The Traveler and his mysterious companion must stop the graviton engine from ripping the universe a new one. Along the way, he meets up with his arch nemesis Abaris, only this time the old time traveler is on his side, or is he?
Abberations
This is a case where I had to read the book twice. There's a lot of technobabble in the story, but it does make sense. Unfortunately, the jargon does interrupt the flow, and that's a pity because at its heart, the story is about the Traveler and his relationship with the Mystery Woman.
She's a mystery girl…
Waid and Peyer provide a solution to the enigma this issue, which they foreshadowed in the premiere, and that's why the book earns four bullets. It's very easy to ignore the physics discussion when the writers are clever enough to create an elegant full circle.
In addition, the characterization of Abaris is quite novel for a villain. Here is a character that reflected over the years and saw his life as wasted potential. So he decides to use his understanding of time to change things.
The story appears to be the finale to The Traveler series, but given the way Waid and Peyer manipulate and erase timelines, the Traveler could return at any point and ignore what occurs this issue. Besides, they do leave some things open. For example, the Big Cosmic Bad of the book, the Inheritors, are powerful enough to still be out there.
If The Traveler does return, I hope Chad Hardin and colorist Blond will be with him. Hardin with his Gil Kane inspired style made this book a sort of sophisticated silver age title that fell through a wormhole to our time. The colors bearing the technological stamp of today and demonstrate how the pixilated Gardner Fox adventures of yore might have looked.
Ray Tate's first online work appeared in 1994 for Knotted. He has had a short story, "Spider Without a Web," published in 1995 for the magazine evernight and earned a degree in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh. Since 1995, Ray self-published The Pick of the Brown Bag on various usenet groups, where he reviewed comic books, Doctor Who novels, movies and occasionally music. Circa 2000, he contributed his reviews to Silver Bullet Comic Books (later Comics Bulletin) and became its senior reviewer. Ray Tate would like to think that he's young at heart. Of course, we all know better.