Publisher: Valiant
Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Francis Portela
Editor: Tom Brennan
Release date: OUT NOW!!!
Price: $3.99

 

Remember when all you needed to know about time travel was epitomised by some bloke in a blue box with a companion. Well, make that bloke young and called Ivar, who hails from an ancient race of adventurers, swap the blue box for a tachyon compass and make call the companion Neela Sethi. And you have the essence of Ivar, Timewalker #5.

Neela Sethi has her own agenda and wants to alter history to save her father from a medical error. Throw Sethi’s future self into the chronological mix and those time lines are going to get mixed up good and proper. Neela Sethi does not hang about in her desire to alter time and she steals Ivar’s tachyon compass but not before stranding Ivar in a prehistoric past.

The trouble with time travel stories is you need a scorecard to remember who’s who, what’s what and when’s when and, even for comic books where death is little more than a temporary inconvenience it’s implicit in the very concept nothing that happens here is binding or permanent; it could all be undone next issue by a swift twirl of the old tachyon compass.

An Expertly told and expertly drawn time travelling adventure in a similar vein to a certain doctor, which is no bad thing, originality can be so overrated. And, given the choice between entertainment and being original, I’ll take entertainment and Ivar, Timewalker #5 any day of the week. Give Ivar, Timewalker #5 a read and you will too.

 

Reviewer: Gary Orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker