Written by Marcus Perry
Illustrated by Tony Donley
Published by Action Lab Entertainment
I have here the first four issues of a comic book entitled Albert Einstein, Time Mason from Action Lab Entertainment.
As it happens, I’ve always had a weakness for time travel stories. For many years now, I’ve also been intrigued by the genre of taking historical figures and building fictional adventures around them, such as Ron Goulart’s Groucho Marx mysteries and Robert Lee Hall’s Ben Franklin detective stories.
As you might expect, a book with a title like Albert Einstein, Time Mason combines both genres.
It also offers up some good old fashioned, easy to follow comic art along with an increasingly mysterious sci-fi plot.
We start out meeting a middle-aged version of the Professor, already in the midst of attempting to rescue his own brain, which was taken far into the future at his death. Rather than hit the reader over the head with an origin story, we are filled in here and there at a rather leisurely pace as we go along.
Basically, the pitch would be, “What if the man who discovered the Theory of Relativity was, himself, a Time Lord?”
Some sharp and witty writing from Marcus Perry makes that work from issue to issue and the art, by Terry Donley, resembles an odd but intriguing combination of 1970s-era Joe Staton and 1980s-era Howard Chaykin. Every once in a while, a hint of manga influence slips in, too. It’s a combination of styles I wouldn’t necessarily expect to work and yet the evidence to the contrary is right in front of me.
Don’t want to say too much about the actual plot because this is one of those comic books where the less you know going in, the more fun you have as you ride along. It’s a book about time and it’s about time we got a book this entertaining.
Booksteve recommends.
