Chrononauts

Chrononauts is a fun read.  It is actually one of the better titles to be conceived by Mark Millar.  The tag I would give this series would be its like Back to the Future without the ethics of Doc Brown.  This book is a little like Jumper in that the two main characters can travel throughout time and space bring things with them.  This book turns the idea of being a scientist is similar to being a rock star and everything that goes with it.  The two main characters in this story are Corbin Quinn and his best friend Danny Reilly.  Both are poised to make history by being the first time travelers but they are not just traveling through but they are going to broadcast it to the world.  However like all stories that deal with time travel something has gone wrong after Corbin went into the time stream. 

Danny is going to attempt to bring him back.  When he gets there he discoveries that Corbin has set himself up as a king in the ancient world giving technology to people that haven’t developed it traveling through time to see famous events, dating girls in different time periods, using his knowledge for personal gains.  Corbin even persuades his best friend Danny to join in on this time traveling hijinks.  But as the powers that be in the present are scrambling to send a team of soldiers back in time to take out our two traveling chrononauts before they cripple the time stream.  Eventually Corbin Quinn’s lifestyle comes close to getting him killed in a very Great Gatsby type fashion but Danny comes to his aid.  However their bad luck catches up with them and Corbin’s decisions lead to the death of Danny and his exile.  However because we are dealing with time travel here be the end Corbin sets everything right and he even fixes the mistakes of his past to make his life back in the present day even more to what he had wished it had been.  I really liked this book I wish it had been it little longer because it seems like Millar rushed through the ending compared to the way it started.

Reborn: Book One

Back in the 1990s Image Comics was the place to go for comics that were not about superheroes it was a place to go to see what comics as an art form could be stretched toward.  Mark Millar is one of those visionaries he has been crafting his own stories for some time now with several of them becoming films and even some of them surpassing the original source material.  Reborn is one of those books.  Now I’ll be up front this book may not be for everybody.  There is a lot to like in this book but there are things that I did not like as well.

First off the art is simply spectacular as Greg Capullo is here to provide the art for this series coming fresh off of his run on Batman with Scott Snyder.  The book starts off with a sniper in a public place taking out unsuspecting victims.  One of the unlucky citizens wakes up in a green field much younger in what looks like something out of Lord of the Rings.  The hero of this tale is Bonnie Black a school teacher who is very pessimistic about the afterlife as she is in a nursing home and has lost her husband, mother, father and best friend.  When she dies she awakens in this realm in the middle of a warzone.  She finds out well she’s in this new land with a new lease on life and a younger body that she is the savior of this realm.  She discovers that she has some type of powers she is reunited with her father and her childhood pet.  She is on a quest to find her husband in this realm and along the way she finds her best friend.  At the end there is a big showdown between Bonnie and the demon like villain of this realm.

What I like about this book is this high concept of an idea that Mark Millar has come up with I like most of his books because of their concepts but I don’t particularly like his execution all of the time and this was one of those times.  I really liked the first half of this book but I just felt that he didn’t stick to the landing.  I also didn’t like the reveal of who the big bad was before he died.  It didn’t sit well with me.  I also didn’t like how bitter her best friend became when she discovered that her faith and beliefs had been dashed by this new reality.  This book leave lots of room for improvement, I had hoped that this would be a one and done tale like so many of Mark Millar’s books but sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case.