This year, I decided to do something different for Fred Van Lente Day, I'm going to review one issue of Ivar, Timewalker a day, leading up to Fred Van Lente Day!

We continue with Ivar, Timewalker #3, by Fred Van Lente, Clayton Henry and Brian Reber (with Robert Gill)...

When last we saw our heroes, Ivar and Neela, they were in a Nazi bunker in World War II, Ivar had taken Neela to the past to teach her a major lesson about time travel - you can't change the past. This is proven by how many time travelers travel to the past to kill Hitler and they're all unsuccessful.

I've written before about how Van Lente cleverly uses the time travel approach to fit in interesting pieces of history, and that's the case in this issue, as well, as Ivar is tortured by some Nazi soldiers using an actual device that the Nazis worked on in one of the concentration camps, a device that strikes a person with a hammer at random intervals. Man, the Nazis sure were some sick people.

After an interaction with the Eternal Warrior (who is there for a mission of his own), Neela tries to find the time traveler who has stolen the way for her and Ivar to get out of this time. This leads to the best bit in the issue...





I just love how Van Lente develops these fascinating minor characters. The l33t-speaking future time travel guys? SO FUNNY.

Clayton Henry and Brian Reber are on point, as per usual, with their artwork. There's a particularly inspired piece of art where Neela takes some bad guys to the past, at a time when the Earth had a lot more oxygen in the air than normal, so people, like these bad guys, who have open flames on their heads...well, it is not a good time for them.

In the end, Neela discovers that Ivar might be lying about this whole "you can't change the past" rule, so she splits from him. It'll be fascinating to see where she goes next, now that she can travel through time on her own.