Sometimes I still fall for the hype. Marvel’s latest Timeless one shot (for 2024, just out a week or two ago) was another hyped book that would give us a look at the future of the Marvel Universe. However, I always forget, the future is fluid and never really comes to pass. So this book may or may not end up being important. I think we know which one it will actually be, though.
We get a prologue where we meet the two main characters and they’re people we know in the Marvel Universe, don’t worry. It’s just that by the end of this book, between the two of them, they’ve taken on the powers of virtually every damn Marvel character around. For…reasons.
Combine that with the portentous narration, which would mean something to us if we actually had experienced all the stories that the main characters had, but since we’re only given hints of what has happened over the years, we can only guess at what’s going on and why we should care. We get a few pages of “memories” of the character’s past/ our future, and they look kinda cool, but in the end will either come to pass without this needing to have been told, or they won’t come to pass and it’s just empty promises.
The writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly do as well a job as they could with this, and Juann Cabal is a pretty kickass artist for this. Edgar Delgado handles the coloring and VC’s Travis Lantham does the lettering, both of which are perfectly serviceable without sticking out for the wrong reasons.
Timeless is maybe worthless, a brief jaunt through the Marvel U and one possible future, but mostly it’s needless.
Pointless maybe, I stay well away from books like this. I’ve been stung far too many times.