My Time Machine

A seeker voyages past the end of human existence in this pensive yet whimsical science fiction fable from alt-comics mainstay Lay (Murderville). In 2020, a nameless 60-something protagonist who looks a lot like Lay climbs into a time machine built by her scientist ex-husband from the blueprints of H.G. Wells’s Time Traveler. Supplied with a jet pack, a digital music library, and a concertina, she hopes humanity will manage to extract itself from the troubles of her time. The answer is an emphatic no, as, moving ever forward, she visits a climate-decimated surveillance state, a wasteland inhabited by gun-toting child scavengers, an underwater California, and other visions of contemporary crises played out to devastating conclusions. “We’re the frogs that got used to the rising temperature,” an inhabitant of the future tell her. “You just got tossed in boiling water.” Much like The Time Machine, which Lay frequently references, ideas more than plot or character fuel this trip, as the protagonist enters into lengthy dialogues about the butterfly effect (“I wonder if some dead butterfly in the past resulted in the current president,” she muses) and other philosophical conundrums of time travel. The almost clinical intellectualism is softened by the artwork, with its appealing cartoon abstraction and human touch. Though it sometimes risks veering into polemic, this ends up as a hopeful meditation on the present’s responsibility to the future. (Oct.)