Lenore The Time War: Never Cross the Time Goats

“Absurd” is the word of the day for Lenore The Time War. That doesn’t necessarily distinguish it from any other Lenore work. But it’s hard not to see a story featuring antagonist time goats as something special. The mayhem spills out of Lenore’s friends considering killing a pickle hat which would drastically change the future. So time goats travel back to the present to save the pickle hat. Things get progressively weirder from there.

It’s difficult to describe Lenore to someone who has never experienced it. Lenore is built around black comedy more than anything else. The characters are frequently depressed or nihilistic, but Dirge is able to play both for laughs because the surrounding material is so darkly humorous. It’s impossible to take seriously what might otherwise be worrisome character traits because nothing in this story is taken seriously. And the fact that none of the characters are recognizably human helps sell some of the darker humor.

Lenore The Time War is strangely engrossing. Part of that comes from the opening pages and Flashback Squirrel’s recitation of past events. There is connective tissue here to the last Lenore project, but none of it impacts this story, so readers need not worry about having missed anything. Indeed, Lenore The Time War is completely accessible to new readers. Knowing past story details is unnecessary. The big shock will be the tone. The opening pages featuring Flashback Squirrel establish that tone immediately, and new readers are likely to know right away if they want to continue.

Established Lenore fans will find the kind of story and humor they expect. The time goats set the stage for a story unlike any other delivered by Lenore so far. The humor is in keeping with the style, but the jokes are fresh. It helps that Lenore The Time War is a time hopping story that puts Lenore and company in a variety of completely new situations. Time goats, dinosaurs, Roman legions, and Thoth god of time and space are only a few of the time travel encounters the group has.

Dirge’s art style remains constant where this material is concerned. Lenore’s wide-eyed expressions are just as broad, leaping from her default disapproving borderline anger to sadness, shock, boredom, and a host of other emotions that come on suddenly only to sometimes vanish in the following panel.

Much like the narrative, some of the more amusing visual moments come when Lenore and company find themselves in the past. Dirge doesn’t play the settings completely straight, but he does change the color palette, keeping the Lenore cast of characters much brighter than the backgrounds they’re set against. The result is that they pop off the page more than the background and create some unusual juxtapositions.