Past Aways #1 Review: Ho Hum

Time traveling teams aren’t anything new. There have been a ton of them with varying degrees of success. Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Dr. Who and an assistant and “Mirai Sentai Timeranger”(“Power Rangers: Time Force” in America) just to name a few. One of the more recent ones is “Past Aways” by Matt Kindt with art by Scott Kolins and it is one of the weakest team-ups to date.

In the future, some a dinosaur is wreaking havoc in Greece. The problem is the “Past Aways” has disbanded. So now Art, the leader of the group, is trying to bring everyone back together again.

Except for the dinosaur, the story is underwhelming so far. It’s traditional- the whole “get the gang back together/character introductions” in the first chapter are firm proof of this. The problem with the character introductions here is that we really don’t learn anything about the characters. What we do learn is that Art is the leader, Marge is some kind of the loose cannon born-again Christian and Ursula is suicidal for some reason. The others we don’t learn anything about.

Because of this weak introduction, the reader does not care about the characters, little less even attempt to remember their names. This also causes the reader to not only skim through the comic, but to put it away and not want to continue with the series.

The art is mostly not so great designs. The characters look generic and don’t stand out and the backgrounds are lacking. One of the biggest downsides is one of the spacecrafts we see in the middle. This may be the future, but the design of the ship and how it functions looks like it would not only not get off the ground, but break after its initial flight.

“Past Aways #1” is an underwhelming introduction to an idea that is tried and true. The story is ho-hum, the characters lack any depth and the art is mediocre. This is one comic should not be messing around with the space/time continuum.