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Emma Vieceli and Claudia Leonardi’s Life is Strange comic is back with a renumbering. While this is technically a new number one, it is thankfully being marketed as a Season 2 of sorts for this creative team’s story, so those picking up for the first time are forewarned. This indeed is not a perfect jumping-on point as character relationships and ongoing stories could be confusing, but the divergent universe with Chloe and Tristian may serve as a good way to get people up to speed. So, without further ado, let’s see what Max, Chloe, Rachel, original Chloe, and Tristan have been up to in Life is Strange: Partners in Time #1.
Trio Universe
In the universe where Rachel is still alive, we pick up where we left off at the end of the last series. Rachel, Max, and Chloe are on a road trip as Rachel is traveling with a troupe of actors. Emma Vieceli quickly gets us established to the new status quo and catches us up to speed and then starts expertly weaving in ideas and themes. One of these is actually a theme present in the original game and I was excited to see it talked about again. This is the nature of pictures and memories.
Max is a photographer, she sees things as a snapshot in time, this relates to her powers. But photos are limited, they only capture a small moment or detail, they don’t capture the wider picture, the nuances of the situation, etc. We rely on our memories to do that, but it works both ways as memories are just as limited as photos. Taking a mental picture of an experience can be edited as time goes on, sweeping away the bad and only focusing on the good. I know that I have cherished memories that have been swept up in a sense of romantic nostalgia rather than reality. Max fears this, meanwhile, Rachel asks why it is a bad thing, as the good is what we really want to cherish.
The point of introducing this theme in Life is Strange: Partners in Time #1 is, in my opinion, to set up Max’s arc which becomes clearer with her conversation with Chloe outside the van. Max has been in this universe for years, this may not be her Chloe, the one she loves, but she is friends with this one. And Rachel is alive in this universe and she has grown to care for her too. The memories she has in this universe are good, the experiences are good, and she doesn’t want to see that diminished. But yet she wants to go back to the Chloe she is in love with, but maybe she is looking at her time in that universe with rose-tinted glasses? It’s a complicated web that Max has found herself in, the question is can she unravel it?
Original Universe
Life is Strange: Partners in Time #1 sees the original Chloe, the one from the game, and the one Max is in love with, going on the same road trip in a different universe. Instead of traveling with Rachel, who is obviously dead, she is traveling with The Highseas band and Tristan who has found his way into this universe. One thing that is quite clever is that the band and the actors’ troupe are shared characters in each universe so we can see the cause and effect from one universe and another.
I guarantee this was a headache for the creative team to differentiate each universe from each other just enough for the reader to notice. There are some really subtle differences but the one that stands out to me most is that Chloe’s blue hair is lighter in the original universe and darker in the universe with the trio. A special shoutout needs to go to colourist Andrea Izzo for making this very subtle difference that really helps out when reading.
At the end of the last series, the original Chloe was approached by a mysterious person off-panel, and it is revealed here that it is Tristan. In a beautifully done final page, we get three wordless panels as Tristan explains how he ended up in this universe and what happened to Max. We don’t need to know this information, because we have seen it before in the previous series, but even if we are a new reader, the exact details are not what matters.
It’s the emotional impact of this moment that does. Chloe has had glimpses of Max, seeing her as a ghost, during her time in the other dimension, but no confirmation that she survived. All she has had is hope and love, two of the strongest forces in the universe. Now, she knows the woman she loves is alive and well, just in a different universe and they are both on the same path in hopes of finding each other again. Talk about star-crossed lovers.
Life is Strange: Partners in Time #1 Promises A Bold New Direction
Life is Strange: Partners in Time #1 starts out the renumbering on a strong note. Each of the characters are re-established well and the cutting between the two universes is a strong narrative gimmick that gives the story added emotional weight. I can’t wait to see where this goes, once again this creative team proves to me that they just get Life is Strange like few others do.
