As convoluted as things have become in the DC Universe’s time stream,
thanks to Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour, it is surprising
that any one character would want to hazard traveling through time.
With the new book Chronos, however, writer John Francis Moore,
penciler Paul Guinan, and inker Steve Leialoha dare to take the title
character on a trip through the history of the DC Universe.
        Chronos is the story of Walker Gabriel, a small-time thief who
utilizes technology given to him by the Silver Age Atom and JLA
villain of the same name, who has since retired. With the technology
acquired by the fourth issue, Gabriel starts a tour of the DCU’s
history, all the while being pursued by one of the Linear Men, the
DCU’s chronal police.

        “Chronos is about our lead character, Walker Gabriel’s sort of
discovery of himself as he travels through the DC Universe’s history,”
John Francis Moore said. “I think it’s a book of discovery and
adventure, as ‘sound bite’ as that may sound.”

         “A great romp. An epic adventure with a positive slant (no ‘grim and
gritty’ here) and wide-ranging appeal,” Paul Guinan said in an e-mail
interview. “The main character -- Walker Gabriel -- is a freewheeling
guy in his twenties, an industrial thief thrust into the role of hero.
Chronos' light-hearted tone and illustrative style make it accessible
to younger readers, while the the plot intricacies and cameo
appearances by DC figures of the past will be enjoyed by older fans.”

        “My end of it is that it comes fully realized from John Moore and
Paul Guinan, so I’m trying to make it look slick and polished,” Steve
Leialoha admitted. “Outside of the obvious, Chronos is a time-travel
story, or a story with time travel as they like to say it.”

        The guest appearances may well be what attracts the older fans who
may miss characters who have blended into obscurity; Moore and Guinan
have the history of the DCU and all of its rich history at their
fingertips to put in a plethora of guests, whether it is a current set
of characters such as the Kent family of Smallville of the Old West,
or obscure supporting characters from Jack Kirby’s Kamandi book, with
even more guest appearances on the way, including the Silver Age
Justice League...sort of.

        “In the millionth issue, which is coming up, we find out what the
future is for Walker Gabriel, and for the City Out of Time,
Chronopolis, whose origin and it’s connection to Walker is the subject
of the storyline following the millionth issue,” Moore dropped about
the upcoming summer JLA crossover. “In the millionth issue, we’ll see
who Walker becomes in the far future, and we’ll also see a number of
time travelers from the DC Universe make appearances on Chronopolis.
We’ll see Rip Hunter, Brainiac Five, [Waverider]...”

        “The original Chronos, David Clinton, is laid to rest in issue 6. In
his will, he leaves Walker Gabriel a key to his secret hideout, with
interesting results,” Guinan revealed.  “In #7, the shape-changing
Glass from issue 1 "returns" to meet Walker for the first time --
disguised as members of the Silver-Age Justice League. (I got to draw
Superman for the first time since I was a kid, plus I got paid for it!)”

        Of all the characters to revamp, it is rather surprising that Moore,
Guinan, and Leialoha could get a Silver Age JLA villain, at a time
where Grant Morrison has been resurrecting old JLA villains for his
current series. However, Moore and Guinan had their reasons for
choosing Chronos.

        “The time-travel element, as well as the central idea of one guy with
one power. One far-reaching power, with almost universal appeal!”
Guinan said.  “Many recent comics characters require complex backstory
explanations, but the most memorable superheroes are the iconographic
ones: the Flash runs fast, Green Arrow's a champion archer. Chronos
travels through time.”

        While Walker Gabriel has the original Chronos around as a supporting
character for the first few issues, it is very possible that the two
might meet again, but at different times in their lives...

        “[I]t won’t be in the first year, but I definitely had intentions
from the beginning to have Walker meet the original Chronos while the
original Chronos is involved with a conflict with Ray Palmer [The
Atom], when he was still an adult [in] the Gil Kane era, before he
became seventeen years old. But mostly, you won’t see the original
Chronos in the book for a while,” Moore observed.  “I think it was
important to establish a connection between the original Chronos and
Walker and to let Walker stand as the contemporary Chronos. They don’t
have a familial connection like Jack and Ted Knight [of Starman].”

        “I have a scenario in mind that I've discussed with John. We may not
get to it right away, but it'll happen eventually,” Guinan promised.
        Writing any book in DC continuity that refers to the past, especially
a time travel book, does have it’s share of problems; Moore told of
how the constant revamping of DC’s continuity can cause some
complications.

        “I have tried to avoid the big continuity-slashing events in the
book...because I didn’t want to make this book about the DC Universe
time continuity. I wanted to take advantage of the history that has
sort of accumulated by virtue of sixty years now, of DC Comics. So, I
haven’t really been tied or shackled by either of the big events, by
the continuity of Zero Hour or Crisis on Infinite Earths. I think
probably the most frustrating thing [with] writing a time-travel book,
or a book that’s trying to be as time-specific as possible, is that
there’s a constant unspoken revision of the origin points of the DC
Universe characters. Obviously, when there was Earth-1 and Earth-2,
there was some kind of an explanation of why Superman existed in the
1940’s, when he’s around in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. Right now, Batman and
Superman are probably in their late twenties, which means that if
Superman is thirty, he came to Earth in 1969?

        “Which is a much different world than depression-era Kansas. So,
there’s this kind of a transition, an unspoken one, and it means that
you can’t fix a date on when those characters existed. I would love to
do a story that very specifically put the early Justice League in the
1960’s, at the time when they were actually being written and drawn
for the first time. I don’t know what the continuity is for Justice
League Year One, but it’s five years ago, or ten years ago, at the
very latest that the Justice League first got together. In a way
that’s really frustrating, because you know that the Justice Society
fought during World War II, and they’re constantly making revisions in
those character’s histories to explain why [they] are around today.”

        Time specific events are a must for Chronos, and are heavily
researched, also affecting how the book is drawn, according to Guinan.

        “I'm an insane history buff. Every  aspect of any given time period
depicted in Chronos has been extensively  researched. Each scene
contains elements accurate to within two years of the specified date
and locale--such as the Countess' dress in #3, the building facades
and cowboys' clothes in #2, even the ruined highway sign in issue #4's
Kamandi sequence. This sort of detail can be be subtle yet distinct,
like the difference between alt-rocker dress in Seattle vs. New York.”
        Guinan’s fluid style, which earned him acclaim over his Heart
Breakers mini-series for Dark Horse Comics a few years ago, is inked
over by comics legend Steve Leialoha.

        “As an inker, I try to give the penciler what they’re going for, and
if I see places where I might make things more interesting by adding
something, or maybe simplifying something. Sometimes he’ll have some
sort of lighting effect going and I might change things a bit; a sort
of process of refinement. Sometimes it doesn’t need it, sometimes it
could use a little bit. It just depends,” Leialoha told.

        Paul Guinan has one specific inspiration that sprung to mind when
designing the look for Chronos.

        “In Chronos, I saw a classic adventure aspect that touched on my love
of old newspaper strips. I deliberately designed the series in that
mold, with the strongest influence coming from my favorite
globe-trotting series: Tin-Tin, by Hergé.”

        “[W]ith Paul’s pencils, sometimes they’re extremely tight, sometimes
they’re a little bit loose. Most of the time, I try to give him what
he seems to be going for. Due to deadline pressures, it’s sort of a
sink or swim type of thing. I think the very first thing I inked for
Paul was the cover of the first issue, so I had to figure out my
approach to inking as we went along. His pencils are so tight that
it’s pretty straightforward. There’s considerably less room for
interpretation, than if I were inking somebody like Sal Buscema, for
example...Paul has specific ideas [and] these things carefully worked
out. Occasionally, it’ll come in handy [like with #3, when] it starts
off pretty quickly when he ends up in Renaissance Florence, Italy.
Since I’ve actually been there, it sort of helped where I could
embellish accordingly. Paul had pretty good reference, things like
that. A lot of it’s science fiction, we’re depicting things that no
one has been to except, maybe Paul,” Leialoha said with a laugh.

        There’s more in store for Chronos, one of the bigger things being his
“hosting” the upcoming Legends of the DC Universe Annual in a framing
sequence.
        “I’m hoping there’s a place in the next five months of Chronos where
we can find out that it’s Walker Gabriel who is responsible for
rescuing Rip Hunter from the Pre-Cambrian or Jurassic era that he
ended up in at the end of the Time Masters mini-series from the late
‘80’s,” Moore hinted.
        “In the Legends of the DC Universe 80-page annual that’s being
written and drawn now, Dan Jurgens has a Rip Hunter story where he’s
traveling through time and gets rescued by the Linear Men. So, there’s
a point in which he obviously gets out of the past, and reactivates
his Time Sphere or whatever he travels in. So, I’m doing a framing
sequence for that annual, the seven or eight page stories in the book
will be framed by that Chronos sequence.”
        Overall, according to Guinan, Chronos is not a book about a superhero
in the typical sense. One aspect of the book’s appeal, at least to the
writer of this article, is in Gabriel’s humanity.
        “Walker Gabriel, in keeping with the times, is not as
self-sacrificing. Not that he is apathetic or irresponsible, it's just
that he's a little more reluctant to take on the hero role, which I
think makes for more interesting situations. As the series progresses
he takes a stronger moral stance in his life. It's an interesting
character arc.”