Once Upon a Time Machine - Softcover

Lee Nordling; Jason Rodriguez; Tara Alexander; Various Writers; Charles Fetherolf; Chris Stevens; Andrew Carl; Eric Hobbs

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1616550406 ISBN 13: 9781616550400

Publisher: Dark Horse, 2012

Synopsis

Fairy tales have fueled our dreams and fired our imaginations for centuries. Step inside a time machine built by a collection of today's finest storytellers, and enter a range of futures where familiar tales are reimagined in an astonishing variety of styles. Editor Andrew Carl and Producer Chris Stevens bring you the next wave of leading writers and illustrators, working alongside superstar creators like Farel Dalrymple (Pop Gun War), Ryan Ottley (Invincible), Khoi Pham (Daredevil), and Brandon Graham (King City) to deliver a reading experience that will delight generations young and old.

About this title

Review

"It's a giant book stuffed to bursting with great stories told with truly unique characters, based on classic fables. Every piece presented here is a quality piece of work and will provide hours of whimsical, light hearted reading." -Talking Comics

"It's a volume that adults and children will greatly enjoy, with clever, insightful, and witty tales abounding on every page...Highly recommended." -SFRevu

"You may not be completely sold on one story, but you turn the page and there is one that completely blows you away. No matter your tastes, there's something for you in this. I cannot recommend this highly enough and give it a 5/5 because that is as high as it goes." -Comic Book Therapy

"Time Machine examines knotty, dark issues -- death, loss, alienation -- but, as with the original stories, there are lessons to be learned. With its wealth of humor, playfulness and gorgeous illustration, it's completely kid-safe, but grandma will surely get a kick out of it, too." -Philadelphia City Paper

"This is a gorgeous, GORGEOUS presentation. Clocking in at over 400 pages, this book is the type of thing I absolutely adore; beautifully crafted genre stories that take full advantage of the medium of comics." -CHUD.com

From Booklist

A panoply of creators retells fairy tales, folktales, and stories from classic literature, all with a sci-fi twist. Every tale, from John Henry in a space-pilot showdown to the Billy Goats Gruff told as a girl’s journey through the subterranean sewer beneath a futuristic metropolis to The Three Musketeers with Nigerian swordsmen fighting samurai robots, takes a familiar plot and casts it into an unfamiliar future. While the whole product is a mixed bag, with a few standouts like poignant re-imaginings of Pinocchio and the Puppet Show Man, a strong theme emerges in the aggregate—namely, how humanity interacts with technology, how we give it life, and what it does to our lives. With a few exceptions (including Jill Thompson, who provides a single-image, futuristic take on Santa Claus), these are not big-name creators, and, while the tone ranges from humor to action to heartfelt drama, manga is a fair-sized influence in style and content. With a large array of stories, though, this will provide hours of opportunity for dipping into the future. --Jesse Karp

About this edition

• Publisher: Dark Horse
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1616550406
• ISBN 13: 9781616550400
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432
• Illustrator: James Giar, Nelson Evergreen, Khoi Pham