Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Back to the Future: Tales from the Time Train #1-6

Back to the Future: Tales From the Time Train

Rate this book
What does the future hold for the Brown family? Find out what happens to Doc, Clara, Jules, and Verne after the end of BTTF Part III!

It's 1893, and at last, Doc Brown fulfills his promise to Clara as he completes the project he's been working on: the Time Train! But where in time and space will the Brown family go on their adventures? And what could possibly go wrong if and when they get there?

Includes a new introduction by Bob Gale and a bonus supplement, the Time Train Technical Manual, with drawings and photos of the development process that have never been seen before!

152 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2018

23 people are currently reading
114 people want to read

About the author

Bob Gale

198 books35 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
22 (20%)
4 stars
21 (19%)
3 stars
43 (39%)
2 stars
18 (16%)
1 star
4 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Profile Image for Completely Melanie.
762 reviews391 followers
September 12, 2020
This picks up where the 3rd movie leaves off. I love all of these Back to the Future graphic novel by Bob Gale. I love that they don't try to change anything that we love about the movies and that they just fill in the gaps.
Profile Image for Galy.
925 reviews48 followers
June 6, 2021
3.25/5
Para ser un cómic de Regreso al Futuro me ha decepcionado un poco. Es como un juego de escondite y pilla pilla todo el tiempo y no hay una gran historia como en los otros.

Aún así estoy deseando que saquen más cómics de Regreso al Futuro.
Profile Image for Juan.
325 reviews4 followers
October 7, 2018
This wasnt all that bad. I will rate this as below the level of quality I feel the previous volumes have provided.

On a otherwise unnecessary critique of the characters, I really hate Jules genius level of speech. Come on kid, dumb it down a few thousand notches.
Profile Image for Amy Walker  - Trans-Scribe Reviews.
924 reviews16 followers
Read
June 15, 2019
Back To The Future: Tales From The Time Train takes a break from the main story of the Back To The Future comics to focus on Doc Brown and his family, as they settle into their new lives as time travellers. Despite what the title may lead you to believe, there aren’t multiple tales contained within the pages of this collected volume, but one large story of the Brown family’s first trip together through the time stream.

Originally travelling into the future of 2038, Doc and Clara try to distract and entertain their young sons with a trip to a future amusement park, filled with robots. Unfortunately, it’s not the future adventure that they were hoping for, and things soon go astray, leading to Doc Brown to try a different approach, and time.

Taking his family to the New York World’s Fair in 1939, he hopes that they can find something to keep them entertained. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned when Einstein escapes from the time train and gets lost in the Fair, getting himself mixed up with Prince Rufio, the ‘four legged regent of Barataria’; whilst Doc Brown falls into the sights of a pair of Nazi agents, who think that he might be Albert Einstein.

What ensues are two outlandish and over the top stories that keep intertwining around the two cases of mistaken identity, and bumbling villains.

The story itself isn’t too bad, and is at times quite fun and inrriguing. Doc Brown and his family are genuinely pleasant to spend time with, and Jules and Verne never quite stumble into the ‘annoying kid’ role that often happens in fiction. Their reactions to the things that they are seeing feel very real and believable, and can sometimes even be quite sweet. The scene where Doc Brown explains away why the Fair means so much to him and is a moment of hope in a very dark world gives a wonderful insight into the character.

Sadly, the villains of the piece, two Nazi agents, and some of the handlers of Prince Rufio, feel very two dimensional and flat in comparison. They spend much of the book as caricatures, rather than characters. If the Brown family weren’t so well written then this would have been a major problem, instead of just a minor annoyance.

The artwork is well drawn, and is simply coloured with most of the art having just a base shade and a shadow. It keeps things simple, and stops the panels from feeling too crowded, and the simple, flat coloured backgrounds helps to emphasise the action taking place with the characters.

The main criticism of the book is that it begins to feel a bit long by the end, with the story stretched too thin. The book has six issues, but it could easily have told the same story without missing anything important in just five. Whilst a good portion of the book is filled with entertaining character moments, it’s towards the end, when the characters are on the run from the villains, that things start to feel a little too long, and dare I say, boring.

Overall, Back To The Future: Tales From The Time Train tells a very entertaining and engaging story, and even adds new light to one of the final scenes from the films. It explores the Brown family in fun ways, and creates a core cast that readers will definitely want to see more from again in the future.
Profile Image for Philmore Olazo.
Author 6 books4 followers
November 21, 2025
The book is nothing like the rest of the series. And I think it strays way too far from the movies and comics.

Right at the end of Back to the Future #25 and Back to the Future Part III, Doc takes his family back in time to New York for a futuristic fair. And instead of a fun time traveling adventure, we get two nazi spies looking for Albert Einstein and tagging the wrong person, Doc Brown, and his family to force him back to Germany so they can use his knowledge to get a scientific edge.

I’d normally say the story wasn't what I expected, but it wasn’t that bad. This one was quite boring. Doc is acting out of character, his children are not interesting to follow, and the main idea for the story is just a series of convenient situations.

I expected more, considering how fun the IDW run was.
Profile Image for The McRib.
60 reviews
November 10, 2024
It's pretty apparent that Bob very abruptly ran out of ideas with this one. This is clearly meant to be part of a longer episodic series that someone gave up and pulled the plug on.

Overall it leaves it feeling a lot more like an episode of the short-lived 1991 cartoon show than the previous comics do.

On the other hand Doc Brown beats some nazis. So maybe it's okay.
Profile Image for Javi.
677 reviews26 followers
September 21, 2020
Un argumento pobre y estirado como un chicle.
Profile Image for Montserrat Esteban.
1,406 reviews23 followers
July 24, 2021
Séptimo libro de esta saga que me encanta. Conocemos más de la historia de las películas de regreso al futuro y sus historias entre medias y cosas de la historia
Profile Image for Will Plunkett.
729 reviews1 follower
June 20, 2022
Story: 4 stars; art: 3 stars. I liked the concept (and the BTTF design sketches at the back) and they ways the plot developed and ended, but it seemed drawn too cartoon-y, even for IDW comics levels.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews