Weekly Comic Features: August 31, 2022

Go forward to go backward, but also go unfunded because academia sucks. 

Forever Forward  #1 (w: Zack Kaplan, a: Arjuna Susini)
​Publisher: Scout Comics

I feel like time travel has become another hot-button concept for comics recently, but because they come out so sporadically, we as readers feel less overwhelmed than by things like vampires or, Odin help us, Norse mythology. This book does its best to make time travel feel more grounded, more realistic, and more centered in today's world and timeline, but by doing so, they had to steep it in the miserable world of university-funded academia, and honestly, no one wants that. 

The main character is an insufferable PhD-hunting prat who's knocking off all the tropes of being a bad friend, to the extent I was less surprised when everyone got yeeted into the future, and more surprised that any of his "friends" showed up for his birthday at all. I think the story could be interesting - rarely do we have a full group of mostly-unscientific normies fighting their way as a team through the war-torn future - but it's going to be a slog if our lead continues to be as pretentious as he was in this issue (and weird flex to have him call out a historical figure that had their science stolen in the same breath as revealing himself as an Edison-stan.... k, sure). 

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Thunderbolts  #1 (w: Jim Zub, a:  Sean Izaakse)
​Publisher: Marvel Comics

Whenever a new movie or show is revealed or picks up some steam in the MCU, you can bet your bottom that a similarly-titled comic is going to come out to milk that hype. What's nice about the new Thunderbolts book is that it has effectively nothing to do with the MCU Thunderbolts (US Agent is there, but not there) and is entirely about poor Luke Cage having to deal with a rebrand with an unstable Clint Barton as his leading show-pony. As someone who deals in brands every day, Luke is gonna need a stiff drink, stat. 

They've already done a good job setting up some weird up-comings, like America Chavez spewing after a portal-making attempt and Gutsen Glory (not kidding) struggling to keep some strange energy/demon/spiritual awakening at bay. At the end of the day, I just really enjoy watching comic-based Clint be a hot-mess-express; makes me feel a lot better about what I've got going on in my own day-to-day, that's for sure.