Frame 1 of TimeAfterTime.

A year ago, I highlighted a unique new style of story telling from the xkcd webcomic entitled Time. Somewhere between a comic strip and a movie, this story displayed one new black-and-white frame, usually pretty closely associated with the previous one, every hour on the hour for several months. These frames slowly unfolded into an epic story about the struggle to survive in the distant future.

At the time, I speculated that fans of the, for lack of a better work, comic might continue the story or create a new story in the same style, and, in fact, they did. The fan-made sequel to Time, called TimeAfterTime, has now concluded.

TimeAfterTime was not quite as refined an operation as the original Time. It played one frame every four hours, and the storyline does not appear as carefully planned–many aspects of it were not clarified as much as Time did. Yet, the story is still compelling.

In TimeAfterTime, the flooded-out refugees from Time explore their new home. But all is not well there, as what the reader will recognize as an ancient nuclear waste dump has contaminated the area. They must figure out the secret before it’s too late in order to find a safe new home for themselves.

Despite the weaknesses of TimeAfterTime, I still followed it to the end and found it a worthy successor to the original in this small and fledgling genre.

My rating: 4 out of 5.