We all know time travel is serious business. Yet we love when people don’t take it seriously. If you tell me a sound of thunder might actually be flatulence, I’m in. So when writer/comedian Brian Posehn teams with writer/musician Joe Trohman and artist Chris Johnson for Law & Order meets Timecop meets half-assed cops, you notice a thing like Rifters.
Coming to comics shops June 12, 2024, Rifters promises an irreverent murder mystery and a good time. Looking at the preview pages, they take that part very seriously. I suspect there’s a few digs at how our culture would really handle time travel, but I’ve come to consider that a hallmark of Posehn’s work. He’ll sneak a little seriousness past you when you least expect it, and if you missed it, that’s on you.
From Image Comics:
Fan-favorite comedian Brian Posehn (Deadpool, The Mandalorian, Scotch McTiernan: Holiday Party) teams up with Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman (The Holy Roller) to co-write alongside artist Chris Johnson (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) the upcoming time-traveling comedy romp, Rifters. This all-new ongoing series is set to launch in June from Image Comics.
Readers will be hurtled in the wild world of Rifters—where Time Cop collides with Law & Order, filtered through the lens of Mr. Show—when they meet Fenton and Geller. These two part-time Wisenheimers, full-time vice time-cops suck at rule-following but excel at busting time-travel crimes. Unfortunately, their daily grind involves tedious police work—like chasing down douchebag influencers hellbent on live-streaming illegal transtemporal trips to 1920s Chicago to steal primo bootleg hooch.
“Joe and I are having a blast with Rifters, we put time travel and police procedurals in a comedy blender, we had underwear on our head and we yelled ‘Dick Wolf’ three times,” said Posehn. “Our pal Chris Johnson is killing the art, hope you dig it!”
In a twist of fate, the duo finds themselves at the center of an inter-time serial homicide mystery—and in the crosshairs of potentially lethal consequences.
Trohman added: “The book is pure fun, pure escapism—a distillation of everything we love about ’80s and ’90s science fiction, comedy, and the police procedural—big shout out to Dick Wolf. And a more enormous shout-out to dick jokes—there’s at least one in there.”
The stakes are high, time is of the essence, and Fenton and Geller are about to discover that playing with the time-stream isn’t all flappers and jazz hands. Readers are in for a high-octane, double-illegal adventure that promises to rewrite the rulebook on time-travel tales.
“Rifters wants to pull you out of real life for a while and have an adventure and laugh,” said Johnson.
Rifters #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, June 12:
Cover A by Johnson – Lunar Code 0424IM211
Cover B by Michael Avon Oeming – Lunar Code 0424IM212
Cover C by Tony Moore – Lunar Code 0424IM213
Cover D (1:10 incentive copy) by Johnson – Lunar Code 0424IM214
Cover E (1:25 incentive copy) by Mike Allred – Lunar Code 0424IM215
In addition to running Fanboy Planet, Derek has written for ActionAce, Daily Radar, Once Upon A Dime, and The Wave. He has contributed stories to Arcana Comics (The Greatest American Hero) and Monsterverse Comics (Bela Lugosi's Tales from the Grave). He has performed with ComedySportz and Silicon Valley Shakespeare, though relocated to Hollywood to... work in an office? If you ever played Eric's Ultimate Solitaire on the Macintosh, it was Derek's voice as The Weasel that urged you to play longer. You can buy his book "I Was Flesh Gordon" on the Amazon link at the right. Email him at [email protected].
