Borrowed Time vol. 1 & 2

Author: Neal Shaffer
Year: 2007
Genre: Mystery / Adventure

I wasn't sure whether I should post about this, because it's basically a monthly comic book published in graphic-novel format. In the end, I decided that anything with an ISBN belongs in my LibraryThing catalog, and can merit a review here.

Borrowed Time is the story of a journalist who goes to investigate the Bermuda Triangle and gets sucked into the world of lost things. I feel like this fantasy idea has been used and overused, but the only example I can recall offhand is an episode of Ren & Stimpy that otherwise bears no resemblance to Shaffer's world of bleak desperation. Through the first two issues, our hero has tried to find his place in his new world without giving up hope of returning to the old one; time will tell what happens to him.

The "regular guy walking the line between coping and denial when the world he knew is gone" storyline bears some resemblance to Y: The Last Man, but Vaughan's man-killing science-fiction plague is replaced by a wall of stubbornly unexplained mystery and obfuscation. Like any good serial writer, Shaffer will have to make monthly revelations around the edges of the mystery; the test of the series will come from whether we believe we're getting closer to its center.