Review by Ian Keogh

Three years after producing the first adventure of naive, would-be journalist Leo Roa, Juan Giménez returned to his creation. Cousin Meke is now an acclaimed rock musician, so has been doing very well, and so has Leo, although he’s rather secretive about his new position within the Starr Corporation.

The reason for Leo’s secrecy is the Starr Corporation working on experimental technology enabling them to report news through time and space. Unfortunately the technology is in their new headquarters, right in the middle of a remote area where a hijacked space station is likely to crash to Earth. At the same time, Meke has been abducted as he resembles the leader of an alien race, and the only person capable of uniting two warring factions.

As is the case with other projects he returned to over the years, Giménez really poured the detail into the first volume, in this case The True Tales of Leo Roa, and pared back the art for following outings. That said, he’s such a phenomenal artist that anyone looking at this without knowledge of the earlier story (and it can be read without that) is likely to be blown away anyway. He still shows everything that’s necessary, just that it’s likelier to be seen from a closer viewpoint and with the occasional fudged face.

Having teased with the possibilities of a time machine, Giménez doesn’t make the most of the opportunities. What comes across is that he felt like drawing a few World War II planes and some dinosaurs, and the time machine is the maguffin enabling it. It’s not actually the case, as it also feeds into an ending tying the plot threads together, but that’s a long time in coming, although it’s clever.

Anything drawn by Giménez is going to be worth looking at, but this isn’t as funny, nor as detailed as Leo’s first outing.

An Odyssey Back in Time is combined with The True Tales of Leo Roa in a single volume as The Starr Conspiracy, which is turn combined with The Fourth Power in The Deluxe Giménez.