After a year on store shelves, publisherDSTLRYcontinues to impress with its slate of genre-defying prestige-format comics - including a brand-new miniseries,Time Waits, from Chip Zdarsky, David Brothers, and Marcus To. ScreenRant can share an exclusive new preview - and spoiler-free review - for the time travel drama, which hits shelves on September 11th.
Time Waits#1 is an accomplished genre story that clearly loves humanity as much as its own genre tropes.
DSTLRY’s latest science fiction miniseries,Time Waitsby Zdarsky, Brothers, and To, like other time travel tales before it, stars a man lost in time - but in this case, former solider Blue is lost “on purpose.” After failing to complete a morally-fraught time travel mission,Blue chooses to leave his time behind to make a life in the present day in a small town with his love, Grace- the town’s friendly sheriff - and their shared cast of friends and loved ones.
TIME WAITS #1 (2024)
September 11th, 2024
Variant Covers:
Sean Phillips, Chip Zdarsky, Steve Lieber, Adam Warren, Matt Taylor
Join Chip Zdarsky, David Brothers, and Marcus To for a sci-fi adventure that defies expectation and time itself! Meet Blue, a man trapped in the past, which is our present. Sent back in time for a mission he could not bring himself to complete, the former soldier Blue builds a life with Grace, the Sheriff of a small rural town. The pair build a foundation of happiness on a history of bloodshed, as far away from the trigger-happy corporate overlords that used Blue as a human gun. After ten years together, Blue and Grace are on the cusp of taking the next step in their relationship: adoption. Before Grace can fully convince Blue to expand their family, the future comes calling. The overlords want their first deserter and to complete the mission Blue could not. They have one simple rule: kill anyone who stands in their way. The first of four miniseries by Chip Zdarsky from DSTLRY! Every issue from DSTLRY is presented in our perfect bound Prestige format, featuring wraparound covers with spot gloss on robust cover stock, complemented by 48 pages of exquisite interior stock. It’s the DSTLRY difference.
But every story needs its conflict, andall is not well in Blue’s life- and it’s not just his fear of adopting a child and becoming a father, nor his frustrating forays into domestic hobbies. As Grace looks to their family’s future, Blue’s military past comes back to haunt them - and that past is not afraid to bring the firepower.
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Time WaitsBrings Real Heart to a Classic Sci-Fi Concept
Characters Drive the Story
Time Waits#1 is an accomplished genre story that clearly loves humanity as much as its own genre tropes. Unique in being a time travel story that spends almost as much time on Blue’s attempts at vegetable gardening - a handy and astute metaphor for both domesticity and the desire for control over one’s environment - as it does on the action sequences with nifty futuristic weapons,Time Waitsexemplifies all that works well for DSTLRY:balancing high-concept genre comicswith what’s obviously intense emotional connection from its creators.
Did you catch the manga references in the preview pages? Zdarsky and Brothers, along with other industry professionals Deb Aoki and Christopher Butcher, host a “beginner’s” manga podcast, Mangasplaining, which is available on Spotify, Apple, and theMangasplaining website.
And there is a clear emotional connection inTime Waits#1, which will find its readers not through its action - though the action scenes are well-done, if familiar in their scope - but rather through its characters and their internal lives and interpersonal connections. Blue is billed as the star of the show, and his relationships with Grace and his other friends around town are, of course, important to the issue, but the real scene-stealer andheart of the story is Duke, a young podcast-loving kid, and particularly his relationship with Grace, who adores him like a son.
Time WaitsStands Out for Its Emotional Core
What Other Time Travel Stories Sometimes Lack
Duke’s place in the story - and Grace’s love for him - means that the real conflict here has nothing to do with the military and time travel and all the other beloved action-oriented sci-fi trappings. What makesTime Waitsworth reading, amongall the other time travel storiescomic readers and TV and movie watchers could spend their time on, isBlue’s central emotional question: can he let go of his own violent, complicated past to shape a new kind of future with a new kind of family? Can he relinquish his fear in order to find his place in the world?
Time Waitsis a story about destiny, fate, and control - apt themes for a time travel tale.
These big, emotional story beats - as quietly as they’re depicted in the first issue’s thematically-geared establishing scenes - are perfectly supported by To and the other artists, including Marvin Sianipar, colorist Matt Wilson, and letterer Ariana Maher. To is an industry stalwart perhaps best known by superhero comics readers for his work with DC and Marvel, andhis art here is as accomplished and emotionally nuanced as ever.
Wilson’s colors, though, stand out as essential toTime Waits’time-flipping narrative structure, guiding the reader through flashbacks and small-town scenes both. The art, as always in DSTLRY’s art-forward publishing slate, is enhanced by the oversize, prestige magazine format, and will be a particular treat to read for fans of these artists.
What IsTime WaitsReally About?
The Main Character Isn’t Just Lost in Time
At the end of the day,Time Waitsis a story about destiny, fate, and control - apt themes for a time travel tale, which only goes to show how seriously Zdarsky, Brothers, and To take genre storytelling. The best sci-fi stories, after all, embrace the genre and its attached tropes (and even clichés) as means to a human, character-driven end. Time travel, then, becomesan oversize metaphor for understanding the present, and in this case, Blue’s fear of his own past and how it may shape his future - but not the future he’s already run from.
Time Waitsis the first of four miniseries by Chip Zdarsky for DSTLRY. The next three have yet to be announced.
As one might expect from a Zdarksy comic, there’s a touch of humor here, too, and it’s right at home alongside the tomato gardens and fast-food bags and, yes, the time travel mechanisms. Though its story beats may, at times, feel familiar,Time Waitsembraces love for its genre, love for its characters, and love for how those two things fit together - and that love makes for a standout first issue. Fans of character-driven sci-fi - andhilariousChainsaw Manreferences- won’t want to missTime Waits#1, available September 11th, 2024 fromDSTLRYMedia.
DSTLRY
DSTLRY is a comic and collectibles publisher founded in 2023. Formed by former comiXology heads, DSTLRY is known for some more famous works such as “Gone” and “Spectregraph” and continues to expand to include a wide variety of genres and artists.
