James Bond might have no time to die, but Temporal Agent Tarik Abdelnasser is not nearly so lucky. In Ibrahim Moustafa’s upcoming graphic novel Retroactive, Abdelnasser gets caught in a time loop while trying to stop a terrorist attack — only to discover a much more sinister challenge awaits if he wants to die another day. (See what I did there?) Gizmodo is thrilled to offer this exclusive preview.
“RetroActive is ‘James Bond meets Groundhog Day,’ an exciting mash-up of the espionage and time-travel genres in a way we’ve not seen before,” explains Moustafa, who also created the critically acclaimed graphic novel Count. But add a good dash of Edge of Tomorrow (a.k.a. Live Die Repeat) as Abdelnasser has to perfect his attempt to stop white supremacists from causing a nuclear meltdown using technology that they shouldn’t have. But repeated time travel isn’t exactly good for one’s sanity…
Obviously, if saving this single day was the only issue, Retroactive wouldn’t need to be much longer than this preview… unless there’s more going on with this terrorist attack that Abdelnasser realises. Because the government agency he works for, the Bureau of Temporal Affairs, isn’t the only one with the power to travel through time, and other countries aren’t quite so circumspect about altering the timeline to benefit themselves. Suffice it to say, if Agent Abdelnasser can’t figure out the real threat in time, the entire Bureau will discover that contrary to popular belief, tomorrow can definitely die. (Last one, promise.)
“I’m very excited to share this work that the rest of the creative team and I are so proud of,” says Moustafa. “Brad Simpson (colours) and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letters) are at their very best on Retroactive.”
You can see for yourself when Retroactive arrives on April 26, courtesy of the Moebius-created publisher Humanoids.