Review: Back to the Future #3

IDW’s Back to the Future series has tried to balance filling in the gaps of the Back to the Future films and, at the same time, trying to give fans something new. It has been pretty successful thus far but issue #3 unfortunately fails to capitalize on both goals of the comic. At the same time, the second portion of the book is a little too “far fetched,” and we are talking about a graphic novel based on movies involving time travel.

The book begins with Doc telling his sons a tale about his encounter with George McFly and Lorraine Baines in 1955 after Marty heads back to 1985. It seems both of Marty’s future parents are looking for “Calvin Klein,” since they are both having relationship issues. Seems Calvin is the only problem solver for both of them. Doc tries to handle matters himself despite the fact that he knows nothing about each of these people.

It’s definitely interesting to see how the future Mr. and Mrs. McFly react to Marty’s sudden disappearance, as we, the audience, would forever wonder how that would go down back in the day. Making George and Lorraine have problems in light of Marty’s absence is a wonderful angle to play, but the patching up of things happens way too easily, which makes the whole time spent reading the story as it happens kind of weak.

The second part of the book has old Biff working the time machine in 2015 to go back to 1955. His working of the time circuits is a simple knock of his cane; however, this sends back to the Jurassic age and the elderly Tannen encounters a dinosaur. How he escapes is pretty ridiculous and cartoon like, and even though this is a comic book, if we are supposed to believe this really happened “behind the scenes” in the films then I call blasphemy. Getting away from the T-Rex in Back to the Future: The Ride is more credible than this.

Ultimately, Back to the Future #3 starts off strong but drops low in the middle and stumbles across the finish line. After the great issue #2, my anticipation for this one was high. Sadly, at the end of it all, I wanted the storylines to make like a tree and get outta here.

Rating: 6/10

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Logan J. Fowler is a senior writer and video game editor on Pop-Break.com. He contributes his thoughts every week for Trailer Tuesday and ABC’s The Goldbergs.” Logan’s “kid at heart” nature has led to his discussion about pop culture that many geeks love to talk about, including superheroes, Super Mario Bros., Pixar, and Muppets, among other things. In addition, one of his first pieces for the site, “Top Ten Comic Book Movies,” was picked as a “Freshly Pressed” piece by WordPress and remains one of the site’s most well-read articles. Many of Logan’s friends have said that he moonlights as Spider-Man but this is so not true. Wait, are those police sirens I’m hearing?! Gotta go! -thwipp-
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