Chrononauts is a limited series written by Mark Millar. For those who don’t know, these days Mark Millar is kind of the man when it comes to graphic novels and series runs. The movie rights to Millar’s stories typically get picked up before they even hit the shelves for their first issues. (Chrononauts is currently in development at Universal at the moment.) Millar’s original comic adaptations include Kick-Ass, Wanted, and Kingsman: The Secret Service, all of which were blockbuster movies in their own rights. Millar also penned many of the Marvel Ultimate Universe comics, including the Ultimates (the Ultimate Universe version of the Avengers) which served as the primary source material for Marvel’s The Avengers. Yeah, I know that the Avengers have been around for forever, but Millar ditched heroes with over the top costumes, fighting crazy villains without any supervision in favour of a more grounded, government sanctioned team. Millar also wrote the backbone of Marvel’s Civil War storyline, to be featured next year in Captain America: Civil War.
Chrononauts combines the time travelling antics of Back to the Future with the buddy adventure stylings of Lethal Weapon. In the near future archeologists keep rediscovering sites filled with modern technology, and the scientific community takes that as a hint that time travel is the way of the future. After an unmanned satellite style mission, two geniuses, Danny Rielly and Corbin Quinn, are the first to take the plunge through time, but of course everything first goes wrong, and then goes so right. Who would’ve thought that giving two geniuses with personal issues power over time would be a bad idea? By the third issue the boys have written Harry Potter and Breaking Bad, stolen legendary gangster Lucky Luciano’s girlfriend and jammed with the Beatles (playing them their own songs). Of course nothing last forever and the house of cards starts coming down. After a chase through time and space our heroes are left with nothing but their wits to save the day.
Overall Millar crafts a world full of light hearted adventure with excellent but fairly one dimensional characters. The emotional climax of the story is brought down by the length of the story, with audiences not having much invested in the characters after the four issues. Millar also forms continuity problems through time travel by not adhering to a specific set of rules when the past changes. While not a must read for everyone, fans of Millar’s work or time travel stories in general will certainly enjoy it. As a man who can recite almost the entire Back to the Future trilogy I give it two thumbs up.
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