I am so thankful to Fantagraphics, Carol Lay, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!

Well, this one wasn’t for me. Here’s why:
- Something about the narration felt odd to me.
- The art wasn’t for me.
- Sometimes I felt like I was reading about science instead of a fictional story. It got really boring, occasionally.

My Time Machine dares to imagine a world where nothing ever happens. Carol Lay’s new comic is an intentionally mundane take on time travel. The blasé attitude is charming at first but quickly exhausting, as this comic drowns you in dialogue and exposition. The art does not do much to enhance the story or emotion with its stiff figures and simplistic design. This approach is interesting conceptually—the Time Machine moves only in time and never in space and so our intrepid hero experiences the future first in small jumps and then millions of years ahead. There are some potentially compelling techniques you could use to make this conceit visually exciting or compelling in ways unique to comics. (Richard McGuire’s Here comes to mind, with its single POV unchanging over millennia). 

There is no such flair here. The backdrop changes a bit in the near future but our traveler never moves beyond the confines of her home. As a result we the readers experience this future only through pages of characters talking. She does not encounter the future and neither do we.

In "My Time Machine: Carol Lay has created and intelligent and thought provoking book that will engage and challenge readers. Nominally a time travel adventure story, the book uses H.G Well’s famous story "The Time Machine" as the basis for a deep and nuanced look at the current state of global affairs. Part cautionary tale, part literary tribute and complete nerd fest this is a book for readers who love introspection and fear that the future might be just as bad as we imagine,

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Fantagraphics Books, for providing me with a eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, Fantagraphics, Fantagraphics Books, and Carol Lay for the opportunity to read this graphic novel in exchange for an honest review.

Generally set in 2020, My Time Machine follows an older female character whose ex-husband has built a successful time machine. His experiments come from the H.G. Wells novel "The Time Machine," as he considers it so be fact rather than fiction. With this mindset, he stays in the past while his ex-wife travels into the future to look for a solution to climate change.

The various decades offer an interesting glimpse of a possible future based on people's ways in today's world. This graphic novel is a harrowing tale that shed slight on the changes humanity needs to make TODAY in order to exist TOMORROW. Readers will certainly identify some political bias, though anyone interested in science, climate, change, and the future will find this an intriguing read.

In My Time Machine, our protagonist (who bears a striking resemblance to author Carol Lay) literally travels millions of years into the future, in a time machine built by her ex-husband. Finding herself stranded, waiting for the machine to reset, our traveler remembers her previous stops just a few decades ahead of 2024, and things do not look good for the human race.

This graphic novel was absolutely terrifying. The predictions of how California will look mere decades from now makes for brutal reading. Especially upsetting was a brief mention of the eventual fate of household pets. And given the upcoming election, there were a few sections that were just a little too close to home right now.

But I loved reading My Time Machine. Lays illustrations are clear, and her visualizations of the act of traveling through time are really beautiful. The one thing I really appreciated about this book is that it’s set in a world where H.G Wells novel, The Time Machine, is treated as fact, and the blueprints for the titular machine were inherited from Wells. A really beautiful touch.

My Time Machine is a genuinely exciting, thoughtful adventure, with a wonderful protagonist.

Thank you the NetGalley for this review copy.


I will not be finishing this book. This book couldn’t keep my interested. The writing style wasn’t for me and I found the story boring. It could grab my attention.

My Time Machine takes the Time Traveler story to spin it around current issues such as climate change, authoritarianism, and the loss of the world we knew. In this graphic novel, our hero is an older woman whose genius ex-husband builds a time machine after the Time Traveler’s blueprints. She’s determined to try it out and she does - taking us further through 2040, 2045, and then much, much further, to 800,000 and beyond. The book follows her thoughts, her relationship with her divorced husband and with her cat, Buddy, and jumps from memory-to-present, creating another sort of time-travel within it. I was caught in its philosophical whirlwinds which ask some of the right questions, in a very simple way. Delightful!

Although the story is very much inspired by H G Wells' “The Time Machine”, it’s a beautiful read even without having read Wells’ work.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Fantagraphics Books for the e-arc!

Carol Lay masterfully uses the visual approach of the graphic novel to explore elements both realistic and fantastic. The art and artistic storytelling are well worth favoring.

As a fan of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, I had to read this one. It’s a modern take, filled with funny pop culture references and reflections on what might have been wrong with the first machine—and what someone might actually do with such a device. And it’s a tough question to answer. Should I do this? Should I try that? Should I go back and kill Hitler (of course)? And so on. It’s a fascinating exploration of what could happen… but clearly, this traveler takes way too many stupid risks after being so cautious initially. By the end, I felt like I needed therapy. And a hug from my cat.

I received this DRC from NetGalley.

The artwork was fine, but the colors were mostly bland. The blurb on this sold it really hard and told the entire plotline so there aren't any surprises, and I didn't find anything particularly funny or suspenseful about it regardless. It does comment on climate change and presidents (without naming names) very directly. But really, the whole thing felt pretty anticlimactic, and it's not like they're going to do anything to save the earth; they're only going to take a few measures to make sure their own lives are a bit better, so really, they hardly did anything except allow an older woman to take a fun trip that should have allowed for some cool artwork when she gets to the far future. The references to California were nice, though.

Once I realised what this comic wouod be covering plus how short it was I very quickly came to the realisation that it wasn't gonna be enoigh pages to do the concept justice, therefore I've made the decision to dnf this, I had access to the arc so I'd like to think there will be time for them to rethink the length but I doubt this wilk be the case so as of now it's a no for me.

This reminds me of The Martian by Andy Weir. In this graphic novel the main character travels through time in hope to find a solution for climate change. It first shows us her stop 30 million years into the future. While she’s there, to pass the time she writes a journal log of her adventures. And we see the whole story play out from there.

It was a very entertaining read and the art was wonderful. This book focused on the climate crisis and the grim future we could face. Do I think this book is realistic in terms of how our future will look? Yes and no. I think the idea is right at least. That we’re heading down a gloomy path.

What if you could go to the future, see how things are, in order to come back and make things better? That is the plot of this graphic novel by Carol Lay. At times bleak and frightening, it also always has a sliver of hope that it is not too late to make things better.

My Time Machine: A Graphic Novel by Carol Lay is an interesting, funny and visually interesting combination of science fiction, social political satire and adventure. A strong female protagonist embarks on a emotional eye and mind opening journey through time to save humanity from itself and spark meaningful change.

The use of colorful art, flashbacks, and interesting thought experiments and having science and artistic type characters in witty playful banter keep the storyline quite literally "moving forward".

This cautionary tale is slyly serious and timely in a blink and it's happening again kind of way.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Fantagraphics Books for an advance copy of this graphic novel that tells of a time traveller from our past, passing through time, the wondrous that are seen, and the sad realities that might be our future.

I love the idea that time travel has so many rules, so many warnings about something that might not be possible. Going back in time if one sneezes on a dinosaur, the entire future can change. If one goes back and kills Hitler, that might change everything meaning the person who went back in time to kill Hitler was never born. Or does it cause an alternate reality. A world where Nelson Mandela died in prison, like so many people remember or where the Berenstain Bears are really the Berenstein Bears. Or vice versa. Maybe someone has gone back in time and changed things, or gone forward in time to make changes now. The possibilities like the rules that so many made up are endless. That's why I think that Carol Lay has travelled through time, and written this graphic novel as both a warning of what can be, and to create change through entertainment. Lay's story is just too good to be fiction, and the future to scary to be thought of as not real. My Time Machine is written and illustrated by Carol Lay and works as a log book of Lay's adventures in time, always moving forward to our inevitable end.

Carol Lay's Uncle had a very good streak playing poker and won, from a lawyer what looked to be engineering plans. These plans were from the original time traveller from the H. G. Wells novel the Time Machine, and after he passed away, the Uncle gave them to Lay because of her interest in art. Not thinking much Lay approached her ex-husband who taught physics and loved to tinker and showed him the plans. He was enthralled, and soon after a lot of time and expense, presented Lay with the gift of a time machine. An actual working time machine, controlled by an app on her phone. Lay had dreams of finding a solution to climate change, but the reality of the time, 2019 with an election coming, and COVID being talked about, Lay wanted more to see what the future held. Soon she went ahead, to find a country rationing water, low on food, not able to touch, and patrolled by drones, that seemed everywhere. And as she went further into the future, things did not get better.

I really loved this story as time travel usually doesn't look much at the near future, nor the times that it is written in. Writing about 5 years from now is much harder than writing about a 1,000 years, as who can say one is wrong. However the future shown, seems pretty real. And even closer to happening than we want to admit. The characters were very interesting, and one can see Lay being a time traveller, though leaving the cat must have been hard. Also, Lay has good taste in music, soundtracking her time travel with some nice progressive music. There is a lot of action far more than i expected with a lot of scenes that really hold the reader's interest. The art is excellent, complementing the story and character well, and yet being really dynamic when the story asks for it.

What I really enjoyed was that there were a lot of questions asked, buy no answers. Lay refers to the original user of the time machine, but has no idea what happened to him, or why she was seeing things different than he had. Had time changed, did Lay do something different somehow? Also this is not jus a story about hope, but about love. Lay finding her ex-husband has a new woman in his life, means a lot to Lay. Lay is happy that he is happy. One doesn't see that much in stories, and real moments like that made me enjoy the story more. Not just a good time travel story, but a graphic novel with great art and characters that really love and care for each other. And the world.

How can one 160-page graphic novel provoke so much thought and concern about the future? What tools might it give us to seek an alternative future as climate change and political division threaten our very existence even now? Carol Lay has created a stunning work—simple, beautifully told, moving—that I hope fosters discussion, and action. Very highly recommended.

This was just not one I enjoyed. It was well drawn. I just did not like the pacing and the story just did not grab me at all

The concept was cool: The protagonist inherits blue prints to a time travel machine, and enlists the help of her ex-husband to build it and travels into the future in various increments. However, the future is grim, which sets the overall tone for the story.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was drawn to this book by the cover and title and was not disappointed. The illustration style is gentle and lovely which goes so well with the story. We follow our middle aged brave and curious time traveler as she navigates the distant and not so distant future in a craft made by her ex inspired by the blueprints of the original HG Wells time traveler.
This graphic novel is as much about the politics of the time she starts to time travel (2020) as it is about caring for the planet we live on and the adventures of time travel.