer talked about in that SNL sketch that I included in my post the other day.
IS IT? DAMN, I GUESS IT IS. WHAT IF I TELL YOU THINGS OF THE FUTURE THAT YOU DO NOT YET KNOW?
Won’t help, because I don’t know them. And telling me something only I know won’t help, because who cares?
FINE, BUT WILL YOU BELIEVE THAT WHEN YOU POST THAT REVIEW, YOU THREATEN ALL OF TIME AND SPACE? PARADOXES UP THY ASS SHALL BE CREATED!
(Thy?) Given the current political climate, among other things, might it not be a good thing for paradoxes to occur?
NO, IT —
Whoa! The paradoxes ARE happening! Travis, I’m you from a timeline where the Atomic Junk Shop never had reason to come into being!
What, really? You mean that other site won’t crash my computer anymore?
…Well, yeah, it’ll do that. And you don’t have a column of your own. You just make juvenile comments in the comments sections.
Hmm, that’s fun, but I get to do that here in my own column. That is something I wanted to bring up about Time Share, though. As juvenile as I am, the adolescent humor in this GN just doesn’t do it for me. “Save My Cock” isn’t all that funny to begin with (although admittedly, I enjoyed when my local minor league baseball team had Mike Cox on the team, and I would ask no one in particular if they’d seen Mike Cox), and then finding out right away (confirming right away, I should say) that someone is hunting Mike Hawks just kills the joke. And the 19th century inventor naming his creations ill-advisedly is mildly amusing at best.
You’re going to talk about other people’s lame jokes?
What? No! I mean, yeah, I loves me some bad puns, and I think the Thomas Edison bit was pretty damn funny, as well as the bad French, but overall, this book didn’t give me more than a smirk through most of it, and since the time travel element was too hard to follow — what now?
I’m a Travis from a timeline where you sacked up and asked that woman to marry you rather than let her get away.
Oh really. Are you tryin’ to get me to post “Bad Romance” again? So how’m I doing married to her?
You’re fine, she’s fine, it’s your kids that are the problem!
What, do they grow up to be assholes? More likely, they’re dorky mutants that just sit around reading nerd books and writing poetry, right?
…That too, but they didn’t help prevent Hillary Clinton from getting elected, and now she’s ruined the world!
Wait, what? My kids in another time frame somehow didn’t prevent Hillary Clinton from getting elected (possibly because they would have been about 5!), but Hillary ruined the world?
Yes! You exist in the better world, where…oh shit, wait, Ziggy says your world elected Donald Trump for President. WTF?
That’s what a lot of us are saying.
But Gary Johnson was supposed to win! That was your only hope, USA!
Oh for chrissakes…. Look, I’m just trying to review an ok comic book here. I need to point out that for the most part, Dan McDaid’s art, which I’ve liked elsewhere, is pretty good here, although there are times when the panel-to-panel continuity or the depictions of the action make it hard to follow. I’m not sure if that’s a script thing, though, or what. I mean, I’m not even sure what the hell happened at the end to wrap up the story, so I don’t know if it’s a script problem, or if McDaid didn’t depict things properly. Who are you now?
I’m you…if you never physically grew up from your avatar picture here on the AJS! That’s right, I’m a big fat bald baby in a Hulk t-shirt just trying to tell people about cool comics!
Hey, I’ve got hair, otherwise that’s pretty much what I look like now anyway. Can I wrap this up, other mes?
Sure FINE why not I’ve got to get home to our lovely wife
Okay. Jeezus. Time Share is a decent comic book if you don’t try too hard to figure out what the fuck is going on while you’re reading. You get some action, some wacky hijinks, juvenile poo-poo humor, and winks at time travel movies. What you don’t get is a story that presents a group of people with discernible motivations or interesting personalities.
Back…in the future! with more stuff, but less mes.