There's No Time Like the Present

By Paul B. Rainey. Published by Drawn & Quarterly. 

Softcover, 336 pages, B&W, 2025. 

If time travel existed, would you right societal wrongs or just watch future episodes of Doctor Who?

Paul B. Rainey’s There’s No Time Like the Present continues to upend grand science fiction gestures with a deep desire to understand the emotional lives of the common man (nerd). It’s a simple conceit: time travel is only possible between the invention of the necessary, functioning machinery and the day those machines are shut off. In that finite sliver of space-time, humanity schisms into those who defiantly refuse to look into the future, and those who reap the benefits of doing so.

After all, what would you do if you accidentally found out for certain that you would still be working the same dead end job at the age of 70? What would you do if you could read every future issue of your favorite comic? Or if you traveled back in time and couldn’t afford to travel back? Would your life actually be that different? Can we admit that there might not be such a thing as free will? Is life just a series of denials of reality? Why does that one guy have horns?

There’s No Time Like The Present proves the success of Why Don’t You Love Me? was no fluke, and is yet another brilliant graphic novel by a modern master.

“There’s No Time Like the Present is one of the most unique science fiction comics I have ever read. Weaving together a disparate array of themes in a wild plot that runs from office sitcom to the farthest reaches of existential time and space, Paul B. Rainey builds something continually surprising, funny, and moving.”—Sammy Harkham