Carol Lay and MY TIME MACHINE interview

Carol Lay has set the bar high for time travel novels and, no doubt, time travel graphic novels. I would not be surprised to find out that this book ends up joining the ranks of time travel movies. As we move further along in an ever-expanding tech-laden and crisis-prone world, we seem to have an insatiable desire for time travel stories. Well, then grab this book! And, if you should need a little more convincing, please stop by the Comics Grinder YouTube channel and check out my interview with Carol Lay.

MY TIME MACHINE, published by Fantagraphics Books, is one of the best contemporary time travel stories I’ve ever read, whatever the medium used to tell it.

We keep the chat light and easygoing and, given the subject matter, we find ourselves naturally covering a lot of ground. If you are new to H.G.Wells, or a diehard fan of time travel and science fiction, we’ve got you covered. This is one of my most fun interviews with one of the best cartoonists in the business. As an added bonus for those readers familiar with the original novel, and the 1960 movie for that matter, you can consider Lay’s book, as she states, “a sort of sequel to the original in that my book treats those events as if they had really happened and my story is a continuation.” Lay goes on to say that climate change plays a pivotal role in her story. “H.G. Wells was very interested in science. He carefully studied Darwin. He basically wanted to go into the future to see how humans evolved. In my story, I wanted to go into the future to see how the planet evolved.”

Like I suggest in my review of this book, it’s really nice when you have an auteur cartoonist like Lay (in full command of both writing and artwork) who knows just how to dive into the good stuff. Creating a work of comics at this level is a lot of work but it can also be a lot fun. That’s the whole point to all this: it’s gotta be fun! At some crucial level, the story is moving along at an undeniable and highly compelling pace. You do not have to be a fan of science fiction to get into this book. If you love a good story that is as much character-driven as it is quirky and confronting big issues, then this will appeal to you.