IDW; $19.99 

In October 2015, IDW began a new Back to the Future ongoing comic series during the year of the movie’s 30th anniversary and more specifically, the time when Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to the future in October 2015. The comic began with five issues of anthology style storytelling that was collected in the trade paperback, Back to the Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines. 

Back to the Future creator/screenwriter Bob Gale was the main writer on the series, joined by John Barber and Erik Burnham. The stories took place in multiple timelines, starting in the 1890s when Doc tells his children how he met Marty, then in 1943 Doc is a young scientist trying to work with a famous scientist. Some of the stories included Marty dealing with a bully, George and Lorraine McFly hitting relationship bumps during college, Clara’s history is revealed, and readers see the dangers of the government having access to time travel.  

The trade is a fun companion to the movie trilogy, plumbing the never ending supply of potential stories that the time traveling series has to offer. It fulfills our Back to the Future needs, complete with convoluted science, Marty’s trouble with bullies and other teenage issues, and Doc teaching him lessons through his scatterbrained antics. Art duties were handled by Brent Schoonover, Dan Schoening, and others, who capture the family-friendly humor with cartoony depictions of the time traveling pair. 

–Amanda Sheriff