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Buy your way across the centuries in Action Lab's crazy graphic novel, Time Shopper
Time Shopper, a refreshing and wildly hilarious new original graphic novel set to be published in January of 2020 from indie publisher Action Lab, takes the tantalizing concept of personal monetary gain while tripping across the time stream and shifts it into maximum overdrive — and SYFY WIRE has an exclusive early look inside all the wackiness!
Written by Tony Fleecs (My Little Pony, Star Wars) and injected with whimsical art by acclaimed cartoonist Christian Meesey and colors via Brad Simpson, Time Shopper is a wildly irreverent descent into pulp science fiction and insane millennial culture, all revolving around a slacker shot back in time to prevent the world's wars, tragedies, and atrocities.
However, this humanitarian mission also happens to be the perfect opportunity to purchase a ton of cheap stuff due to everything being so inexpensive along the highways of time. Think Back to the Future meets Rick and Morty and you'll start to feel the optimistic pulse of this fun project.
"When I had the idea for this book, one of the first things I thought of was the scene in Back to the Future Part II when Doc gives Marty that suitcase full of money," Fleecs tells SYFY WIRE. "So we didn't do any direct homages to it in the book, but I feel like anyone making any time-travel story is sort of paying homage to Back to the Future. They set up all the rules so definitively that you can just skip over all sorts of exposition. Now everybody in the world already knows how time travel works because Doc Brown told them about it years ago."
“On the surface, the story's about that universal feeling of 'Man! I wish I could've bought that thing before it got so expensive' that everybody feels every day, from real estate to concert tickets," Fleecs explains. "And going into it, I didn't have any big ideas about what I wanted the story to mean. I just knew I wanted it to be funny. But as I got into outlining the thing, I realized that it's really about buyer’s remorse and how there's nothing you can buy that beats good human interaction."
For Meesey, the book's visual style is grounded in reality, but with highly detailed cartoony aspects.
"I’m a huge Arthur Adams and Todd McFarlane fan, as well as a fan of Kyle Baker and Mort Drucker," Meesey reveals to SYFY WIRE. "So, as much as I cater the artwork to fit the script, some of those influences always shine through. Kind of like ‘90s Image Comics mixed with old-school MAD Magazine.
“It has stakes, and covers some serious historical instances, but it’s more Rick and Morty or Bill & Ted than Somewhere in Time," he adds. "So I mainly hope people have a good time with it, think about history and stuff, get some laughs (at least one on every page!), and enjoy Carl’s entertaining, though often head-shaking, misadventures. Above all, I had a blast drawing and collaborating with the hilarious Tony Fleecs, and packed as many gigawatts of Pure Fun into the book as possible.”
Now grab your wallet and leap into the time current for our exclusive look at Action Lab's Time Shopper in the full gallery below, then let us know if you'll be watching for this amusing graphic novel when it arrives in late January of 2020.
