Last month we looked at the Back to the Future (BTTF) “Citizen Brown” comic book mini-series, which came out in 2016. This time, we’ll look at the six episode “Biff to the Future” mini-series that came out this year (2017). It’s an exploration of the alternate 1985 timeline, as seen in the second BTTF movie. Let’s follow along with Biff after he got the Sports Almanac, to see what might have been on display in the “Biff Tannen Museum”.
DARK BEGINNING
We begin on November 12th, 1955, with the scene from the second movie where Old Biff is presenting the Almanac to his younger counterpart in the car. Jump to the very next day, when Biff has to take his grandma to play the slots. Being too young to place a sports bet, he asks her to do it – and she doesn’t bet on the team he asked her to. He forces her to do it right – and she keeps the winnings.
A guy named Louie has noticed Biff, and says he can get the money back from grandma and help Biff bet, for a cut of the day’s winnings. Except Louie kills Grandma Tannen, and after seeing the Almanac, tries to kill Biff too. Biff kills him first. (I must say, I was not a fan of all the violence.) Biff buries Louie’s body, takes Louie’s money, tries to bribe Strickland with it to graduate high school (he’s already been held back), and gets expelled instead. Fast forward to March 28, 1958, and Biff winning his first million on a horse race, ending issue one.
Issue two opens on April 4, 1960. Biff Tannen, “the luckiest man on earth”, visits Hollywood. A man named Bernie Kessoff pitches making a film studio, but needs Biff’s funds to do it. Biff agrees. Bernie takes advantage of him, their film debut is a flop, and Biff learns that while he was away from Hill Valley, Lorraine and George McFly started a family. So Biff maneuvers Bernie into a situation with a horse race track owner (who didn’t want Biff to bet with him again), getting Bernie killed, and then Biff returns to his hometown, ending issue two.
“HELL” VALLEY
It’s 1971, and Biff bursts into a Hill Valley council meeting, wanting to override zoning bylaws. Strickland (on the council) will have none of it. In retaliation, Biff burns the school while framing Strickland, and thus gets his palatial house built. It’s constructed complete with a hidden shrine to Lorraine, which Biff’s wife finds, so she leaves him. Enter a shady man, who offers the wealthy Biff “new friends in the Nixon administration”.
Soon, Biffco is buying up property around town. But George McFly gets a message to be wary. Marty’s father meets with others in town who don’t trust Biff (including Strickland and Goldie Wilson), and they organize a protest – to no avail. Then, the night George is supposed to be honoured with an award, he receives a mystery phone tip. Too late, George discovers that Biff has been baiting him with anonymous messages, and George McFly dies at the end of issue three.
Issue four opens with Lorraine accepting marriage to Biff, in order to help her family. Biff then goes to Washington, meets the President, and decides to buy off politicians to keep Nixon in office (by repealing the 22nd amendment). By September 3, 1979, Nixon has helped Biff legalize gambling in Hill Valley, and the courthouse gets demolished to build Biff’s huge casino hotel. The resistance movement in town is again unsuccessful in stopping Biff – which is when Doc Brown shows up, ending the issue.
ENTER TIME TRAVEL
On May 1, 1983, Doc Brown reveals that he’s converted a refrigerator into a time travel chamber, but he had to cut some corners to make it work. They can send someone into the past, but only for four hours. After that, the flux energy will dissipate, snapping the time traveller back to the present. Powering it will also black out Hill Valley, which is a bit of a tipoff.
Strickland immediately volunteers, remembering a time (May 16, 1946) when he was stopped from sending young Biff to reform school. The principal travels back. However, at the pivotal moment, he sees his younger self (who had hair!) advocating for Biff instead. It was another teacher who had wanted to send Biff away. Unable to change the event, Strickland believes everything is his fault, and he returns to the present a broken man.
Doc decides to try himself next, planning to prevent the wedding of Biff’s parents on December 6, 1936. He makes it there, only to discover that Biff was already born, out of wedlock. Worse, when Doc returns to the present, Biff is there, having tracked the latest power outage. He has Doc committed, ending that issue, and catching us up to the alternate 1985.
BEYOND THE MOVIE
Issue six begins on February 4, 1986, hence after events of the second movie – but we follow along as if Marty never travelled back from 2015. Biff is running for president in 1988. His shady government friend says Biff needs an all-American family for that, so Biff sets about reuniting the McFlys (reasoning they can later be killed in a “terrorist attack”).
Later, while refurbishing the “Tannen Museum”, Doc Brown is spotted in a photo of Biff’s parents’ marriage. Biff puts two and two together (Almanac from the future plus photo from the past) and realizes Doc’s refrigerator must have been a time machine. When Marty then visits Doc in the sanitarium, having found old letters Doc wrote to him, Biff decides to take action.
Biff blackmails Doc into helping him time travel into the future, so that he can get information on the stock market. But Doc pulls a fast one, sending Biff to March 18, 1884, where he’s shot by “Mad Dog” Tannen. (This would explain why Old Biff might fade out in 2015, he’s no longer alive.) With Biff dead, and Lorraine inheriting his money, everyone can return Hill Valley to the way it was, ending the mini-series.
IN SUMMARY
This series is not for the very young, or the faint of heart. Someone literally dies in every issue except number 5, and even though much of the violence takes place in the background, it’s not pretty. Which I suppose is part of the point, as misery follows Biff around, but even Biff’s usually humorous malapropisms (“Let’s shake down this town” versus “shake up”) don’t seem funny in this environment.
That said, there are some interesting aspects to the series as well. I found the arc with Strickland through the issues to be of particular interest, examining how we can remember events differently, particularly if we have a desire to do so. And while we don’t see much of Marty, Doc is in full form for the last two issues, and indeed all of the main characters ring true when they appear.
There are also many nods to the movie series. For instance, issue 3 subtly harkens to the newspaper shifting from “George McFly Murdered” to “George McFly Honored” on the same date. A sequence in issue 5 between Goldie Wilson and Doc Brown (rehearsing his wedding objection) plays out like Marty and George McFly from the first movie (rehearsing saving Lorraine). Someone was paying attention to the details.
The series also adds a bit to the lore, explaining how Biff bought off the Hill Valley cops (he was owed money), got involved with Nixon (Biff owned the paper that would have broken Watergate), and adds how Biff would ultimately have come to a bad end regardless. Biff even gets a birthday, March 28th, though issue 5 reveals his birth certificate is a fake. It was also fun to see the time machine reinvented as a refrigerator, which was part of early drafts of the first movie (before it became the DeLorean we know).
On the whole, I would say that “Biff to the Future” might appeal to anyone who has an interest in dystopias, or time travel (naturally), but as compared to “Citizen Brown”, it feels less accessible to readers who don’t know the BTTF trilogy. In particular, there’s no real protagonist to root for here. (Maybe Lorraine, the only character to appear in all the issues aside from Biff himself, but she’s never an active force.) As such, events feel a bit disconnected, needing the movie mythos as a glue to hold the narrative together.
Again though, this mini-series is worth a look simply for the new take on time travel that occurs in the last couple of issues. Agree? Disagree? Please do let me know, if you have the time.
And in case you missed my last post…
Citizen Brown comic adapts BTTF video game
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