A review by michellehogmire
Backtrack, Vol. 1 by Jake Elphick, Brian Joines, Doug Garbark

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

5.0

Big thanks to Oni Press for an advance copy of this graphic novel, which was published this Tuesday Nov 17, 2020--

I was immediately taken with the rad cover art for Brian Joines' Backtrack, and it definitely did not disappoint--the comic is a wild, dangerous adventure ride through history, like a combination of Looper with Death Race. I've been reading some super heavy books lately, and getting sucked into this action-packed world was exactly what I needed.

Okay, plot: our main character is Alyson Levy, a disgraced former criminal getaway driver who's approached by a strange rich guy about joining a car race. The prize? The winner will get to correct one mistake from their past. The catch? The contest is going to involve some wacky time travel.

Turns out the rich guy (named Casper Quellex) is from the future, where time travel has been invented, and subsequently outlawed. He runs these illegal races for billionaire bidders, traveling through time to find the saddest characters willing to put everything on the line to entertain the rich. Alyson and the other competitors, all ruthlessly determined to change their circumstances by winning the prize, quickly realize that this is no ordinary car race: every single leg will take place in a different time period. 

The racers (including a bratty wealthy teen and her competent bodyguard, a washed-up former NASCAR driver, a man whose son died of leukemia, and many more) will have to decide whether to work together or not, all while trying to survive dinosaur attacks, historical natural disasters, the plague in Constantinople, and Stasi interrogations in 1970s East Germany. What a ride--volume 2, please!