I have a love-hate relationship with time travel in fiction. I love the movies, TV, and of course, the comics that use it for emotional resonance and/or comedy: see Looper, Back to the Future, the Bill & Ted trilogy and X-Men: Days of Future Past (both the movie and comic). But I hate how some stories will often use it as a reset button whenever they’ve written themselves into a corner. Thankfully, Rifters #1 falls into the former category.
Rifters paints a world where time travel was once commonplace, but quickly became outlawed due to a corrupt president using the tech for his own gain and people committing various acts of chaos throughout history. Eventually the Regulators of Infinite and Finite Time Police – or R.I.F.T. for short – was formed to protect history. When R.I.F.T. agents Geller and Fenton travel to Prohibition-era Chicago to stop a duo of time-traveling influencers, things get out of hand fast.
The thing that makes Rifters #1 stand out isn’t its high-concept premise; it’s the fact that it’s utterly hilarious. Co-writers Brian Posehn and Joe Trohman have a ball with taking the piss out of the ways people would actually use time travel. This takes the form of a running gag where people take bets on what actually happened in history – how did Hitler die? Is Jesus Black? – and it had me cackling throughout. Even the opening doesn’t pull its punches, featuring a family taking a trip back to the time of the dinosaurs and the eventual carnage that follows.
Given that this is a time travel comedy, the right artist is needed to sell the hilarious moments as well as the more awesome moments of time travel. Chris Johnson rises to the challenge, with his art style providing an animated flair to expressions as well as movement. Characters move with briskness, hopping over obstacles or pulling out weapons (or a selfie stick, in the case of the fame-hungry ne’er-do-wells that kick off the plot.) The blending of cutting edge weaponry and time travel vehicles with the various time periods is also impressive; Johnson hurtles from D-Day to the Ice Age with an ease that’s near superhuman. Topping it all off is a set of warm colors from Mark Englert, and Joe Sabino’s energetic lettering.
If there’s one downside to Rifters #1, it’s that we don’t get much of a feel from Geller and Fenton. There are little tidbits – Geller is a stickler for detail, Fenton is more laid back – but the buddy comedy energy is lacking. Fingers crossed that future issues tackle this. As it stands, Rifters #1 is a fresh and funny take on the time travel genre, and the perfect title for folks enjoying Trohman’s work on The Holy Roller.
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