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Writer: Mark Millar

Penciller: Sean Gordon Murphy

Colorist: Matt Hollingsworth

Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos

Writer Mark Millar is a polarizing creator, but with the recent critical success of Starlight, interested in his work has been reignited. Teaming the author with a killer creative team including both artist Sean Gordon Murphy and the excellent colors of Matt Hollingsworth & letters of Chris Eliopoulos should be a case for instant success. Fortunately, Chrononauts #1 reads as if it is cut from the same cloth of Starlight. The tale builds out a world and personality for our characters recalling some of the intense interpersonal work that Millar crafted in what is arguably his strongest Big Two work: The Ultimates.

Within the space of this one issue Millar fills these characters with heart and nuance. Corbin Quinn and Danny Reilly are both written with an immense amount of pathos and love in this tale. As soon as this comic establishes these two as interesting human beings with engaging backstories, it starts collapsing and shifting the dynamic. The high science aspects of this issue take a similar approach to the works this story is based off of like Back to the Future with similar color schemes, aesthetics, and heart. Those influences suit this comic well, and so long as we invest in the two personalities of these characters throughout the more action heavy parts of this story, Chrononauts is likely going to be a tale that’s engaging during the full span of the story.

Artist Sean Gordon Murphy is an incredible asset to the storytelling of this issue. Millar’s focus on cinematic presentation simply requires excellent artists fleshing out his environments and spreads added to the work. Perhaps the most mesmerizing sequences of this comic are the incredible instances of technology in which Murphy draws futuristic vehicles with all the bells and whistles that futuristic machinery could possibly have. Millar has always worked with top flight artists in the industry, and with the right project he and Murphy are a match made in comic book heaven. The vehicles aren’t the only excellent part of this comic, office spaces and scenic vistas are jam-packed with an immense amount of detail. This is the comic that you remove the staples from and tack to the wall. A crowd shot in the middle of the tale is filled with individuals that Murphy pencils in an immense amount of detail. Due to the nature of the title, time travel is a necessary component to the book – which is another strength of the penciller. The eras represented here feel authentic and unique. This book jumps to the future and the past, so clarity is a requirement.

The personal lives of our main characters is fleshed out to an excellent degree, giving them the right amount of emotion and comedic elements. On multiple occasions, I was shocked with just how funny this story was. Murphy and Millar both nail the comedic elements of this story with some physical humor from the leads to small instances of funny fervor hiding in the background of this story. More importantly, this comic never strays too far into either comedy or drama, but instead moves into the dramedy section of entertainment, as the stakes for our heroes is clearly and cleanly laid out amongst the first installment of this story.

Cinematic is a term that is sometimes daunting for the medium. It’s something that can absolutely be applied in this context, with a story that is lighter on dialogue and heavier on splash pages and big wide panels. These stories mix great on the comic store shelf next to complicated pieces covered with dialogue. Still, these cinematic comics shouldn’t read like movie scripts, they should read like comics. The medium should be taken advantage of at all times. That attitude of trying to get everything up on the screen is a turn off, and something that has distracted fans from Millar’s own writing. Chrononauts #1 reads like a comic, and it’s made all the better for being written, drawn, and created as such.

Have you seen the movie Interstellar? Director Christopher Nolan (pictured, via) wrote a comic to reveal a back story for two characters: Dr. Mann (played by Oscar winner Matt Damon) and his robot SKIPP.

Wired posted “Absolute Zero” in its entirety on the magazine’s website. The 7 page comic will also appear in the print edition; Nolan is serving as the guest editor for this issue which focuses on themes of time, space, and multiple dimensions. Animator Sean Gordon Murphy created the artwork for this project.

Here’s more about the comic book: “Before Cooper left his daughter to find humanity a new home in space, there were the Lazarus missions. Led by Dr. Mann, this was NASA’s first attempt to locate a hospitable exoplanet. So what happened to Mann on the other side of the wormhole? We teamed Christopher Nolan with award-winning comic-book artist Sean Gordon Murphy to tell Mann’s story.” (via The Hollywood Reporter)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Look, The Beat had a bad day yesterday and made lots and lots of mistakes. Tonight we’re getting a full five hours of sleep and things should be much better. Okay? Sorry about all that, but it happens. Our “hire a copy editor” fund is to the right in the box marked “Patreon.”

Also, it is going to snow soon, so send hot cocoa.

Photo of Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold via Geoff Johns’ Instagram

§ The Wrap looks at all the LGBT actors being hired for superhero roles, like Ezra Miller in that far off Flash movie, Ellen Page in the X-Men movies and Wentworth Millar as Captain Cold:

“I’d like to believe the industry is more LGBT-friendly,” openly gay actor Wentworth Miller, who stars as villain Captain Cold on CW’s “The Flash, told TheWrap, “I see LGBT characters on TV and I can think of actors who are out and paying the rent. Again, mostly on TV. Most out actors I can name are either exclusively or primarily associated with television. I don’t know why that is, why I can’t think of more out movie actors. It feels like change might be coming more slowly on the feature side.”

§ Do you remember the first time that comics tried to break the internet? Brian Cronin does. It did not involve photoshop nor an oiled up butt, but it did involve a superhero believed dead!!!

§ First Seconds’s blog questions some of its authors on self publishing vs publishing. Self-publishing involves many trips to the post office so be forewarned.

§ Dr Naif al-Muawa describes the time he had to go to the police station and defend himself on charges of being a heretic:

“Leading up to it, there’s been a whole series of death threats.” Mutawa chatted with Al-Monitor on the margins of the World Innovation Summit on Education (WISE) last week in Doha, where he was on the opening panel. He’s facing a lawsuit by a self-proclaimed defender of the Sunni faith as well as a recent fatwa from the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, both of whom have attacked “THE 99″ for allegedly disparaging Islam — even though both the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments gave their blessing for the project years ago. “I went there with my lawyer and when I was asked the question at the police station, I just burst out laughing,” Mutawa told Al-Monitor. “It’s just so ludicrous what’s happening. I’m the one who’s giving Islam a bad name? I’ve been giving Islam a good name for over 10 years.” “It’s very schizophrenic,” he added. “They keep honoring me from here, and then they sue me from here — it’s like they don’t know what to do with me.”

§ Comics news I missed in yesterday’s meltdown — a new comic from the Mark Millar and Sean Gordon Murphy team called Chrononauts. It is very very pretty and will look great when they turn it into a movie as they do with all Mark Millar projects.

Described by Millar as “Apollo 13 meets The Time Machine,” Chrononauts aims for big sci-fi fun that will appeal to fans of last summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy. “‘Man’s first step into the past’ was really the starting point for this, planting an American flag in the soil the day before even Columbus arrives,” Millar says. “But of course it all goes horribly wrong and so we have these two guys stranded in the time-stream, trying to get home, but at the same time at this incredible advantage the people around them don’t have.” It’s a deliberate step away from the grounded and more serious sci-fi fare of recent memory, an escapist time travel adventure in the vein of Doctor Who. “It’s essentially a buddy story about two best friends who can jump around between 16th-century Persia, the American Civil War or New York in the ’20s,” Millar says.

§ Comics event in Riga, Latvia, courtesy of kuš!

§ I was cleaning out some links and was reminded that Meathaus has a blog, mostly posting really cool art, like this from Christine Bian. In case you weren’t around 15 years ago, Meathaus ws a comics/art anthology that featured early works by Brandon Graham, Tomer Hanuka, Farel Dalrymple and James Jean among others. No big whoop.

§ The Batman tv show DVD is out and I have a copy. That is the only thing I wanted for my birthday so I’m super happy. Mark Evanier has a few comments including photographic evidence of him Adam Ward was made to look dumpy via the positioning of his Bat logo.

§ Evanier’s piece led me to this well researched and somewhat definitive piece on how the show finally got released after decades of legal wrangling and neglect.

The wait is over. Next week, Batman hits retail in all its kitsch-laden glory just in time for the holidays. After decades of rumors, corporate wrangling, and the foresight of an actor who recorded his commentary early in case he dropped dead before the collection materialized, the series finally escapes legal purgatory. But don’t give much credit to corporate lawyers. Instead, it’s due to a tireless, clever campaign by a small band of fans that started when Stacks started digging into the show’s archived paper trail. “That’s when one fat guy in Florida shook the whole thing up,” he says.

Indeed in reading the story about the conflict—which pitted Warner and Fox against one another with the scattered heirs of producer William Dozier in the mix—one is struck by just HOW LITTLE CORPORATIONS WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN. If it hadn’t been for dogged fans and the vision of Eric Ellenbogen at Classic Media this might never have happened at all, and Warner and Fox execs were mostly engaged in a war of “I don’t want the other guy to have the money!!!”. Ellenbogen, who was briefly a high level mucky muck at Marvel, is a preatty smart executive when you look at all the deals he’s made. But see the next post for more on that..

Among the fun facts in the piece: Mark Hamill had Fox make him a special VHS copy of the entire series; and Adam West recorded audio commentary years ago before there was even a DVD in case he passed away before it was finally put on the media storage of the moment. West is 86 and we’re very glad he lived to see this, even if his uniform was dumpy.

§ A look behind another nerd lore classic: James Dallas Egbert III, a troubled teen whose dissapearance in a bunch of tunnels in 1979 sparked protests against D&D. Police believed that Egbert had wandered into the tunnels as some kind of role playing thing (The term LARPing may not have been invenetd then) casting a lot of shade on the then-underground game. The truth, however, was much sadder.

§ Finally, Ellen Pao, a Silicon Valley whistle blower who filed a lawsuit for harassment which laid open a lot of the tech industries sexism, is now acting CEO of Reddit. Good luck with that!