NYCC 2023: Discussing The End Of `Time Before Time’ With Writers Declan Shalvey and Rory McConville

In 2021, Declan Shalvey and Rory McConville launched Time Before Time, a creator-owned series published by Image Comics. The series concludes with November’s issue #29, with original artist Joe Palmer returning to illustrate the coda. Shalvey and McConville took time out of a busy New York Comic Con to discuss their journey through Time.

Tom Smithyman: How are you two feeling now that Time is coming to an end?

Declan Shalvey: It’s a little bittersweet. It’s finally sinking in that it’s stopped – that the machine is slowly sectioned off, that the lights are turning off in the building. I think partly it’s a relief because it’s been so much work, and it’s quite nice to wrap it up. But I’m definitely going to miss it.

Rory McConville: I think we’re feeling satisfaction in that we’ve landed the plane. Well, we think we landed the plane, we’ll see in the reviews to come. Maybe we crashed it! But definitely there’s a bit of sadness for sure.

Smithyman: It’s pretty remarkable for an independent series like Time Before Time to hit 29 issues. What does the series’ longevity speak to, in your minds?

McConville: It’s so great to be able to set up these things that pay off two or three volumes down the line. I think that’s the nicest thing, just being able to close off all those loops.

Shavley: Because part of the goal of the book was to do something more expansive. We didn’t want it to be a mini. We wanted it to be an ongoing and take advantage of that. So it’s great that the thing we wanted it to be is exactly the thing that it ended up being.

Smithyman: Has the journey gone the way that you expected?

Shalvey: No, we would have liked to have had Joe the whole way, but he worked his butt off for the first year, and then he wanted to do his own work. And that’s fair enough. Instead of getting another artist to replace him, having different artists kind of works.

McConville: I think we were quite fortunate that we had already introduced the idea of other artists working on the book, with the introduction of the one-shot, drawn by Dec. That breaks the seal off.

Shalvey: I prefer books that are just the one artist. But, at the same time, the mechanics of making a book work every month – some stuff just needs to be adjusted. Thankfully it was OK.

McConville: I’d say the end point we’ve reached is where it was always going, but as with all things, the journey along the way goes in all places.

Shalvey: We could have kept the book going creatively. That wouldn’t have been a problem. But financially, if we went on any further, we’d be in trouble. But this way we could afford it, and we’re able to tell the story we want.

Smithyman: How did you divide responsibilities for writing?

Shalvey: Rory writes it. I stick my name on it.

McConville: I write it, and he takes credit!

Shalvey: No, it is more Rory at the end of the day. We basically get on the phone and talk everything over. And then Rory would take that and write an outline for that arc. And then Rory would pick a scene for me to write and we would write the rest of it. Then he would take my scene and sew it back in.

There might be some changes because he’ll have written so much of it, and I’ll have my scene. You don’t want to make it seem like it’s a totally different writer. So if it needed to be massaged, he’d massage it.

In a way, it’s more work than writing it on your own because of the back and forth. My schedule was tough, and sometimes he would be waiting for me, which I felt bad about.

McConville: I think there are situations where there’s a total 50-50 split. That feels like it is more work than a solo run. I’ve heard of partnerships where people would write 10 pages each, and then they’ll both do a pass on the other 10. I don’t see how you can do it without one person taking the reins a bit more than the other.

Shalvey: If it all depended on me, the book would have ground to a halt because I’m doing lots of other stuff. So it made sense for Rory to take the ball for the most part because he would be able to dig in. I don’t want to be the person getting in the way of things.

Smithyman: Do you find yourselves editing each other or do you let each other do your own thing?

Shalvey: There were probably more notes in the beginning, but by the end there were very few. “Oh, you forgot a full stop (period). Gotcha!”

Neither of us had worked this way before, so I tried to be less precious. Rory changed some stuff that I had, and if I felt really passionate about it, I’d push back. But if not, I figured that was what made things work. I did have to ask at one point: “Do you like the pages I’m doing?” But it all worked. You just have to get over your own ego.

And also, I’m not going to make changes to what he did just for the sake of it. There’s just no point.

McConville: Because it’s so much better!

Smithyman: While your journey to the end of Time didn’t go quite as expected, is the ending still the same as you had planned when you wrote issue #1?

McConville: The final issue is almost an epilogue to the final arc. It’s very much meant to be a standalone tale. There are elements that came later on, but the shape of it? Definitely.

Shalvey: We had a fairly good idea of where we were going to land. I mean, some stuff did change. We didn’t nail it all down.

McConville: We didn’t have Kevin!

Smithyman: What a joy Kevin the fowl-mouthed robot is. Was he fun to write?

Shalvey: I wouldn’t know because he does all of his pages!

Smithyman: So Rory, is Kevin really you in a robot disguise?

Shalvey: I can see that. I could tell when I was reading the script. “Damn it! Rory’s having a lot of fun!”

McConville: As a character, he’s great for adding a bit of ridiculousness to the whole thing. He says stuff that no other can get away with saying.

Smithyman: So what’s next for you two?

McConville: At the moment, it’s a lot of Spawn. I’ve been writing it for the last couple of years, and we’ve been building up to issue #350 with Brett Booth taking over on art. There’s also a miniseries of Medieval Spawn coming out in 2024.

Shalvey: Dynamite announced Thundercats at NYCC, and I’m writing that and doing covers. And Aliens is coming out. Old Dog and lots of covers.

Smithyman: It sounds like you both are going to be busy. Thanks for taking the Time to talk with Comicon.com.