‘Time Before Time #1’ (review)

Written by Declan Shalvey
and Rory McConville
Art by Joe Palmer
Published by Image Comics

If everything is hopeless, maybe there is refuge in the past?

Perhaps a far distant future?

For the right price you can find out, but there are no guarantees.

Tatsuo knows all of this.

As a member of the Syndicate, he smuggles anyone with the right money and connections wherever they want to go for a fresh start. He may not get to decide who deserves a do-over, but hey, at least the pay is okay.

But no one wants to live this kind of life forever.

Dodging through time, risking the illness that can accompany it, being stuck in time-travel pods and drafty warehouses, friends Tatuso and Oscar want something more for themselves.

The present and the future are bleak.

Maybe there’s a better place for them somewhere in the past.

The Syndicate is good at what they do, though, tracking people through time. It would be madness to try something as risky as stealing one of their pods.

Sometimes madness is the only thing you’ve got left. A year later, Oscar and Tatuso make their plan for escape. Everything looks like it will go according to plan, up until the moment it doesn’t.

They get separated. Tatsuo gets sent on another mission, while Oscar gets left behind.

When Tatsuo gets back, even sicker than he was during his last mission, his boss Helgi calls him in for a chat.

Seems that in the time it took Tatsuo to get his latest client settled, Oscar was sent on another run that didn’t go so well–for him or for the client whose goods he was smuggling.

Their plans for a better future–in the past–are immediately scrapped. Whatever adventures Tatsuo has now are going to have to be enough for the two of them.

Tatsuo knows what he needs to do now, and it isn’t wrapping up the run that Oscar left unfinished.

Someone else has other plans, though, and it looks like Tatsuo may be in for one more job after all.