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Back to the Future
"Clara's Story"
Back to the Future #5
IDW
Story by John Barber and Bob Gale
Script by John Barber and Erik Burnham
Art by Marcelo Ferreira
Colors by Diego Rodriguez
Letters by Shawn Lee |
Doc and Clara make a life and a family for
themselves in the Old West.
Read the story
summary at
Futurepedia
Notes from the Back to the Future chronology
This story has bookends taking place in 1893.
Didja Know?
Unlike previous issues that were narrated by Doc, this issue is
narrated by Clara.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this story
Doc Brown
Clara
Jules
Verne
Marshal Strickland
Roger Strickland
Martha Clayton (in Clara's memories only, deceased)
Daniel Clayton (in Clara's memories only, deceased)
Marty McFly
Zeke (in flashbacks only)
Jeb (in flashbacks only)
Levi (in flashbacks only)
Biff Tannen (in flashbacks only)
asylum attendant (unnamed)
Einstein
Didja Notice?
On page 3,
Marshal Strickland and his son, Roger, are observing on
horseback nearby as Doc and his family prepare to launch the
time train for its maiden voyage.
Doc remarks that he has refined the Presto logs he makes to
burn hotter and faster so the time train won't need as much
track to get up to 88 MPH as was needed with Locomotive 131
in
Back to the Future Part III.
In panel 5 of page 3, Doc is seen holding the hoverboard
obtained in 2015 in
Back to the Future Part II.
Clara states she is an only child.
On pages 7-8, we see Clara living the events she told Doc of
in
Back to the Future Part III,
of catching diphtheria at the age of 11 and receiving a gift
of a telescope from her father to while away the time she
was bedridden.
On page 8, young Clara is seen with copies of Jules Verne's
novels From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864).
On page 9, Clara is seen reading Jules Verne's Around
the World in 80 Days (1872).
Clara's father, Daniel, died in 1879 and her mother, Martha,
in 1884.
On page 10, Clara is reading Jules Verne's The Green Ray
(1882).
On page 10, Clara says her parents met on the Oregon Trail.
The Oregon Trail is an historic wagon route running from
eastern Missouri to western Oregon. It was a
particularly important route between the east and west of the
country from 1840-1869, when Clara's parents would have met.
Page 11 features flashbacks to events in
Back to the Future Part III,
to the two times when Doc saved Clara's life. Clara appears
to be wearing the same dress on both occasions here, but in Back to the Future Part III,
she wore two entirely different dresses than this one.
In panel 1 of page 12, the three men standing together in
the middle of the panel appear to be the three hecklers in
the bar seen in Back to the Future Part III,
Zeke, Jeb, and Levi.
Pages 14-15 feature flashbacks to events in
Back to the Future Part II.
In panel 2 of page 14, the future newspaper is U.S. Now,
but in the movie it was
USA
Today. In panels 3-5, Doc is wearing a different
shirt than he was in the film and is missing his clear tie.
When Doc goes to visit himself in the mental institution in
1985A, he uses the last name Von Braun, which was his
family's original name when they moved to the U.S. from
Germany at the beginning of the 20th Century, as he tells
Marty in
Back to the Future Part III.
Doc discovers that his institutionalized self has seemingly been
lobotomized, unable to tell him anything. But "Biff to the
Future" Part 6 instead shows us that Doc had learned of and
used an ancient Eastern religious practice to shut off his
higher brain functions in order to prevent BiffCo from
getting the secret of time travel.
On page 17, Doc is depicted wearing a lab coat while piloting
the DeLorean when it got struck by lightning in 1955 in
Back to the Future Part II.
But he was not wearing a lab coat in the film.
Page 17 shows Doc walking into Hill Valley after the
lightning bolt has sent the DeLorean to 1885 (as seen in
Back to the Future Part III).
But, the courthouse is depicted as completed when it should
be either under construction or still just a vacant parcel
(as also seen in
Back to the Future Part III).
On page 20, panel 4, Doc is seen reading Jules Verne's'
Around the Moon (1870). In panel 7, he is reading
Grimm's Fairy Tales aloud to his boys.
This story shows Doc's first attempt to use the time train
was a failure.
On page 24, one of the Brown family's fellow citizens of
Hill Valley has had a Serpollet Steam Tricycle shipped to
him from France, intriguing the Doc. The steam tricycle was
invented by Leon and Henri Serpollet in France in the late
1880s.
In
"Continuum Conundrum" Part 3, Doc has built a steam time
car shortly after the events of this story and will use it
to go to the future to get the technology he needs to get
the more complex time train working so he can tour time with
his family as Clara desires to do here.
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