Advance Review: ‘Time Before Time’ #26 Deftly Begins The Series’ Conclusion
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
While this script in this sometimes confusion story is straightforward, the visuals could use considerable improvement. The level of detail just isn’t there, which is shame given that this long-running series will soon reach its planned end.
Overall
8/10For a series that has been around for more than 25 issues, bringing a story to a conclusion can be a difficult job of storytelling. When that story involves lots of characters who are skipping through time like a flat stone on a still lake, it can be downright impossible.
Yet the creative team behind Time Before Time is skipping away in this latest issue. What could have been an impossible-to-navigate mess instead reads as a pretty straightforward tale of revenge and redemption. That’s a testament to writers Rory McConville and Declan Shalvey. Their earlier chapters haven’t always been so easy to digest. Yet, just when you think they are slight back into their old bad habits, the pair surprises you.
As we learned last issue, Nadia remains hellbent on punishing the mob-life Syndicate for killing her friend Tatsuo. She’s been traveling back and forth through time to destroy the Syndicate’s facilities and kill their soldiers. But now the organization has laid a trap for her, and it’s up to Tatsuo (who is very much not dead, at least for now) to save her.
There’s plenty of side characters and other drama to round out the story, but at its core, McConville and Shalvey understand the heart of the series they’ve created as well as how to keep that heart pumping.
These later story arcs have had different artists, with Geoffo having the honor of illustrating the conclusion. The panels in Time Before Time have never been drawn with exquisite detail, but Geoffo’s illustrations seem even more scaled down. Several panels lack any background at all, save for some word balloons. He does, though, pull off an interesting split screen with Nadia and her sister arguing. It’s not particularly original, but it does serve as a visual highlight for this issue.
If the visuals in this last arc can improve to match the quality of the script, Time Before Time will have an ending worthy of its long tenure. Time will tell.
Time Before Time #26 will be available for purchase tomorrow.
