Good news – Back to the Future has returned in comic book form. And so far, I’ve been collecting all of them. Today, a look at “Citizen Brown”, the five episode mini-series (from 2016) based on the Back to the Future video game (which was released in late 2010). I’ll summarize the comic highlights here, and mention a couple of the format differences towards the end.
OUT OF THE PAST
We open in issue one on May 15th, 1986. The DeLorean appears outside Marty’s home with a tape recorded message inside, from Doc, saying he’s in trouble. Last time departed reads Aug 18th, 1931. Trying to do some research on the era, Marty is directed to Edna Strickland (said to be the older sister of Vice Principal Strickland), who has copies of old newspapers from that time period. Through Edna, Marty learns that Doc (under the pseudonym “Carl Sagan”) was killed, possibly by Kid Tannen.
Marty travels to 1931. Doc’s in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, and they need to get him out before he gets shot. Doc suggests to Marty that he use the rocket powered drill invented by his younger self to accomplish that. As the young Emmett Brown is a law clerk, Marty helps with delivering a subpoena to Arthur McFly, in order to get access to the drill. (Arthur McFly is Kid Tannen’s accountant.) Using the drill, Doc escapes, but before they can time travel away, Marty starts to fade from existence, ending the issue.
Issue two opens with them realizing (via the newspaper Marty pinched from Edna) that Arthur McFly gets beaten and left for dead the next day (instead of Carl Sagan being shot). Doc takes them back in time to the temporal disturbance (delivering the subpoena), and they grab Arthur before he can be attacked. Arthur can’t leave town, as he needs to meet Sylvia, Marty’s grandmother, but they convince him to lay low, then return to the present.
It’s a present where Biff Tannen has a bunch of siblings, and they own Marty’s neighbourhood, because Kid Tannen never went to jail. Marty evades the Tannens with Doc’s help. Doc knows that Kid Tannen was supposed to be betrayed by the singer Trixie Trotter (and arrested by Danny Parker) back in 1931, but he wasn’t. Marty and Doc go back to November of that year to see what went wrong.
Apparently Trixie had been motivated to flip on Tannen by talking to Arthur McFly. In trying to get the two to meet back up, they run into more trouble with Kid Tannen, which requires enlisting the help of the young Emmett Brown again. They succeed in getting Tannen, but this time the young Edna Strickland (courtesy of her subplot) ends up hooking up with the young Emmett. That causes Doc to fade from existence even as they’re time travelling back to 1986, ending the issue.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Issue three finds Marty in an alternate 1986 with a broken DeLorean (owing to crashing into a billboard). He spends time exploring the new Hill Valley, which is under the control of one Citizen Brown – it’s a totalitarian government. After Marty meets Jennifer (his ex), Biff (brainwashed), and his family (his dad’s a peeping Tom on a grand scale), Marty gets himself arrested in order to see Citizen Brown (Doc) personally.
Marty manages to convince Citizen Brown about the time machine, but as they go to see it, they are ambushed by Edna, Citizen Brown’s wife. She sees the town as a well-ordered utopia, and doesn’t want Marty interfering. Marty is restrained, while Citizen Brown will get a “treatment” to forget about all of this. That ends issue three.
In issue four, Jennifer and Marty’s family help Marty to escape, and he in turn frees Citizen Brown. They go to repair the DeLorean. That will take some time – but once it’s done, Brown reasons he can time travel back to now. He ends up arriving a bit late, yet they still manage to escape (as Biff seems to blow Edna up accidentally), travelling back to 1931. Except it’s December, not November; the time circuits are mis-calibrated. Citizen Brown isn’t sure how to fix it, so they’ll have to do what they can here.
Marty’s goal is to split up Emmett and Edna, and he enlists Trixie’s help to do it. But Citizen Brown starts to have second thoughts – his past self looks happy, and Edna’s future according to Marty (living alone and hoarding newspapers) has him considering alternatives. So when Marty’s plan succeeds, and Marty goes off to restore young Emmett’s passion for science, Citizen Brown meets with young Edna, talking with her to end issue four.
HOW THE WEST WAS WON
The last issue of the series has Marty assisting young Emmett in being part of the Science Expo, only to realize that if everything’s successful, Citizen Brown will be erased from existence, along with the repaired DeLorean. He races back to find Doc, but young Edna hears the two of them talk about “returning to 1986”. She pulls a gun on them. In the confusion, Citizen Brown is shot, and as Edna steals the time machine, he fades from existence.
Now stuck in 1931, Marty thinks fourth dimensionally. He sends a letter to Doc, to be delivered January 3rd, 1985. In it, Marty asks the Doc to modify a second DeLorean into a time machine, and to keep it well hidden, so that Marty can be rescued later (ie- now). It works, but no sooner has Doc arrived to pick Marty up, then the entire town starts fading from existence. There is only a marker saying that Hill Valley burned to the ground on April 3rd, 1876.
Realizing this was Edna’s doing, they go back to April 2nd, and catch her trying to set fire to the saloon (what Edna deems as the source of Hill Valley’s sin). The appearance of Mad Dog Tannen’s father only makes the situation worse, but some quick thinking by Marty prevents any disaster from occurring. They bring Edna back to 1931, Doc reasoning that her DeLorean was erased along with the Citizen Brown timeline – or if not, it’s existence will simply be attributed to “ancient aliens”.
As Edna is convinced to turn herself in for a crime she committed in 1931 (again, from her subplot), Marty discovers that Arthur and Trixie are getting married. But it’s okay – Trixie’s real name is Sylvia Miskin from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is Marty’s grandmother, Trixie was a stage name. With that, we return to the present, where we finally learn why Doc was in 1931 in the first place… he was doing research on the McFly family tree to present a birthday gift to Marty.
IN SUMMARY
Overall, the characters are true to form and the plot is interesting. It’s definitely worth a read, whether you know about the Back to the Future film trilogy or not.
The reason I feel it’s accessible to those who don’t know the movie trilogy is it makes no reference to the source material, aside from the fact that Marty knows Doc, who had built a time machine. (Of course, the ancestor references won’t mean as much to you.) It’s also a good read if you know the movies but haven’t played the game, as you’ll be able to see additional details I left out (there is a subplot with Doc’s father too). Conversely, if you have played the game, you’ll be able to see what details they dropped.
For instance, in the game, Einstein (Doc’s dog) is present in the DeLorean at the start, leading Marty to Edna and her newspapers, versus it being a tape recorder. And towards the end of the game, there is a DeLorean chase as they try to take remote control of Edna’s DeLorean in 1876 (and it indeed vanishes upon their return to 1931). There are a number of changes like this in the name of efficiency, as the game was designed to be lengthier, but nothing felt unexplained or out of place in the comic. Of note, Bob Gale (co-creator of the movie trilogy) was involved with both versions.
The other thing this comic does well is show how small changes to a timeline can create bigger ripples. The Emmett and Edna relationship was particularly interesting in my mind, in that it needed more than one nudge to get going, but once it was in place, it was equally difficult to pull the two of them apart.
Related, you get to see more of the “ripple effect” (as Doc calls it in the second movie) regarding people getting erased from time, along with some fun head scratching temporal mechanics. Of course, the timeline shifts do seem to be tied to the narrative, versus any particular cause-and-effect time frame (compare the first movie, where Marty had a full week before his changes caught up to him). We also must presume things like the DeLorean getting refuelled occur off-panel.
Finally, the story also helps to expand on the family tree for the McFlys, the Tannens, and even Mr. Strickland. While it is not “canon” per se, Bob Gale (in an introduction to issue one) remarks that, “when you have a time machine and a premise that allows for alternate pasts, presents and futures, everything is “canon”.” So, I’d give a thumbs up to supporting this comic mini-series, which provides a clever take on the familiar movie characters. Agree? Disagree? Please do let me know, if you have the time.
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