Zeb Larson reviews Chrononauts #3…
From ancient Rome to the roaring twenties to the 1980s music scene, Corbin and Danny— the world’s first time travelers—continue to wreak havoc with the time-stream, and get into more hijinks with some of history’s most notorious figures! And it’s all happening while the world—and their bosses—are watching!
Chrononauts really throws any pretense of precaution to the wind in this issue as the characters embark on a wild chase through time. Corbin and Reilly do their best to throw off their pursuers, but they didn’t realize just how many people are out to get them. The result is a bloodbath spanning across multiple centuries, and a host of new problems as their choices are catching up to them. I will be discussing spoilers in this review, so keep reading only if you don’t mind or if you’ve already the issue.
In 1986, Danny is playing with the Smiths while Corbin is in 1929 New York. Danny gets a telegram from himself saying that he needs to go back and rescue Corbin, who has just been kidnapped by an angry Lucky Luciano. Corbin is saved by Mannix and escapes just long enough to find Danny, and they try to lose their pursuers by jumping to as many different time periods as possible (and devastating them in the process). They finally lose their pursuers and end up back in Samarkand, where they decide to bury the remaining suit and disappear in history. Unfortunately, the men they trusted to bury it aren’t so trustworthy, and they demand to know how it works.
Things fell apart rather messily, didn’t they? There wasn’t any other way this could have gone down, though. It’s not as though either of the time-hoppers made an effort to make friends or ensure people’s loyalty. Even when they didn’t piss people off, they left a trail that just about anybody could follow or piece together. Given the wealth and power that they managed to build for themselves, it’s not surprising that somebody might try to come along and steal it. Sure enough, that’s pretty much exactly what has happened.
What else is there to say about this issue? It’s pretty action driven and this is the penultimate issue, so this is much of what we’re going to get. There’s an interesting bit of character development between Corbin and Danny once they arrive in Samarkand. Corbin expresses regret that amidst everything he didn’t stop to help his father with his alcoholism. Reilly points out the naiveté in that statement, which really says worlds about how much thought Corbin and Reilly really put into time travel. They seem to have thought that you could just go back and tinker with things, not expecting there to be consequences for those actions.
Well, this series is almost over, and I think it should go out with a big bang. Besides, we still need to figure out how Danny sent that telegram to himself. If nothing else, the last issue should be a fun one.
Zeb Larson
https://youtu.be/8HTiU_hrLms?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published May 13, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
